CHRISTOPHER FLUKE

I started my career working at a camera store in a mall, of all places. Due to my success in helping manage the store, I ended up becoming a district manager and responsible for several stores.

I had an opportunity with a company that manufactured debit cards for banks called NEC. I cannot express the gratitude this opportunity gave me to learn and to shine, really allowing all future career opportunities to come about.

For a short time, I left NEC to a small technical writing company to create a network for them, but returned to NEC after completing the initial goal that was defined and the changing business needs.

I laid out a data center for a new location that was a show piece for NEC customers and supervised a technical team focused on networking, servers, and phone systems.

Paranet, a consulting company for Sprint, brought me onboard for my expertise in Wide Area Networking, which at the time not many people were familiar with Cisco Routers and IP addressing, let alone the fundamentals of IP networking. I quickly was sent to Southwestern Bell/SBC to help with designs and consulting for customers needing equipment at the end of WAN circuits.

Southwestern Bell/SBC hired me on to continue to design and consult with customers on their data networking needs. This spanned almost every possible type of customer provided equipment you could imaging, from TDM DS3 , SONET, and DWDM systems, to core Cisco LAN switches and routers, to Firewalls from Checkpoint, Netscreen, Cisco, and others. Even fiber cabling and designs for long haul DWDM fiber systems from Nortel and Cisco. SBC eventually became AT&T, which I am extremely grateful for the 23 years I was at AT&T.

I am entering the next chapter in my life and look forward to the opportunities that lay ahead. I am a Cisco Certified Network Professional Enterprise and hold sever specialization certifications for Unified Communications.