Employee Highlight: Richard the Lego MasterThe Pro Services Manager at Carolina Advanced Digital is an integral part of engineering team. This position contributes to the development and implementation of organizational strategies, policies and practices. Our PSM also oversees the planning and coordination of client interactions, project creation and tracking to include document creation and review, engineer assignment and project oversight. In a nutshell, we really depend on our PSM!
We welcomed a new Pro Services Manager to our team last week, Richard Helmer who has already settled in nicely with our team. We sat down with Richard to ask him a few questions about himself to share with our readers and we noticed that he holds one of our most cherished requirements to work at Carolina Advanced Digital—a fantastic sense of humor.
Here’s what Richard had to say:
Q. Richard, where are you from?
A. I am from a small town just north of Dayton call Troy, Ohio.
Q. While living in Ohio, what did you want to be when you were younger?
A. Pro Services Manager for a small IT firm in Cary, NC…If my professional baseball career didn’t work out.
Q. What do you love or miss the most about Ohio?
A. I would have to say that I love and miss my friends, family, and Skyline Chili, a chili restaurant chain that is based out of Cincinnati.
Q. Ohio and North Carolina seem so different from each other. How did you end up in North Carolina?
A. My family vacationed along the NC coast while I grew up, so after I left the Army at Fort Bragg we wanted to stay.
Q. What made you decide to join the Army?
A. It was a childhood goal to one day serve in the military, and I weighed the different options when I was able to join and found the Forward Observer track in the Army the most appealing.
Q. How did you get involved in IT?
A. After being a city planner I realized all the fun, learning, and growth was in IT. I took a 4 and half year break from pursuing a career in IT to serve in the US Army out of Fort Bragg, NC. This was mostly to avoid using Windows Vista.
Q. What about the IT industry appealed to you?
A. The constant discovery and improvement. IT is making the world healthier, smaller, and safer, not to mention more productive and efficient.
Q. How much do you love NC?
A. Very much! The people are friendly and fun, the weather is a nicer version of Ohio, and the sports, culture, beach, and business and technology opportunities are unsurpassed.
Q. How did you find Carolina Advanced Digital?
A. I first heard about Carolina Advanced Digital through a close colleague of mine, Rob Martin who is also an instructor at New Horizons and President of Raleigh’s ISSA Chapter.
Q. What appealed to you about Carolina Advanced Digital?
A. Everything: the mission, the culture, the people.
Q. What do you look forward to doing at Carolina Advanced Digital?
A. Growing and learning with the team!
Q. What else could you share with us? Stories or anecdotes?
A. Too many to list here, so for brevity’s sake I have two children, Max who is 15 months old, and Aurora who is 3 years old. My wife Beth is an avid runner and reader and is a project manager at Siemens in Cary.
Q. Do you have any cool hobbies or interests? Hidden talents?
A. I’m a pseudo professional Lego builder of contemporary houses and Jeeps. I am also nearly unbeatable at ping pong, arcade basketball, and chess.
