Exchange Training - Speaker Bios

Konstantin Ryvkin
Senior Technology Architect, Microsoft

Konstantin is a Sr. Technology Architect in the Microsoft Business Collaboration Services Group a team which provides Exchange based hosted messaging services to Microsoft IT and other enterprise customers. Konstantin joined Microsoft IT 9 years ago and specialized on security aspects of messaging, e-mail routing, messaging hygiene and mobile messaging. He is currently working on architecting and designing messaging solutions for Microsoft IT and Microsoft Online production environments based on Exchange 2007 and Exchange 14 technologies. Konstantin regularly presents at industry conferences on e-mail subjects and is also a trainer for the Microsoft Certified Architect | Messaging program.

Prior to joining Microsoft Konstantin was working as consultant and technical trainer. He holds Masters Degree in Computer Science from St. Petersburg State Technical University in Russia and has several industry certifications including MCA|M, MCT, CISSP, CCNA and Security+. Konstantin also coauthored several books on networking and security technologies.

Andrew Weiss
Application Developer, Avanade

Andrew Weiss is a software developer at Avanade, Inc. While at Avanade, Weiss has focused on Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager and how it can be used to facilitate Exchange migrations. Weiss graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science. He lives in Chicago.

Brien Posey
Freelance Technical Writer

Brien Posey is a freelance technical writer, and a five time Microsoft MVP. Over the last thirteen years, Brien has published literally thousands of technical articles and whitepapers, and written or contributed to dozens of books. Prior to becoming a freelance writer, Brien served as CIO for a national chain of hospitals and healthcare facilities. He has also served as a network administrator for the Department of Defense at Fort Knox, and for some of the nation’s largest insurance companies.

David Espinoza
Program Manager for the Exchange Technology Adoption Program (TAP),
Microsoft Corporation

David Espinoza is a Program Manager for the Exchange Technology Adoption Program (TAP). The goal of the TAP program is to work closely with a set of customers to help test, deploy, and provide the product team feedback on Exchange Server throughout the product development cycle.

Outside of the TAP program Dave reviews Books on Exchange for authors; Dave also works closely with the Exchange Ranger program and the Exchange Center of Excellence.

Prior to working in the Exchange Product group Dave was a Group Manager of Messaging Engineering for the Messaging & Collaboration Services Group. He was responsible for delivery of technology platforms, testing of vendor solutions, and documentation for new designs and architecture for corporate e-mail systems. The engineering team makes recommendations to development groups for improving existing products and design configurations.

David has been with Microsoft for 15 years and has a wealth of IT experience. He started as Service Manager for Telecom operations, and later managed a variety of operation teams including Exchange Server operations, Network operations, Server operations, Telecom operations and Data Center operations.

Prior to joining Microsoft, David worked for AT&T for 15 years where he managed many groups from Main Frame operations to Central Office teams and Service Management.

David has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science with an emphasis in Information systems.

Evan Dodds
Senior Program Manager, Microsoft

Evan Dodds is a Senior Program Manager on the Exchange Server Datacenter team, where he is currently focused on updates to the management infrastructure for the next version of Exchange. During Exchange 2007, he focused on improving the administrative model for the IT Pro experience with the initial integration of PowerShell v1. Prior to that, Dodds was a member of the PSS Escalation Services organization – directly helping customers with their most critical issues and escalations on the Exchange Server product, principally focused on Exchange High Availability and Clustering scenarios. He is an MCSE, an MCSE:Messaging, as well as a Microsoft Certified Architect:Messaging 2003 (“Exchange Ranger”).

Ilse Van Criekinge
ICT Trainer & Consultant, Microsoft MVP Exchange/OCS, Global Knowledge

Ilse Van Criekinge has been working since mid 2007 as an ICT Consultant, Trainer and Business Development Manager at Global Knowledge Belgium bvba. Before that she worked for almost a year as an ICT consultant for Atos Origin located in Belgium, where she focused on Exchange migrations and deployments. Prior to joining Atos Origin, Van Criekinge was employed as an Exchange Trainer at Azlan for more than five years. As an MCT, she offered several companies guidance in their Exchange and MOM deployments, as well as auditing the disaster recovery capabilities in their mail environment. During the last two years she has ignited many IT Professionals with the power of Exchange 2007, by delivering trainings, and by co-founding a new user group Pro-Exchange in Belgium focused on Microsoft Unified Communications, www.proexchange.be. Van Criekinge received the Exchange MVP award in April 2007. She has co-authored an Exchange Exam Prep Guide and wrote Exchange Management Shell: TFM for Sapien Press. She is based in Belgium, where she lives together with Serge and their son Robin.

J. Peter Bruzzese
Co-Founder, ClipTraining

Over the past 10 years J. Peter Bruzzese has worked for everyone from Goldman Sachs to Microsoft. He specializes in corporate training and has had the privilege of working with some of the top names in the business of Computer Education. During the 9190s, Bruzzese focused specifically on Certification Training (holding at the time certifications from Microsoft as an MCSE for 4.0 and an MCT, as well as A+, Network+, iNet+ from Comptia, and CNA from Novell and CCNA from Cisco). With the introduction of Windows 2000, he became one of the leading speakers on the subject of Active Directory and Exchange. More recently he is authoring monthly features for Redmond, WindowsITPro, and Realtime Publishers on Exchange 2007. He has just completed the book How-To with Exchange 2007 SP1 published by Sams. He maintains a free website relating to Exchange called www.ExclusivelyExchange.com. Bruzzese speaks for TechMentor Events and recently became a Microsoft TechEd speaker, ranking in the Top 10 speakers of his track.

Jonathan Smith
Senior Consultant, Ensynch, Inc.

Jonathan Smith is a Senior Consultant with Ensynch, an award-winning Microsoft Gold Certified Partner based in Tempe, Arizona. His focus is on Ensynch’s Infrastructure and Information Worker Practice, which focuses on such Microsoft technologies as Messaging and Collaboration, Windows Server and Active Directory, SharePoint products, Office Communications Server, and System Center suite of products. His specialties include Exchange, Active Directory, and Unified Communications. His consulting engagements range from troubleshooting and designing systems for small to medium-sized companies to cross platform migration services for large enterprises with more than 150,000 users.

Keri Farrell
Product Manager, Quest Software

Keri Farrell is a product manager at Quest Software, where she is responsible for global e-discovery and recovery strategy for messaging and unified communications systems. She has worked in IT for 12 years, including a specialization in Microsoft Exchange and legal discovery pertaining to e-mail systems. Prior to joining Quest, Farrell has substantial hands-on industry experience at Microsoft, Iron Mountain, Boston Scientific and Safety 1st. At Microsoft, Farrell served on the Exchange PSS team focusing on database recovery technologies. With Iron Mountain, she assisted Fortune 500 companies archiving to the Iron Mountain Digital Archive, and played a key role in developing policies and solutions for high volume recovery from tape backup, e-mail record definitions and journaling configuration. Farrell has authored numerous technical publications on legal discovery, recovery, archiving, and enterprise data protection. Currently based in the Boston area, she has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Computer Information Systems from Bryant University in Smithfield, RI.

Michael B. Smith
Managing Partner, The Essential Exchange

Michael B. Smith is an Exchange MVP who owns and operates a consulting firm that specializes in Exchange Server and Active Directory. Michael has had over 25 years of experience in the IT field and focuses on providing solutions that support customers goals for operational excellence. Michael is also a well-known writer for such publications as WindowsITPro, Exchange Messaging & Outlook, and others. Michael recently completed his second book, Monitoring Exchange Server 2007 with Operations Manager from Wiley and was technical editor for two recently published O’Reilly Media books: Active Directory, Fourth Edition and Active Directory Cookbook, Third Edition. Michael is active in a number of online Exchange communities and you can read his blog at http://TheEssentialExchange.com/blogs/michael.

Rob Allen
Director, Active Identity Management, Inc. (ActiveIdM)

Rob is one of the core partners at Active Identity Management, Inc., a recognized industry expert in Directory and Identity Management technologies, particularly Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager (ILM). Allen has developed several tools and directory “widgets” focused on Identity deployments centered around Microsoft's Identity offerings.  He has provided identity architecture and design for clients in the healthcare, federal, and commercial space.  He has more than 14 years of experience in the IT industry. Prior to partnering with ActiveIDM, Allen founded a successful Identity and Directory Services company, worked in the healthcare industry, and also worked in the software development space.