Ellen Jahn's role is a Business Analyst and Project Manager for SIU’s ERP system (Oracle E-Business Suite) focused on HR and Payroll Processing. She supports the technology that runs many of the business processes for the entire SIU system. As a native of Makanda, Ellen took a non-traditional route to a tech career, obtaining a literature degree and later a telecommunications graduate diploma. Ellen holds the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification and has had a part in many tech projects at SIU and other local organizations. For fun, Ellen likes to scuba dive!

Taylor Calloni is a proud IST and SIU graduate and lifelong southern Illinois resident. After transferring to SIU from Rend Lake College, Taylor knew a career in technology was the right fit for him and working for campus IT during his schooling and as a full time team member after graduating provided a wealth of experience and helped develop new skills. Today he works for a large healthcare provider as a cybersecurity engineer and runs his own side business helping his local community with their tech needs. Outside of work, Taylor is a car enthusiast and passionate supporter of the St. Louis City SC soccer team.

Marquist Johnson is a young technology professional whose career journey originally started at SIU as a marketing major but ultimately switched into the Information Systems Technologies. His professional experiences ranges from companies like Boeing, McDonald’s to non profit organizations in Chicago. For fun, Marquist loves seeing live music and cheering on the Chicago Cubs.

Jori K grew up in the Chicago suburbs and graduated SIU with an IST degree in 2015. After some time working in healthcare IT, Jori joined a large technology distributor where he focused growing his knowledge of Red Hat enterprise products and solutions. As a Field Solutions Architect, Jori helps sales team members answer customer questions and ensure the right solutions are provided to the customer. In his free time Jori loves playing disc golf. Fore!

James Jakobsze grew up in the western suburbs of Chicago and started his first job in a tech field as a mobile audio and electronics installer for a local Best Buy. Jim's interest in the field took him to study Electronics Systems Technologies (EST) and earning his degree from SIU in 2003. With 20 years in healthcare technology, and 17 working directly for GE HealthCare, today Jim leads two teams for GE; one working on HL7 integrations and the other designing wireless networks for medical customers. Family activities and vacations, LinkedIn Learning, and admiring classic cars keep him busy when not using his CCNP and leadership skills for GE HealthCare.

Richard has worked in technology for over twenty years. Richard has spent the last 10 years working in Information Technology at SIU in a variety of roles, including datacenter and cloud infrastructure management as well as information security. He has been involved with a number of impactful projects at SIU alone including datacenter rebuilds and physical to virtual migrations, identity and access management solutions, mail hygiene (security) toolsets, network security, account hardening (MFA) and more. Outside of the technical, being able to mentor and see growth in students over the years is one of the most fulfilling parts of working in academia.

Alexander is a Network Support Engineer - a technical interface for customers ranging from all experience levels to engage with on issues/concerns/questions revolving around Meraki products and solutions. He assists customers by wearing the Meraki SME hat with issues ranging from complete network outages to guiding new customers through deployment of Meraki solutions. He loves the opportunity to take on issues most Network Engineers will never see in their life; as well as the collaboration element with customers/internal teams.

Lieutenant Colonel Jessica Dwyer is the Commander of Air Force ROTC Detachment 205 and the Director of the Department of Aerospace Studies at Southern Illinois University. Known as "Hammer" for her no-nonsense approach to enforcing standards in her classrooms and training environments, Lt Col Dwyer earned an undergraduate degree in Physics. While serving in the U.S. Air Force, she obtained a Masters degree in Physics and Astronomy from Dartmouth College and a PhD in Curriculum & Instruction from Kansas State University. As an active duty Air Force officer, Lt Col Dwyer has served as a basic research scientist, a faculty member at the U.S. Air Force Academy, in a role supporting the placement of Air Force scientists in mission units, and most currently as the Commander of the AFROTC Detachment 205 at SIU. Jessica was an intercollegiate athlete and captain of the women's soccer team at the University of Mary Washington and resides in southern Illinois with her husband and two daughters.

Cameron B earned his IST degree from SIU in 2017, following in the footsteps of big brother, Calen. After time working for a corporate healthcare IT company in Kansas City, a slower pace of life back in his hometown and work for a smaller company as a Cloud Engineer is what he currently enjoys.

Jacob Bond is a SOC analyst for a cybersecurity solution provider as well as an information tech and security faculty member at Harper College in Illinois. Jacob is an SIU IST alumni who enjoys the outdoors and works to promote professional communication as a skill set for technology professionals to develop or acquire.

Logan Davis graduated from the SIU ITEC program in May of 2022 and continued working where he completed a 2022 tech internship. From working in the warehouse of a national food distributor to running and automating their networks, Logan loves learning about it all. Hear his thoughts on his career a year in and what he recommends to students still in college.

Steven Fox currently works handling incident response and conducting open source and dark web threat intelligence analysis for customers. He has worked in the SOC for a global aerospace corporation and served in the US military. When not supporting customers Steven loves playing ice hockey and eating Syberg's buffalo chicken sandwiches!

Travis Cooper is a Technology Solutions Architect 2 with the World Wide Technology Advanced Technology Center who focuses on designing and building Lab and Proof of Concept environments for WWT customers.  Before WWT, Travis also worked in various roles in the IT Security organization at Centene, from Security Operations, to Security Engineering, with specializations including Firewalls, Antimalware, Secure Web Gateway, and SIEM (Splunk). Before Centene he worked for AT&T as a Firewall and DDoS prevention tool administrator and at Deloitte as a SOX and SOC2 technical controls auditor.  Travis loves working in IT Security as protecting company and customer data provides a sense of meaning to the jobs and the various technologies and pace keeps all of the jobs fresh and interesting.

Hamid Memari, an SIU Computer Science M.S. graduate, and personal friend of Tom, joins to share about his role working in software engineering and support roles for a global leader in medical imaging solutions in the Raleigh area. Outside of work Hamid enjoys many outdoor recreation pursuits, traveling, and eating tacos with aspiring podcast hosts.

Ethan Hallesy, another IST graduate from southern Illinois, works for a large systems manufacturer in a presales architecture role. He has extensive VMware experience gained during years working at large defense contractors. Hear Ethan chat about helping customers and sales team members find the enterprise solutions they need.

Michael Buhman is a southern Illinois native and SIU & IST Alumni. After testing the waters with a few IT organizations after graduating SIU, he made his mark working in EDI, electronic data interchange. Today Michael helps his organization and clients connect complex data systems together using EDI tools and query languages from his home in Chicago.

Marco Cortez is an IST graduate who has worked for a cloud services brokerage firm in Chicago since graduating SIU in 2017. Having earned a number of Azure cloud and security certificates, Marco helps architect and build cloud services for customers looking to migrate to or improve their cloud infrastructure.

JC Weiser has worked in the IT field for over twenty years. From humble beginnings at Carbondale repair shops, JC has consistently developed new skills and sought opportunities that challenged him to grow and to become an expert in enterprise storage architecture. After 10+ years helping design and build enterprise storage solutions for clients JC has taken some time off to focus on driving his new tractor.