Data Center Institute Board Members

Carrie Goetz, Principal/CTO, StrategITcom, has more than 35 years of global experience designing, running and auditing IT  departments, data centers and working with intelligent building infrastructures. Fostering women in tech, StrategITcom is founded with a charter to assure that 50% of employees are women and 50% of all partner referrals will go to women owned enterprises of all ethnicities.  She is an international keynote speaker and is published in 69 countries in over 250 publications.  She holds an honorary doctorate in Mission Critical Operations, RCDD/NTS, CNID, CDCP, CSM-Agile, AWS CCP and is a 2nd degree Master Infrastructure Mason with over 40 certifications throughout her career.  She is on the WIMCO national education committee and a long-time participant in 7x24 Exchange, AFCOM and Data Center Institute board of advisors, Mission Critical Advisory Board, Cnet Technical Curriculum Advisory Board, Vice Chairwoman and Liaison for STEM for AATCU, a member of WIMCO, BICSI and champions women in STEM.  She holds one telecommunications patent and has submitted two others.

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).

Kevin Kent is the CEO and founder of Critical Facilities Efficiency Solutions, a consultancy dedicated to optimizing energy usage and sustainability in data centers and mission critical facilities. He is recently retired from his role as data center operations manager of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. He is a climate reality leader and an international keynote speaker on climate change and data center energy efficiency. He is also a board member of the AFCOM Data Center Institute.

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 15+ years’ experience designing, deploying, and operating mission critical infrastructure. He is an industry expert on sorting through data center construction, expansion, and lease options.  He is currently employed at Easter-Owens Electric Co. holding the title of Managing Director - Mission Critical Sector.

 
Prior to joining Easter-Owens, Hector served as a Director at CBRE, managing international data centers. Previous employers include HP, and Oracle, where he oversaw a million square foot data center portfolio. He has served as an AFCOM Data Center Institute Board Member for nine years and is President Emeritus of AFCOM’s Denver Rocky Mountain Chapter
 
Hector has published articles on several trade publications and has been a public speaker at conferences in Boston, Denver, London, Los Angeles, and New York.
 
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. Outside of work he enjoys scuba diving, sailing, and bicycling.

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..