Management Team
Peter Curtis
President / CEO
Peter Curtis has 28 years of experience working in the Mission Critical Facilities Engineering industry in the areas of Banking and Finance, Defense, Electric and Water Utilities, and Energy Management. He is an internationally reknowned subject matter expert with a strong commitment to education and technological innovation. As Vice President of Critical Systems at Bankers Trust Company, Senior Engineer at Securities Industry Automation Company (SIAC), and as Superintendent of Electrical Construction at Suffolk County Water Authority, Mr. Curtis was responsible for critical systems, energy and data center engineering, and construction & preventative maintenance for multi-megawatt infrastructures. These infrastructures supported LAN, mid-range & main frame hardware for various multi-billion dollar business lines. He is also an Associate Professor at New York Institute of Technology and Marist College where he has been involved in the design and delivery of numerous courses. Peter is a principal author for the IEEE where he has written an online book regarding Mission Critical Facilities Engineering and is currently working on a second book titled Maintaining Mission Critical Systems in a 24/7 Environment, which have led to the development of a series of online courses.
Stephen Worn
Government Liaison Officer
Stephen is a network and facilities engineer, with over fifteen years experience in Asia, across the Americas and again back on a pan-European level. Most recently Mr. Worn was the Head of Technology Services for Dimension Data UK, where he was also their acting Practice Manager for Data Centres and Intelligent Buildings. He has held senior management roles in Nortel Networks as their EMEA Senior Director of Datacentres, at Japan's Nippon Suisan International, China's National Center for Industry and Technology, as well as with the Center for Special Economic Zones. Mr. Worn has worked with other Asian multinationals, in addition to his BOD role with OT Partners. Mr. Worn has supported DatacenterDynamics since its first conference as Chief Technical Advisor and Guest Conference Chairman. And for the last 6 years has acted as DCDs Global CTO and our technical interface with the industry. He is considered one of the most visible people in the global data center industry, acting as Moderator at many of the most important events. He holds two masters' degrees. At DCProfessional Stephen is responsible for government relations, working with organisations to promote our services and helping to deliver large scale custom training solutions.
Brendan Greg Sherry
Director of Instructor-led Training
Greg has been working in the computer industry for over 33 years, starting as an apprentice QA engineer with ICL in 1976. Since then has been involved in many different aspects of the IT industry, but in recent years Greg has focused on design and build or refurbishment of Data Centres and Computer Rooms for clients throughout the UK, Channel Islands and Europe. The design and build projects cover all aspects of the data centre including architectural, electrical, mechanical and technology. Two of Greg's recent projects have been put forward for National awards recognition. He has been actively involved in BICSI for over 10 years and was originally elected at the start of 2006 to serve on the board of Directors of BICSI as the European Regional Director and served for four years in this capacity. He also serves on several BICSI committees, both in Europe and in the United States, including the UK Steering Committee, the Ethics Committee, the Registration and Speciality Supervisory Committee, and the Data Centre Design Standards Committee. As Head of Classroom Training at DCProfessional, Greg is responsible for course development, instructor selection and management, as well as being a highly respected Classroom Instructor in his own right.
Simon Banham
Chief Financial Officer
Simon is a qualified accountant with over a decade of commercial accounting experience within the Telecoms and Technology sector and more recently within the publishing sector. As Group Financial Controller at PacketExchange Ltd where he managed the Finance team during its highest growth period, the company achieved 18th in the Times Tech Track 100 fastest growing companies. This success has recently been emulated at DatacenterDynamics with their entrance to the Times Fast Track 100. Simon has travelled extensively through the world mainly through South East Asia and Central America and has also lived in Australia. He is passionate about rugby, cricket and skiing and lives with his wife and child in Kent.
Dan Scarbrough
Business Development Director
Dan is a co-founder of DatacenterDynamics, a globally renowned specialist media and conference provider. He has been working in Business to Business publishing for fifteen years, holding senior roles within UK based publishing companies including Campden Publishing and Sterling Publishing PLC. As a founder and board director of DCProfessional he is responsible for business development and for the management of the international sales organisation. Dan holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government and Policy in Europe from Teeside University in the United Kingdom.
George Rockett
Marketing Director
George is a co-founder DatacenterDynamics, the globally renowned specialist media and conference publisher. Having been at the heart of the data center market for the past 12 years, he is a regular industry commentator speaking at events globally and writing in varied media sources. George's ability to view things continually from a fresh perspective and to join the dots between the various disciplines that converge on the data centre market are hallmarks of DCDs success as an organisation. DatacenterDynamics considers itself much more than just a B2B media provider which is highlighted by the number of long-term relationships that have been forged internationally with end-users, vendors and consultants alike. At DCProfessional he is responsible for leveraging these existing relationships and forging new ones whilst steering the marketing of our educational services.
Herb Villa
Senior Technologist, North America
Herb has more than 20 years of experience in the IT market, having been involved in all aspects of data center and system design, installation and operations. Herb has also benefited from three unique vantage points – data center operator, manufacturer, systems integrator. This experience has been used to provide training to end users and engineers & consultants in a variety of forums including conferences, on-site and on-line. Herb has put this knowledge to work for a variety of clients including Fortune 500, financial services, education, government and content and entertainment organizations. An active member of ASHRAE, Herb has also participated in other industry organizations and consortia.
Damion Lock
Senior Technologist, Middle East Africa
Damion has been involved for 20 years in all aspects of the data center industry from mainframes, enterprise storage, fiber optics, servers and software. He also has significant experience consulting in state of the art data center facilities. More recently he founded ONE9 3NINE Consulting, a data center consultancy firm based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. With qualifications in LEED, ISO 9001:2000, PMP, and ITIL, Damion also holds a post graduate business degree. He previously held the role of General Manager with a German-based data center consultant and helped to lead development of the Middle East DC market over the past 5 years.
Mike Foskett
Senior Technologist, Europe
Mike joined DCProfessional after working at Morgan Stanley where he was a VP and data centre operations manager, where he is now developing and delivering training courses. Over the last eight years, Mike has been involved with two major data centres in a variety of roles, from M&E commissioning to managing the critical operations and facilities team and driving a major power reduction initiative. He was a management consultant in airport and ATC systems for 10 years and before that worked with oil companies as a corrosion engineer in the Sahara and with British Gas, where his role took him into engineering business systems management with responsibility for SCADA and telco telemetry systems. He has since taken an MSc in Information Systems at Kingston University and has guest lectured at Kingston and the former British Gas School of Engineering. A passionate environmentalist, Mike is a member of the Sustainability SIG of the BIFM, drives an ultra-low-carbon-footprint car and recycles his TetraPaks.
Brenda St John Brown
Learning and Development Specialist
Brenda has over fifteen years of experience in education and training, including five years in the data center industry. Most recently, she was global education program manager for Hewlett Packard Mission Critical Facilities and implemented, amongst other things, an internal education program for professional engineers which was accredited by the American Institute of Architects and the National Council for Engineers, Examiners and Surveyors. Prior to that, she worked with the third-largest school district in the United States to design and deliver a program focused on teaching staff to use data to make instructional decisions. She participated in the subsequent development of a certification program, which has been adopted by school districts across the US. Brenda has studied curriculum development and adult learning theory, and is a past member of ASTD. Current activities with DCProfessional Development involve gaining world-wide accreditation and certification for training courses and the implementation of a Learning Management System.