Meet the Team
Nick Colyer
Nick Colyer has over 20 years of experience in the IT Industry and serves as the VP of Digital Engineering at AHEAD, LLC, based out of Chicago, IL. At AHEAD, Nick focuses on emerging technologies and methodologies for helping customers transition to the Cloud all while balancing security, operations and costs throughout their respective journey.
Prior to his current position, Nick spent six years as a DevOps lead for TransUnion and Catamaran, where he developed a team focused on standards and automated delivery of IT services to drive a true self service experience. Nick, also works with vendors to help them created pre-packaged automated workflows and code for customers to utilize.
Nick often speaks at conferences including Ahead Azure Innovation Days, VMWorld (2013/2016), the Looking Ahead Tech Summit (2014-2017), as well as tailored briefings for large enterprise companies across the United States. Nick has been selected regularly as a vExpert since 2014 and holds many certifications from Microsoft, VMware, and 3rd parties.
Nick is South African, a huge cricket fan (Springbok forever!), and enjoys playing World of Warcraft (a true nerd and proud!).
You can regularly find Nick at community events and on Twitter (@vnickc).
Amy Colyer
Amy Colyer has been in the industry for more than she’d like to say but from help desk to telecom, networking, virtualization and cloud she’s worked her way through the stack. Prior to Skylines Academy, Amy was an Azure Technical Solutions Specialist in the Education space for Microsoft. Enabling customers to create cloud solutions with the right governance and cost balances in place. She really enjoyed helping Medical centers use Microsoft systems to enhance their programs and research for fighting diseases like Alzheimer’s, as well. Before Microsoft, Amy mainly worked in the healthcare space, she was a Systems Engineer Specialist for the University of Chicago Medical Center leading the Cloud and Automation team.
Besides all things marketing and cloudy, she enjoys yoga and wine (not necessarily together) and travelling the country, spending time with her family and of course beating Nick at video games. You can reach her on Twitter or on LinkedIn
Dwayne Natwick
Dwayne Natwick has over 30 years of experience in the IT industry and is currently the Product Manager for Infrastructure Services at Secure-24, an NTT Communications company, based out of Southfield, MI. At Secure-24, Dwayne provides strategy and development of private, public, and multi-cloud managed hosting services along with technical training for Microsoft Azure.
Dwayne has always enjoyed sharing his technical and soft-skill knowledge to sales, engineers, account managers, and others throughout the various positions that he has held throughout his career. He has spoken at two BICSI conferences and has developed internal cloud and IT training programs for multiple organizations.
Dwayne currently maintains several industry certifications, including CISSP, PMP, AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, and multiple Microsoft certifications: Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Azure Administrator Associate, Azure Security Engineer Associate, Azure Developer Associate, Azure AI Engineer Associate, Azure Data Scientist Associate, Azure Fundamentals, and MTA Cloud Fundamentals. He is also a Microsoft Certified Trainer.
Dwayne can be found on Twitter (@DwayneNcloud) or captainhyperscaler.com.
Shannon Kuehn
Shannon is a not so typical technologist. Her roots are grounded in public speaking and writing. She was a Communication Studies major and English minor in college and participated in competitive high school speech tournaments prior to collegiate life. She gravitated toward technology through music, by way of being a DJ and needing to record demos for club promoters. By taking the time to develop initial skills of troubleshooting, she quickly found herself in jobs that started to graduate her toward deeper levels of technical skill. A self-described tinkerer, Shannon has worked with technical mentors and colleagues who have helped her develop proficiencies in all things infrastructure. From her initial roots in help desk, to Windows systems administration, to VMware administration, to Exchange, to Exchange Online/Office 365, and finally Azure, she has carefully combined the right levels of technical prowess to propel her into her role at Microsoft. Shannon is currently a Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft, tasked with driving high priority customer initiatives on Azure infrastructure in collaboration with customers and the Microsoft field. The overall goal for the role is to ensure customers are as successful as possible for future Azure cloud adoption.
Riaan Lowe
Riaan Lowe is a cloud security architect at one of the largest cybersecurity companies in Africa with multiple information technology certifications including: Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert in Azure, Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (Server), Microsoft Certified Professional, Microsoft Specialist in virtualization, Security +, MTCRA (CCNA equivalent), MTCRE (CCNP equivalent). Riaan has been privileged enough to have had several roles for the better half of a decade as voice engineer, senior infrastructure engineer, Microsoft security specialist, 2nd in charge of the Microsoft Team, lead Azure engineer as well as cloud security architect. I currently reside in South Africa with my wife.