ISC service(s) or programs/projects: Campus-wide fiber-optics specialist; all ISC cabling infrastructure for Pennovation campus (excluding the interior of the Pennovation Data Center) and all athletic buildings on main campus (Palestra, Franklin Field)—so Penn’s newest and oldest buildings!
Length of time in ISC: Joined ISC in January 2014
Previous work experience: H. B. Frazer Co. for 25 years – including many projects as a contractor for Penn, including as foreman for Singh Center infrastructure, Golkin section of Law School, cabling to connect Pennovation Center to the main campus, etc.
Tell us about a challenge at Penn that made you proud to be part of ISC.
When I first started at Penn, the big dorm on Hill Field at the corner of 34th and Chestnut was about to be built. The Infrastructure Engineering team was in the midst of making the necessary changes to accomplish that, because we had fiber-optic infrastructure running through the field that needed to be moved first. We needed to reroute all the cables with only minimal outages before having everything back up online, and we were able to accomplish that. It took about a year's worth of planning before I even started here to make it happen over the course of one weekend. That was the ultimate team effort. It required notifications to all affected Schools—which was pretty much all Schools—and coordination with each from the top all the way down. It provided great insight to the team I was going to be working with. Its members were invaluable assets to me as I got my feet wet on my first big project here at Penn.
What’s an interesting technical or business problem you’ve faced with ISC?
The original route for Pennovation Campus connectivity ran to the legacy DuPont data center in the Pennovation office building. This was chosen to support Transportation Services, the first client to move to the site. As plans for an ISC bridge data center and then a permanent data center clarified, it became clear that ISC needed to redesign connectivity to support the development of the site. It took five years for us to modify the fiber infrastructure as originally designed to facilitate the new Pennovation Data Center in the Pennovation Works building. If I say it was a fifty-step process I might be shortchanging it. It took that long for our Infrastructure Engineering team and its manager to identify and sequence the steps required to ensure the smooth transition of the Data Center connections to campus. Step one would require months of planning for weeks of implementation. And then step two, and so on. This project included working with Facilities to get new conduit under Grays Ferry Avenue for the original campus connections. Along with the ISC Data Center team, we often had to work at night to avoid outages—I believe that all of Penn’s Schools, including the Perelman School of Medicine, SEAS, SAS, Dental, and Wharton, have space in that Data Center. So any time we took any of these steps, it required a tremendous amount of planning on everyone's part to make it happen within the tight time frame that we promised to each of these entities.
What do you like best about working with clients and colleagues?
What it really comes down to is that I love the ability to be an individual thinker but have complete backing all the way. I'm encouraged to come up with solutions on my own, then I get the backing I need to follow through with them. And that's been the case since day one. I've just celebrated my ten-year anniversary and there's nothing that I've been asked to do that wasn't backed 100%. I don't know if that's everyone's experience, but that's mine.
How do you stay connected with colleagues in our hybrid work environment?
Well, I’m on campus three out of five days each week. So, it's not that difficult. And I can tell you that over the last ten years a good number of my colleagues have grown to be friends. That’s probably as nice a thing as there can be in a work environment. We text and communicate about daily life, often about things that have nothing to do with work. It’s always really nice when those two things intersect. So when you go in to work and you see these people, you talk about what you did over the weekend and ask them about their kids and that type of thing. And everyone is very personable.
What do you appreciate most about the time you spend on campus?
Seeing the people! I have a bit of a commute—I live about 35 miles away. And most days I’m driving to work looking forward to seeing the people that I work with. I have not met a person at Penn that I haven’t liked. Some I’ve liked more than others, of course. But I can honestly say that I actually look forward to going to work and seeing the people that I work with.
What are you passionate about in your free time?
Well, my wife and I love to travel. We are big travel buffs. And—this is going to sound completely sappy—but I also take a great deal of pride in watching the accomplishments of my children, who are both adults at this point. My daughter is a senior at Syracuse. My son has graduated and is working in the field of wildlife management. They both just make me extremely proud on a daily basis, and I enjoy every moment with them. Every other year, we take a big family vacation and in alternate years my wife and I will take a vacation with just she and I. We did France this past June. We've done Italy, we’ve done Scotland, England, and Canada. And we try see as much of the United States as we can. Though my daughter’s in Syracuse, they had a program last spring semester where she was in Los Angeles, so we went out there and spent a bit of time with her. It was a lot of fun.
What would you like people at Penn to know about you?
My hair is a direct result of COVID. When we all left to go home in March of 2020, I’d had for my entire life what’s been described as a military haircut. It was just simple and easy. So, by the time we came back into the office on a regular basis, I had to pretty much reintroduce myself to everybody.