Mentors

Esther Barthel

Founding Member

Solutions Architect, cognition IT; Citrix Technology Professional (CTP)

With a MS in Computer Science, Esther is a passionate technology professional, and especially loves to design new VDI infrastructures based on the Citrix product portfolio, and automate the implementation and administration tasks with PowerShell scripts. Esther is also a CTP and very active in the CUGC community as a forum moderator and a member of the Content Working Group.

Jane Cassell

Architect, HPE; Citrix Technology Advocate (CTA)

Jane has over 25 years of IT experience, and is a Senior End User Computing, Mobile & Virtualization Specialist/Architect. She was also recently featured as the CUGC November Member of the Month.

Jo Harder

Founding Member

Cloud Architect & Industry Blogger/Contributor; Tampa CUGC Leader; Citrix Technology Professional (CTP)

Jo has been involved with virtualization for over 20 years. She was a Senior Architect at Citrix for 11 years and has subsequently held consulting, architecture, and product management roles. She presently works in the Financial Technology sector focused on Citrix technologies and has her mind in the cloud. She strongly believes in helping other women eliminate personal barriers in order to achieve success, and two of Jo’s mentees were awarded CTA in 2019.

Cathleen Leik

Senior Systems Engineer, Tad Rogers Consulting

Cathy has been working in IT since the late 80s, starting with the American Heart Association in Phoenix, Arizona. She got involved with Citrix in 1996 when the pharmaceutical company she worked for implemented it for remote access, and fell in love with WinFrame! She currently works for a small IT consulting firm in West Michigan that utilizes VMWare and Microsoft products in addition to Citrix.

Heather Meyer

Consultant, Aspen Systems & Associates

Heather has spent 20 years as a System Engineer and Consultant, building and supporting networks of various sizes. She works with Citrix, Windows, and VMware infrastructures. Her technical expertise is mostly in healthcare and cloud services, working with small to medium businesses.

Theresa Miller

Founding Member

Founder 24x7 IT Connection, LLC; Citrix Technology Professional (CTP)

The Founder of 24x7 IT Connection, with over 20 years of hands-on technical experience specializing in virtualization, messaging and collaboration. In addition to earning a MBA, Theresa is industry-recognized as a Citrix CTP, VMWare vExpert, and a Microsoft MVP. She feels truly honoured to be part of this mentoring program and is looking forward to working with her mentees!

Jim Moyle

Windows Virtual Desktop GBB, Microsoft; UK CUGC Steering Committee; Citrix Technology Professional (CTP)

Jim has been an infrastructure technologist with over two decades of passionate involvement in the IT industry. Over the last decade he has been a specialist in the Server Based Computing, application and desktop delivery sector. He has worked with many blue chip companies around the UK, including being involved in the architecture and delivery of some of the largest Citrix deployments in Europe. As the Chief Technical Evangelist for FSLogix (now with Microsoft) he is responsible for the design and execution of many world class projects.

Mike Nelson

Solutions Architect; CUGC Content Working Group; Citrix Technology Advocate (CTA)

Mike's career in information technology spans more than three decades, involving a vast array of technologies and solutions. He has held roles in corporate management, architecture, and engineering to industry consulting which has provided him with a wide range of hands-on experience and solutions. He has been honored to receive the Microsoft MVP award, as well as being placed as a Microsoft Azure Advisor. He is also a Citrix Technology Advocate (CTA), and a VMware vExpert. Mike currently leads several user groups, including a Cloud user group and a VMware User Group (VMUG). Personally, Mike loves to mentor people interested in technology, and give presentations around the knowledge that he has and wants to share. He is always striving to learn more everyday.

Rene Reighard

Owner, Ponytail Technology; Citrix Technology Advocate (CTA)

Rene started out in the program as a CUGC Women In Technology mentee, under the mentorship of Jo Harder, and has now stepped up as a mentor. She's currently a Senior Systems Architect/Engineer with a wide range of skill sets focusing on virtualization technologies--including Citrix XenApp/ XenDesktop, Provisioning Server, NetScaler, Microsoft Active Directory, VMware, networking and infrastructure design.

Tiffanny Renrick

Columbia CUGC Leader

With over 15 years of IT experience, Tiffanny Renrick has made it her mission to bring forth the change that she wants to see everywhere she goes. Tiffanny has worn many hats in many different industries. From HealthCare to Service Provider, she has enjoyed challenging herself with new technologies such as Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, Cisco UCS, Nutanix, Secure Thin Clients, Citrix ADC, Cloud computing, and SolidFire to name a few. Tiffanny is the current leader of CUGC Columbia. From her working knowledge of Citrix technologies, she has been nicknamed the "Citrix Goddess". Tiffanny has learned to build the bridge between many different components to increase efficiency, improve performance, and broaden the scope to provide the best solutions.

Jenny Sheerin

Senior Citrix Engineer, Presidio; Tampa CUGC Leader; Citrix Technology Advocate (CTA)

Jenny has worked as a Citrix virtualization expert for over 10 years. Before focusing on Citrix, she gained experience in other areas of technology like network/firewall, infrastructure systems, and databases. This multitude of different skills allows Jenny to be a big thinker on the interactive relationship of the data infrastructure and Citrix solutions that form the enterprise environment. She is currently focused on Citrix Digital Workspace and Networking.

Neil Spellings

Enterprise & EUC Infrastructure Architect and Owner, XenCentric; CUGC Steering Committee; UK CUGC Steering Committee; Citrix Technology Professional (CTP)

Neil is a VDI, virtualisation & server-based computing consultant with over 20 years experience in the industry. He’s worked with Citrix products since the early days of Winframe and Metaframe and was instrumental in the initial deployments of these server-based computing technologies into a number of large financial institutions and the continued development and expansion of those into the enterprise environment. Neil was awarded CTP in 2013.

Sarah Vogt

Citrix Infrastructure Engineer, Greenberg Traurig; President CUGC Steering Committee; Orlando CUGC Leader

Sarah began with Citrix WinFrame 1.7 for basic remote access, which led to consolidating Greenberg Traurig's massive law library CD towers and is now used for everything from remote access, to application consolidation, to centralized virtual desktops both for dedicated road warriors as well as pools for billing tasks. She also works with Netscaler for two factor authentication as the firm is accessible 24/7/365. Sarah joined the CUGC Steering Committee in 2017 and is a proud leader of the Orlando CUGC.

Jeannine Watanabe

Director of IT, Cox Communications

Jeannine brings over 20 years of IT experience to the program, and has served in the role of Director of IT since 2006.