human hand holding plasma ball

Jackie Ramsey

Passionate IT Leader and Architect that enables companies and users to push the boundaries of Technology while enabling them to stay safe, and secure and ensuring it is still user-friendly.

About

I am a Director of IT Operations, Infrastructure, and Cyber Security which helps enable technology that benefits business goals and helps builds a bridge between technology and business. I try to partner with everyone from inside the organization and trusted partners to create and deploy products without introducing more risk or complexity into the organization and include a massive solution to keep the business running 24/7/365. I believe that you are only as good as the people and technology you work with.

Experience

LL Flooring formerly Lumber Liquidators

Director of IT Operations - November 2021 - August 2023

Cyber Security Architect - October 2020 - November 2021

LLFlooring.com

The Wills Group is the parents company of Dash In Convenience stores, Splash In Car Wash, SMO Fuels Marketing of privately own gas stations around Delaware, Maryland, and Eastern Virginia.

Accomplishments:

-Upon starting with LL Flooring, they were in a transformation of Remote Access VPN and SSL Inspection Software. They were looking to consolidate solutions that made it easy to support and end-user friendly. The result was a single solution that provides the users with a single installed application and an always-on product.

-Next biggest task was providing a way for retail stores to be able to conduct virtual visits with customers during a pandemic. I worked with some trusted partners to deploy tablets that were completely assembled and using cloud automation, stores were able to set up the device in 6 easy steps with all the components needed to access Lumber Liquidators applications.

-Working with trusted partners to find cost savings measures whiles improving functionality, features and usability across multiples platforms including, Telephony Services, Internet Service Providers, Disaster Recovery, Installation and Smart hand Services.

Responsibilities:

-Set a clear vision, strategy and design for all products around the IT Operations and Engineering program.

-Partner with other business groups to secure and functional platforms or the organization.

-Mentor and help other employees excel and grow around the IT organization.

-Continuously iterate to enhance and improve the IT Service Level Agreements and Value.

-Lead technology incident response in identifying, responding to, mitigating, and reporting technology incidents.

-Lead and build a relationships between the business and technology.

ePlus Techonology

Formally ABS Technology

Microsoft Solutions Architect

EPLUS.com | June 2019 - October 2020

ePlus Technology is a trusted Re-seller and Professional services provider that partners with organizations to effectively manage the complexity of their IT to achieve their ultimate visions to become a more modern and secure digital business.

Responsibilities:

-Developed application architecture strategy to specifically align with customer's business goals.

-Develop Enterprise Architecture and Deployment of Azure Cloud solutions including Azure Active Directory, Azure Load Balancing and Public DNS Services.

-Broke down technical ideas and issues into non-technical terms for business executives. Designed architecture strategies for large-scale Enterprise-wide application deployments.
Mentored customers, sharing skills and expertise and encouraged each member to bring forward ideas and suggestions for improvement.

-Communicated software architecture strategies to senior leadership and third-party business leaders. Maintaining average project work between 25 to 35 hours per week for different customers.

-Maintained current and in-depth understanding of business processes, needs and objectives.-Partner with other business groups to secure and protect platforms or the organization.

The Orvis Company

Senior Solutions Engineer

Orvis.com | November 2017 - June 2019

Family-owned retailer specializing in fly fishing, hunting, and sporting goods. Oldest mail-order retailer in the United States (founded in 1856).

Responsibilities:

-Maintaining 24x7 support for all systems.

-Engineering and Improving all Microsoft and VMware systems.

-Providing Email and Spam Filter support in Office 365 and Barracuda.

-Level 3 support for all server and desktop operating system and applications.

-Introducing IT central management tools from support ticketing system, application monitor, asset management, AD monitoring and Auditing and application patching.

-Upgrade Core Infrastructure hardware across multiple data centers.

-Upgrade Microsoft Core Domain Servers from domain controllers, dhcp, group policy, print services, ADFS, and Azure Connect.

-Improving backup and recovery systems to reduce down time and increase recovery times.

-Performed root cause analysis to provide resolutions for production issues.

Liberty Medical Supplies

Helpdesk- Feb. 2012 - Jun. 2012

Teir 2 Hardware Support- Jun. 2012 - Apr. 2013

Virtual Desktop Administrator- Apr. 2013 - Mar. 2015

Systems Administrator- Mar. 2015 - Aug 2016

VMware Systems Administrators - Aug. 2016 to Dec. 2018

Fortive Autiomation Via Teksystems

Senior Active Directory Contractor

July 2017 - November 2017

Environmental Protection Agency Via Teksystems

Windows 7 Upgrade Tech

January 2014 - February 2014

The Wills Group

Director of IT Operations, Infrastructure, and Security - August 2023 - November 2024

Willsgroup.com

LL Flooring is the nation's largest solid surface flooring retailer and utilizes business-aligned strategic technology advantages to offer services and products to hundreds of thousands of customers across North America.

Accomplishments:

-Within the last year, I have been able to lead the organization with a massive standardization model of their network and infrastructure while remediating key security vulnerabilities within the HQ and Store networks. Using my network of trusted partners within the first 3 months I was able to introduce a new remote access vpn with enhanced internet security functionality, upgrade a 8 year old storage array within their data center, moved them to a supported version of VMWare vCenter, and introduce a reliable enterprise immutable backups that would allow the organization to know their data was protected.

-After aligning and remediating the security vulnerabilities within the Corporate network, it was time to move the store infrastructure to a modern and supported architecture. Moving Point of Sale to supported versions while reducing the downtime of stores being closed while upgrades were in progress. The average POS upgrade was anywhere between 8 to 12 hours and after introducing playbooks, separation of duties, and automation the organization was performing software upgrades between 3 to 4 hours.

-While performing Software Upgrades to move all point of sales to a supported and standard version, we introduced a network standardization of a central internet service provider with advance monitoring, migration from using legacy unmanaged switches to enterprise managed switching, and enterprise grade firewalls with external LTE redundant internet.

Responsibilities:

-Set a clear vision, strategy and design for all products around the IT Operations and Engineering program.

-Partner with other business groups to secure and functional platforms or the organization.

- Provide a standard operating model for all next generation store architecture and security foundation

-Mentor and help other employees excel and grow around the IT organization.

-Continuously iterate to enhance and improve the IT Service Level Agreements and Value.

-Lead technology incident response in identifying, responding to, mitigating, and reporting technology incidents.

-Lead and build a relationships between the business and technology.

Industry Contributions

Guest Speaker at Cisco Connect Vermont- Cisco Hyperflex vs Traditional Virtualization Hardware

Founder and Leader of Roanoke VMware User Group

VMware vExpert since 2019

Certifications

2018- VMWare VCP-Foundation

2019- Microsoft MTA

It has been a pleasure to lead, work together with, and develop a friendship with Jackie over the past half-decade. Jackie is results-driven, positive, hard-working, and able to inspire a team so they together can accomplish amazing things.

Tyson Martin

Principal CIO, CISO, & Board Advisor

AWS

Jackie was an exemplary employee who always strived to put the customer's needs first when implementing and delivering solutions. He was an excellent communicator and always kept the customer and the project manager updated with his progress and status. A great team player who was always willing to lend a hand where needed and never too proud to ask for help when he needed it either.

Kelly Burton

Manager, IT Operations - WAN Team

Sentara Healthcare

Great vibes, amazing people! I enjoyed every moment. I've known Jackie for around 8 years now. We worked together to help get him a full-time position with Orvis Sporting and then to find him an internal position with ABS Technology/ePlus. He's grown significantly professionally and has an incredible technical aptitude paired with excellent communication skills. It's no wonder he's worked his way into a senior management position with a larger organization. His knowledge and technical ability in the cloud and virtualization space would be an asset to any organization.

-Caitlin Johnson

Chief Executive Officer

Input Staffing LLC dba Input Technology Solutions