Meet Our Experts
Mark Russell - SQL 2005 Trainer (MCT, MCDBA, MCSD.NET, MCSE Security, CEH, Security+)
Mark Russell has over twenty years total networking and programming experience with a current focus enterprise database development and training using Microsoft SQL Server tools and technologies. Mark is a Certified Technical Trainer. He has taught over 500 Desktop Applications classes and over 500 Technical classes. Mark has completed Microsoft approved Train-the Trainer Program. He was named Instructor of the Year in 1999 with New Horizons Worldwide. As a Microsoft Certified Trainer, Mark has maintained an overall class (Instructor score) average of 9.62 on a 10 scale.
Patrick Von Schlag
Patrick has worked in the Information Technology field for over 25 years and brings his extensive expertise to our courses. He has helped establish IT service management programs for a variety of organizations including pharmaceutical, energy, and software companies. Patrick was a part of one of the original service management teams in the United States. He has been a member of several CompTIA boards and is a member of the ITSM forum.
Martin VanDerSchouw
Martin VanDerSchouw is the President and CEO of LookingGlass Development, a premier provider of project management, tools, training and consulting. Martin served 3 years on Project Management Institute's International Board of Directors. He has also served as PMI's Chair of Performance Oversight, Chair of External Relations and Involvement Committee, and as Secretary Treasurer. Martin was named in the Top 40 under 40 by the Denver Business Journal and was named PMI's 2004 International Business Leader of the Year. He is currently the Colorado state commissioner for information management. Martin also has previous experience as an executive in the banking industry and as the Chief Technology Officer for one of the largest interactive agencies in the United States.
Sandra Batakis - A+ Trainer, MCT, MCSE, CIW
Sandra is a Senior Microsoft Certified Instructor with over 10 years in
the IT certification training and courseware development field. She has
offered a wide variety of IT training and high level consulting projects
for Fortune 500 companies. She possesses extensive hands-on IT
experience including working with building computer networking
infrastructure, configuring LAN, WAN and Internet security gateways,
Implementing and migrating to Microsoft Exchange 5, 2000,2003 and the
new Exchange 2007. She has delivered numerous Microsoft, CompTIA and
Adobe classroom-based as well as online Boot Camps and Seminars across
the United States.
Linda McKinnon - Linux Expert, Renowned Linux Study Guide Author
Linda McKinnon has more than 10 years of experience as a successful trainer and network engineer, assisting both private and public enterprises in network architecture design, implementation, system administration, and RFP procurement. She is renowned book author and has published numerous Linux study guides for Wiley Press and Gearhead Press.
Kenneth Mayer - Certified CEH Trainer (CCSI, MCT, CCNP, CCDA)
Ken Mayer is a Microsoft Certified Trainer as well as a Certified Ethical Hacker Trainer and Security consultant. He started his career in computer technology in 1980s. He has offered a wide variety of IT training and high level consulting projects for Fortune 500 companies across the United States and Western Europe. He has achieved the Certified Cisco Systems Instructor certification. The CCSI certification involved a two-day lab and observation event held on Cisco in Paris, France Facility. This gave Ken the accreditation to be able to deliver Cisco Authorized Courses as a CCSI. He has taught the full line of Cisco CCNA, CCDA, CCNP, CCDP and CCIP course curriculums, including Cisco's security appliances such as PIX and IDS.
Linda Harris is a Microsoft Certified Trainer, Database Administrator and a System and Application Developer. Linda has over 10 years experience as a Database Administrator and programmer. She has mastered and taught several courses utilizing Microsoft's SQL Server tools and technologies. In addition to her specialty in teaching all aspects of Database Programming, she has also taught a number of Microsoft Windows BackOffice courses.
Kevin Wolford - Mr. Wolford started his computer career in 1983. He has been a technical writer, network administrator, and trainer. Kevin spent many years with Novell and is a CNI and Master CNE. In 1998 Kevin founded Tech Training, giving him a chance to test his training ideas. He is also an MCSE, Microsoft Certified Trainer MCT, and is certified in SMS, SQL Server, TCP/IP, NT Workstation, NT Server, Exchange Server, Windows 9x and 2000. Kevin has authored Microsoft certification books for New Riders and Sybex. He owns a consulting company dedicated to teaching complex technical topics in a simple way. He was involved in the early stages of Windows.NET Server's development and beta testing.
Jeff Cook - MCT, MCSD, MCAD, MCP, A+ and MCDBA - He has been a Microsoft Certified Trainer for 6 years and has been in the training industry for 9 years. Also, he has developed mid-level and Enterprise level applications allowing him to implement a large amount of "real world" experience into his training.
Jeff has been a prinicipal instructor for numerous training organizations since June 1998 with over 1,400 days of teaching experience and an average student survey score of 9.62 on a 10 point scale.
Chris Givens - is the CEO of Architecting Connected Systems, a course ware development company focused on advanced development topics. ACS credits include the top selling worldwide development course in SharePoint 2007. Chris's past experiences include Microsoft, Avanade, several technology startups in the Seattle area and a 5-year career at IBM. Chris grew up in Oklahoma and is a computer science graduate of the University of Tulsa in Tulsa, OK.
Peter Thorsteinson- MCPD, MCTS, MCSD, MCAD, MCP, MCT
Peter has more than a decade of experience as a Microsoft Certified Trainer as well as over 20 years of experience in the programming and software development fields. He has worked with many programming languages including C++, Java, and C# and Visual Basic .NET. Peter has also been involved with ASP.NET, ADO.NET, AJAX, Silverlight, Sharepoint, and other WPF technologies. Peter is the author and coauthor of several books on .NET programming.
Tim Pierson
has been a technical trainer and consultant for security and virtualization for the past 25 years. He has 29 industry technical certifications from CISCO, EC-Council, Microsoft and Novell. Tim has been a noted speaker at many industry events such as Infosec World 2010, Innatech and GISSA. He is a Contributing author of (VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security Securing ESX in the Virtual Environment÷. He was named Instructor of the Year from EC-Council in 2009.
Warren Peterson - is the President, and co-founder of the Security Certified Program (SCP). In addition to his role as President, Warren also functions as the lead author for instructional content, and has written nine leading IT security books, including all current SCP courses.
In 1999, it was Warren's vision to create a program that addressed IT security, and the SCP was born. Warren has overseen the company's growth from delivering security programs in one Chicago classroom to SCP courses delivered on a global scale.
Erin Olsen - MCAS Erin Olsen has been involved in the computer training industry for over 15 years. Erin has helped thousands of students worldwide receive quality computer training in a wide range of software titles and subject matter. Erin is a Microsoft Office Specialist Master Instructor and is MCAS certified. As a frequent Microsoft Office user as well as a trainer, Erin utilizes a practical approach in her instruction.
Tracy Berry - Has been involved graphic and web design for more than 15 years. She has utilized Adobe Photoshop on many different forms including the commercial print industry, however over the past years she has focused devoted its use primarily to web production. She has designed over 200 web sites, and in doing so has discovered many tips & tricks to improve both production and efficiency. In addition to Adobe Photoshop she is also an expert in Macromedia Flash as well as many other Macromedia products. In fact, she has been using many of the Macromedia and Adobe products since their genesis. Over the years she has demonstrated great versatility in these products, producing content of many different forms for many different types of clients.
Duane Anderson - CVSE, CVE, Security+, CPTE, CPTC, CDFE, CEH, VMTraining Certified InstructorDuane has been working in the IT industry for the last two decades. He has primarily focused on security related matters such as Penetration Testing and Forensics. He has appeared as an expert witness in multiple court hearings on IT related matters. Duane has worked for or with most US and some foreign military branches, U.S government agencies, banking and regulatory industries and Fortune 500 companies. Duane contributed to the coordination and execution of IT counter-hacking & security courses for the US Marine Corps, US Army, US Air Force, U.S. Treasury, Sprint, IBM, Washington Mutual and Service Canada.
Jeff Weiss has held a broad spectrum of positions within the IT field for over 30 years. Jeff has owned and operated his own IT business and has installed and supported networks and data centers at almost every level of the IT world. Jeff has recently authored both courseware and exams for Microsoft. For the past 15 years, Jeff has worked as a consultant and trainer with a focus on the design of Enterprise Architecture, as well as Windows and VMware networks.
Shon Harris - CISSP, MCSEis a security consultant, a former engineer in the Air Force Information Warfare Unit, an instructor, an author, and President of Logical Security.
She has written two best selling CISSP books, and co-authored Hacker's Challenge and Gray Hat Hacking. Shon has developed a new security book series, being published by McGraw-Hill, which will be sold to corporations, universities, colleges, and professionals throughout the world. This series will set the new standards in security training, education, and industry practices.
She is an active contributor for Information Security Magazine and Windows 2000 Magazine. Shon has taught computer and information security to a wide range of clients including RSA, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, National Security Agency (NSA), Bank of America, Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), BMC, and more.
Shon was recently recognized by Information Security Magazine as one of the top 25 women technologists, researchers and executives reshaping information security today.
Eric Reed - EC-Council Master Certified Instructor, CEH, CHFI, ECSA/LPT, CISSP, MCT, MCSE: Security Eric Reed brings more than a decade of IT experience to his expert video instruction. Eric specializes in network penetration testing and digital forensics consultation for large corporations and government sectors. After working for many years in the IT security and training industry as an independent consultant, Eric became co-owner of Immersion Training, LLC. He is currently solely focused on advanced security consulting and education. Eric is an EC-Council Master Certified Instructor and a Microsoft Certified Trainer.
His experience in the public / defense sectors is equally complemented by assignments undertaken for heavyweight world renowned corporations including Yahoo, Xerox, AT&T and Texas Instruments to name but a few. He is imminently qualified in his field in that he holds a string of professional qualifications in Networking to name a few (MCT, MCSE, Cisco, Network+) and IT Security (CIW Security Analyst , Security+, CEI, CEH, CPTE, CDFI, CPTM) besides a bachelor's degree in science.
Michael Deskis- Mr. Deskis has twenty years of exposure in the design, construction and implementation of mainframe and client/server application systems. His experience ranges from programming in a variety of languages (COBOL, Assembler, C and JavaŽ) through database design and into data warehousing. The breadth of his exposure ranges from large-scale mainframe operations to smaller client/server systems allowing him to articulate solutions to many types of business scenarios and understand the implications of system migrations.
During his most recent tenures he has been worked closely with IBM utilizing their Visual Warehouse product to migrate legacy systems to smaller more user-responsive enterprise data warehouses with Java-enabled front-ends. He is one of a select few individuals authorized by IBM to teach their Visual Warehouse Business Intelligence and VisualAge for JavaŽ curriculum in North American. In 1998, IBM ranked their entire worldwide instructor/developmental staff based upon student evaluation forms and Mr. Deskis was ranked in the top 3% of all global instructors used by IBM.



