Richard Clapp

I grew up with two major passions in my life, Ballet and Computers. Of the two I figured that I could still work on computers when I was older, but the odds of me dancing when I was in my 50s was highly unlikely. So I did what any rational person would do…focus on Ballet first while keeping up with computers on the side. To this end I Majored in Ballet Performance at the University of Oklahoma. After my third year there I was faced with a tough decision…continue with school and possibly get a job as a professional ballet dancer after I graduate or to dance with a company in Illinois. After much soul searching I decided to take the job since many of the companies I had looked at didn’t care if you had a degree and some wouldn’t even let you audition without past professional experience. I danced professionally as a soloist/principal dancer with the Mid-Illinois Ballet Company. We traveled and performed across the Midwest and in Chicago.

After dancing I moved to Kentucky where I looked to get a “computer” job. The same thing happened to me. I was only able to get a job in retail working with computers because I didn’t have “Experience”. It didn’t matter that I grew up working with DOS, had built my first personal computer from parts in 1994, and been working with computers since the early 1980s. There was nothing that said “I knew what I was doing”. So I went back to school and got some of my certifications (CompTIA A+, CompTIA Network+, Microsoft Certified Professional, Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator, and Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer).
I was half way through taking my certification tests when I was hired by Custom Data Processing. They worked with the state health departments in multiple states and did the majority of the IT work for the health departments in Kentucky. I was a Field Service Technician. I traveled across the state of Kentucky going to the various health departments and working on site with their networks, computers, printers, print servers, and servers. At my highest point as field techs for CDP came and went I supported 15 sites with approximately 500 computers and laptops. I worked with the State of Kentucky’s IT team to transition from Window NT to Windows 2003, move from Exchange 5.5 to exchange 2003, and to switch the health departments from Frame Relay lines over to DSL lines. During my time with CDP I averaged 45,000 miles of travel inside the state a year.

From here I was looking for a job with a lot less travel so that I could spend more time with my family. I had heard that an old friend had started an I.T. Company back in my home town of Stillwater. I came to Stillwater on vacation and looked at several different jobs, but finally decided on InterWorks for multiple reasons. While at InterWorks, I have helped out on many different teams and am currently supporting our medium to large clients that tend to have multiple servers across multiple sites. I do multiple roles with server support, desktop support, maintenance, backup troubleshooting, and SonicWall support to name some of them. I’ve also continued with my training and can add the following certifications to my list of accomplishments since I’ve been working with InterWorks: Certified SonicWall Security Administrator, Symantec Technical Specialist accreditation in Backup Exec 11 and 12, along with multiple Symantec Sales Specialist accreditations. Finally I’m currently working to update my Microsoft certifications and looking into what other certification can help me and InterWorks better support our clients.