Data Center Institute Board Members

Carrie Goetz has been involved in the computing and networking industries for over 30 years. Goetz currently works for Paige DataCom Solutions as the Global Director of Technology shaping the technological future for end user solutions. This global division is responsible for data center and data communications products and services as the newest business division of Paige Electric. Goetz has designed and audited multitudes of data centers for enterprise, colocation, hosting, and cloud facilities. She speaks at numerous industry events, end user education forums and various conferences globally and has been the featured keynote speaker at many. Globally published, Goetz is a frequent industry blogger and expert contributing to over 250 publications worldwide and is published in 69 countries.

Goetz chairs and participates in Women in Data Centers, AFCOM, 7x24Exchange and other forums fostering women in the industry beginning at a young age. She has extensive background in all aspects of networking and application development as a programmer, consultant, project manager, and Fortune 500 executive running IT departments and data centers with multi-million dollar budgets, and has taught at a collegiate level.  Goetz has an MBA and MSBS. She is the former President of the BladeSystems Alliance and member of the Board of Directors. She holds an RCDD/NTS, CDCP, CDCS, is a 1ST Degree Infrastructure Mason, a member of the AFCOM Board of Advisors, and has had 38 other certifications in the industry throughout the years. She has one telecommunications patent.

With 30 years of experience in the Data Center industry, Tad Davies leads teams and engagements that ensure clients gain the most value from their IT and data center investments and that they are congruent with business needs. Tad leads Bick’s Consulting Services practice, which advises clients nationally regarding Business Centric strategies such as consolidation, provider selection, and build vs. buy as well as Facility Centric efforts such as risk assessment and owner’s representation.
Tad has been involved with AFCOM for 15 years, and has attended all Data Center World’s Spring and Fall Conferences during that time. Tad has served on the Data Center Institute Board for seven years. He was born in Melbourne, Australia and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Management from Tulane University’s Business School.

Mark Monroe is President, Energetic Consulting, Inc. He recently served as Executive Director of The Green Grid, an IT industry and end user consortium focused on resource efficient data centers and business computing environments. His 30 years’ experience in the IT industry includes data center design and operations, application and system design, service level management, process design and analysis, professional services, sales, government and commercial program management, and outsourcing management. He works on sustainability advisory boards with the University of Colorado and local Colorado governments, and is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt and Master Black Belt.

Overview
Mike has over 32 years’ experience in the ICT industry, covering strategy, design and management across commercial and government sectors. He is a specialist in large-scale data centre development and telecommunications solutions, with particular skill in strategic and master planning, procurement, telecommunications and networking, design, management and operations, contract negotiations and project recovery.

Experience
Mike holds a number of Director level positions across the ICT and telecommunications industry.
Appointed to the Board of Directors of AFCOM’s Data Center Institute in the USA in April 2010, Mike has since represented the Institute on the Data Centre World Expert Panel on Data Centre Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (2011), Data Center Trends (2012), Total Cost of Ownership (2013-2016), and co-authored a number of Whitepapers including the Data Center Size and Density 2014, Data Center Delivery Models 2018, and the DCI Five Bold Predictions 2019.
A regular speaker at data centre industry events including Data Center World in the USA and AFCOM’s Asia Pacific Data Centre Symposium, Mike maintains his data centre design and operations knowledge with frequent international data centre and vendor reviews, and data centre redevelopment projects.

Mike is a Director and National Data Centre Practice Manager of The Strategic Directions Group, an advisory firm specialising in IT, Telecommunications and Data Centre Strategy. He was the Design Authority for the Polaris Data Centre in Springfield (Queensland, Australia), and was the External CIO responsible for the ICT Master Plan for Greater Springfield (winner of the 2010 World’s Best Master Planned Community Award).
Mike has acted as Plaintiff’s Data Center Expert in a multinational lawsuit in the USA, and as an IT Industry and Solutions Expert for Plaintiffs in an IT Managed Services & Cloud lawsuit in Australia.
Mike is the Managing Director and co-founder of Oper8 Pty Ltd, an Australian IT managed services and cloud services firm, specialising in data centre, telecommunications and storage solutions.
As a qualified technician, Mike’s early career positions included National Connectivity Practice Manager for Dimension Data Australia and Global Communications Consultant for Telstra.

Qualifications
Mike holds a Diploma of Applied Science – Computing, is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD), and a Certified CEO (CCEO). He is a member of the Board of Directors, AFCOM Data Center Institute, USA, and was the first board member appointed from outside North America. He is also an active member of the AFCOM Brisbane Chapter, is a Fellow of the CEO Institute, and has held memberships with the Uptime Institute (USA), and the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA).

Through learning, development and implementation, Kevin Kent is an agile and action oriented leader who maximizes robust data center and IT infrastructure management. He understands customer objectives to develop effective business solutions. Kevin drives continuous improvement initiatives as trusted business partner to leaders, customers, and contributors. Kevin is a skilled communicator who excels in conveying vision, expressing passion, and mentoring excellence. He is an international speaker on data center energy efficiency creating awareness and providing education through his travels. Kevin is an AFCOM member and serves as a board member for Central Ohio AFCOM chapter. Kevin has been employed at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center since 2003 and is the founder and CEO for Critical Facilities Efficiency Solutions. Kevin has association with several environmental foundations including National Resource Defense Council, Citizen’s Climate Lobby, Clean Seas, and Conservation International. His ultimate objective is to reduce the overall data center industry carbon footprint.

After 7 years in the US Army Brad started a 17-year data center career holding various positions within Oracle. His experiences at Oracle include vendor and hardware selection, racking, power planning, cabling, and lifecycle management of IT assets, creation of standards and process documentation.

Brad has created several new programs to include centralized asset lifecycle tool, space and power approval for new IT projects before procurement, consolidation of colocation contracts, Incident Reporting and change management for MEP infrastructure, capacity tracking and reporting for all critical locations, and tools for financial comparisons and request for new build projects greatly reducing approval times.

Brad justifies and oversees projects ranging from large multi-million dollar and multiple megawatt builds, retrofit projects, and small lab projects.  In his current role, Brad’s primary focus is on the continual review of hundreds of compute locations globally to weigh their strategic IT need to Oracle against the cost to operate and maintain them. He also serves as a liaison between IT management and RE&F management where there is often a difference in opinion or communication barrier.

John Parker is a Senior Data Center Management professional with an MBA and over 25 years of IT experience in 4 industries (Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, Banking, and Software Development). Currently John manages Global Data Center Operations and Disaster Recovery at Esri. Strengths are Leadership and mentoring managers, building and maintaining Global Data Center Operations, Facilities and Information Technology support teams. Recent accomplishments include reconditioning legacy data centers, collocation retirements and build outs, managing hybrid data center models (Collo, Cloud, owned data centers) and implementing ITIL Service Delivery initiatives.

Professionally he resides on the Data Center Institute Board of Directors and was President of local AFCOM chapters in North Carolina (2000-2006) and Southern California (2007-2015).

John is also an accomplished speaker. His most recent speaking engagements include; local AFCOM Chapters, IMN Conferences, the CDM-CIO Summits, the Digital Media Educators conferences, Cal Poly Tech Swift conferences, Data Center World conferences and a guest speaker at universities.

Hector Diaz is a senior business leader with over 15 years’ experience designing, deploying, and operating mission critical infrastructure. He is an industry expert on the strategic allocation of capital, sorting through data center expand/build/buy/lease options.

Previous employers include CBRE, Oracle, Keysight Technologies, and HP. As a Director at Oracle he provided capacity planning and decision support for capital investments in infrastructure covering over a million square feet of data center space. Hector has extensive data center management experience including overseeing global hosting operations and supporting moves and consolidations related to mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures.

Hector was born in Spain and raised in Puerto Rico, where he got an engineering degree from the University of Puerto Rico. He has lived in San Juan, Boston, Saudi Arabia, Dallas, and Denver.

Bill is currently the Information Technology (I.T.) General Manager responsible for 24 x 7 x 365 data centers and server rooms for CH Robinson, a growing $16.5BB global third party logistics provider with over 300 branch offices worldwide. 

With over 30 years of experience as an I.T. professional working in data center environments in California and Minnesota, Bill has vast experience managing IT teams including Disaster Recovery, Enterprise Data Warehouse, Electronic Data Interchange technical support, and Intranet development and support.  He completed a multi-year, tier 3 designed datacenter project from the initial planning through the executive approval, site selection, detailed planning, construction, and migration phases for two data centers. 

With broad industry experience including retailing, financial services, food distribution, transportation, and computer hardware and software products and spanning multiple platforms including mainframe, Wintel, UNIX, Linux and other distributed solutions, Bill is uniquely qualified as a Data Center Institute Board member..