Experience

Sr. Director of Field IT | Hornblower Group

February 2022 – Present  |  Austin, Texas
Hornblower Group operates 4 cruise brands with 50+ vessels across North America and worldwide.

• Drove 99%+ fleet internet uptime (from 70%) by architecting a redundant connectivity strategy combining Starlink satellite and cellular 5G across the American Queen Voyages fleet , delivering ~100x faster speeds and eliminating the #1 guest and crew complaint
• Managed $2.5M IT budget in a shared-services model across American Queen Voyages and Hornblower Group, achieving measurable cost savings by reducing AWS footprint through direct collaboration with both CFOs
• Led the Otalio PMS implementation (ship property management system), integrating with Versonix Seaware reservation platform to streamline shipboard operations
• Championed AI-augmented IT operations methodology , designed and validated an enterprise automation framework using agentic AI, infrastructure-as-code, and API-first tooling (view case study)
• Created and sustained a voluntary weekly career development program for the ~100-person IT team , 18 months running, zero cancellations, with CIO and CHRO guest speakers drawing 50+ attendees

Director of Information Technology | Fontainebleau Miami Beach

August 2015 – January 2020  |  Miami Beach, Florida
Iconic luxury resort generating $350M in annual revenue with 1,504 rooms, 12 restaurants, and 40,000 sq ft of meeting space.

• Managed $3.5M IT budget supporting hotel operations, call center, conference services, and helpdesk , directly enabling $350M in annual revenue operations
• Negotiated zero vendor hardware costs by reframing redundancy as mutual asset value, resulting in a contracted 20 Gbps internet connection , a hospitality industry benchmark (featured in CIOReview and Toggle Magazine)
• Delivered PCI-DSS EMV compliance transformation , upgraded Oracle Opera PMS, migrated payment gateway from Shift4 to FreedomPay, reducing credit card fraud exposure across all points of sale
• Architected 24/7 system redundancy ensuring uninterrupted availability of mission-critical hospitality infrastructure

IT Director of Implementation | Allin Interactive

April 2009 – August 2015  |  Miami/Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Technology solutions provider specializing in cruise ship and international hotel deployments.

• Led a team of 22 direct reports and international technical contractors delivering technology deployments across multiple simultaneous projects spanning different time zones
• Managed implementation logistics in 80+ countries , coordinating hardware procurement, customs, shipping, installation teams, and vendor relationships
• Directed multi-million dollar technology implementations on active cruise ships and operating hotels , managing deployments in environments that cannot afford downtime

Earlier Career

IT Director | United Capital Markets (2007–2009)

Modernized infrastructure for 6-site corporate holdings , migrated physical servers to VMware, consolidated 4 Active Directory domains across 35 servers, and deployed VoIP replacing legacy PBX.

IT Manager, Fleet & Business Systems | Cunard Line (1999–2004)

Managed all IT for nine luxury cruise ships including the $850M Queen Mary 2 launch. Directed 18 staff and managers while architecting ship-to-shore communications via C-Band satellite through Cisco routing infrastructure.

E-Jet Project Manager | BP (2000–2001)

Delivered satellite email/network access for BP executives aboard corporate aircraft in London, UK , managing the end-to-end project lifecycle and coordinating around strict aircraft operating schedules.

Onboard Computer Officer | Royal Caribbean Cruises (1996–1999)

Sole IT authority for all onboard computer systems. Highlight: Managed all IT/telecom for NBC during the 2000 Sydney Olympics , established requirements with senior NBC executives and integrated broadcast technology infrastructure into the ship’s systems.

IT Consultant | Cost Management Systems (1995–1999)

Y2K Program Manager for 2,000-node network. Secured $1M+ SSA training contract , 150,000-user nationwide MS Office 97 deployment.