Black in Tech

What’s your official title and how long have you worked at CSC?

I was a systems engineer but was just promoted to Technology Team lead with Enterprise Technology. I’ve been with CSC for a year now.

What inspired you to get into tech?

Since I was young, I’ve always worked with technology. My father taught me how to build computers when I was maybe eight years old. I actually tried to get away from technology. I went to trade school because I thought I wanted to be an electrician—until I worked outside. After that, I didn’t want to do it anymore.

I joined the U.S. Marine Corps, and I wanted to be an electrician with them because I thought I had the skill already, but there’s a vocational test you have to take. I scored pretty high on it, so I thought I was going to be an electrician, but they put me in a job called data systems technician. And that’s when I got back into technology and worked on computers more. When I got out of the Marines after four years, I decided to stay with it. And I’ve been in tech ever since.

After the Marines, I worked as a network operations monitor and wasn’t learning enough. I’d watch the network to make sure everything stayed up—that was literally most of what the job was. I also did a bit of help desk work for one of their clients—a chicken farm.

Then I moved to a small company in Newark, Delaware, and was a LAN administrator or help desk administrator. I became a Windows system administrator and was there for five years. I knew about CSC because my mom has worked here for more than 20 years. And my sister started here a few weeks after me.

What are some of the high-level responsibilities of your current job?

I make policies to make sure everything’s standard across our cloud services. I’m also working on setting up some alerting. If something happens in a test tenant, we’re working on it; we make sure everything is built correctly there so we can apply that to other tenants or other instances in our cloud. I’m setting up alerts and logs so that if something goes wrong or looks weird, we get an alert, and we’ll know we can address it appropriately.

What has contributed to your success so far?

The openness of our team and what our goals are. My leaders have done a good job setting the standard but also asking what I want to do here at CSC that they can help me with. Whatever I want to do, they’ll help me get to that level and assist me.

I also learned about Kobe Bryant’s Mamba Mentality. I used to despise Kobe because he beat the Sixers in the NBA championship when I was a kid. I hated him literally until the very last game he played in the NBA. I watched his last game and decided I’d never hate anything or anybody again. And then I dived into Kobe’s myth, legend, and ethos. Now when I want something, like a gold certification, I attack it with Mamba Mentality: This is what I’m going to focus on, grind on, and I’m going to make sure I know everything there is to know about whatever I’m striving for.

Have you had to overcome any obstacles along the way as a Black professional?

It wasn’t really an obstacle per se, but at my last company, we realized that I was the only Black person that worked there. It was a small company, about 120 people, when I left. They did try to be cognizant of hiring more Black people after somebody else brought it up. I had a boss who protected me and made me feel like he had my best interests at heart. But there was a period when I wondered why I was the only person of color. They did hire more people of color toward the end of my time there.

Have you been involved in any of CSC’s diversity initiatives?

I was just made aware of this Black in Tech series, and I told the team I’d love to be a part of it because I think I have an interesting story.

What advice would you give to other Black professionals who are interested in joining the tech field?

Look at all there is out there. It’s such a wide field that you don’t know what you’re going to like, whether it’s coding or cybersecurity or help desk. See all aspects before you decide on one job. I know a lot of people who started coding but then realized they didn’t like it. See what options might benefit you or complement you.

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