The Corps

December 13, 2000, the day I found myself standing on those magnificent yellow footsteps on Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island. Those foot prints that would forever change my perspective on life and build the foundation from which I would become a man.

 

Two deployments to Iraq - Attached to the Marine Expeditionary Brigade in November 2002 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), then attached to the Marine Expeditionary Brigade again, pushing across the Line of Departure (LOD) March 19th, 2003 as we invaded Iraq. Stayed in country through the completion of the first offensive in July.

 

Returned home July 2003, attached to the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit Special Operations Capable (MEU SOC)on the USS Belleau Wood (LHA-3). I always call this the MEU that would never be, because unlike traditional MEU's we were deployed back in country where we would assume control of Karbala, An Najaf and Al Qadisiyah provinces in July 2004. We would go on to have one of the longest on land deployments for a MEU at the time, over 7 months.

 

Much to my surprise, I would leave the beloved Corps on December 13th, 2005. I did shift to the reserves between my EAS and 2007, but would leave that as well.

 

The Defense Contractor

 

Between 2006 and 2011 I spent my professional career as a Defense contractor providing Subject Matter Expertise (SME) in geospatial technologies to the Departments of the Army, Marine Corps, and Navy.

 

I held roles as analyst, technical architect, project and program manager all in the design and implementation of enterprise systems for range management and sustainment around the world. In 2011, I found myself in Afghanistan as the lead SME in the development and deployment of an enterprise GIS capital asset system for the Afghan Ministry of Defense and Interior.

 

The Founder

 

March 2011, while in Afghanistan, I was asked to join the Sucuri founding team. Just three guys curious about a project, with no real aspirations of anything larger than working on a fun project and making a little extra cash. January 2012 we decided it was time to go full-time with Sucuri. I was appointed the role of Chief Operating Officer (COO) from 2011-2014, where I was responsible for building the foundation of the business, including scaling all operational elements (i.e., support, finance, administration, etc.). The question and focus was always, how do we provide a quality service that makes a difference, in a way that is sustainable and repeatable, as well as scalable.

 

On June of 2014, I was appointed the role of CEO by the board with a renewed focus on the company's strategy and direction in collaboration with my friend and business partner - Daniel Cid (Sucuri Founder and OSSEC Founder).  The question evolved to, what problem are we solving? what value are we offering?

 

An Exit Arrives

 

April 4th, 2017 Daniel and I signed a deal to sell Sucuri to GoDaddy. I was appointed the Sucuri GM at the acquisition, a sub group under the larger Security Product Group. In October 2017, I was appointed the General Manager (GM) response for the entire Security Product Group.

 

Exploring New Ideas

 

In the fall of 2016 Daniel and I began to share our frustrations with the options available to secure our home networks. Over the next two years he would begin playing with the idea and building what would become known as CleanBrowsing (established June 2018).

 

In 2020, after our departure from GoDaddy, it became apparent that we were in dire need of the same tools we had built at Sucuri. Afraid that our non-paying accounts would at some point be disabled, we set out to tackle the same problem we'd worked on for the prior decade. NOC.org was born (established 2020) with a global pandemic as the backdrop, and a personal need for a solution for all our personal projects.

 

In 2022 we released a new project, Trunc. While third in line, the initial foundation for Trunc started long before CleanBrowsing. It was create originally as a means to fork Daniel's original project - OSSEC, but time and focus never let that materialize. Fast-forward a few years and we found ourselves in a world that needed a simpler, more affordable, solution to manage our logs. Trunc was released to focus on that problem - collecting, storing and analyzing logs at scale.