From Desktop Publisher to Digital Transformation Consultant

My career progressed from desktop publishing to running the technical side of a consulting practice, and the path through those roles is what made the practice possible.

The foundation

I started designing documents for engineers. Marketing materials, technical manuals, proposal volumes. At Shipley Associates, I coordinated and desktop published proposals that won: a $15M NASA mission, a $95M Army target system, a $450M NASA deep space mission. The work taught me what makes a proposal win: compliance, clarity, and visible connection between the customer's needs and the proposed solution.

Expanding scope

The proposal work led to project management. At MC&FP, I managed Jira configurations, led a platform migration, coached teams on Agile practices, and built a Zero Trust roadmap. Configuration management came from supporting a PMO that shipped software to government sites. I went from managing the CMDB to designing it from scratch when the existing tools couldn't handle the program's requirements.

Building the practice

Starting Ovoco was the convergence of all of it. Proposal expertise, project management experience, configuration management depth, and the technical ability to build the tools. The open-source projects demonstrate the expertise. The blog and whitepaper drive traffic. The community forum connects practitioners who become teaming partners.

The business development approach is built on demonstrated capability rather than credentials alone. The tools are public. The documentation is thorough. When a prime needs CM expertise on a proposal, they can evaluate the work before they make the call.