Gina Montague
Dorsey and Whitney
    

Gina has been the Manager of the Technical Support Center at Dorsey & Whitney since 2001, at which time she became a Help Desk Institute member. Gina manages 7 full-time employees that provide 24x7 coverage to over 1,500 employees in a law firm that spans the globe. Gina has been involved with IT support since 1996 in roles ranging from Customer Support, Training, and Project Management. Gina was VP of Membership from 2005 to 2008 and the VP of Programs 2008-2010.  
 

Joyce Arlt
               Scott County
        

Joyce Arlt is currently Client Services Manager for Scott County, where her areas of responsibilities include Service Desk, Desktop Support, Incident Management and Service Level Management. Joyce held similar positions with Entegris, Inc., and Carlson Wagonlit Travel prior to joining Scott County. Before IT, Joyce's background was customer service in the insurance industry which proves that anyone with good customer service skills can be taught the technology. Joyce's technical career transformed from the position of PC Technician, to PC Support Specialist, then Help Desk Supervisor and finally manager. Joyce has a Bachelors Degree from Northwestern College in St. Paul. She has been a member of HDI since 1996 and previously held the offices of V.P. of Programs, Communications and Chapter President.

Julie Thorndycraft
      Faegre & Benson
  795-5445

Julie is the Technical Services Manager at Faegre&Benson. Her team includes the Service Desk and Desktop Services. The Service Desk provides 24x7 support for both internal and external customers with a total call volume that averages over 7500 calls per month. The Service Desk has one Supervisor, two Leads and 21 Service Desk agents. In addition, Julie has overall responsibility of the national Desktop Support team of 15 and two Desktop Architects.

Julie has been involved with IT support since 1984 in roles ranging from Customer Support to Project Management. She has been directly involved with Help Desk support for fifteen years at various corporations in the Twin Cities. She has been a member of HDI since 1990 and was Vice President of Membership for the Minnesota HDI chapter for a year before becoming President of the chapter in 2005.

Lynn Skauge
     Robert Half Technology
       

Division Director for Robert Half Technology in Bloomington, MN. I've been with RHT for over 9 years and started as an IT infrastructure recruiter. I have been in both an outside sales role, helping clients achieve their staffing needs and an infrastructure recruiter. I currently provide IT support consultants for all clients in the South metro.

In addition to my main role above, I have also become a Division Director and manage the infrastructure team in Bloomington to provide leadership and work with corporate leadership to identify strategic goals for the company. I look forward to joining the HDI board and hearing from the members so that we can share ideas and set up interesting relevant topics for future meetings.

Heidi Simmons
Baker Till Virchow Krause, LLC
  (612)876-4703

Heidi is the Senior Manager for IT Operations at Baker Tilly Virchow Krause, LLP, and oversees the Service Desk, desktop support, and workstation deployment. She has a team of 16 that supports over 1,400 internal clients with a total call volume averaging over 4,000 per month. Heidi has been involved in IT since 1990 in roles ranging from workstation support, network administration, software trainer, and manger. She has been a member of HDI since 2004 and has been the VP of Communications for 1 year.

   Matt Beran
    American Medical Systems
 (952)930-6754
    

Matt is the Service Desk Team Lead at American Medical Systems, providing service internationally across 5 continents.

Matt has been in the support industry since 2001, while receiving his degree from Gustavus Adolphus College.  Matt joined the local chapter in 2008 and uses HDI as a resource for training, collaboration, perspective and inspiration.

Chris Ezell
Black Box Network Services
 (952) 352-2364

Chris is currently working for the company, Black Box Network Services in Minnetonka as Data Center Operations Team Leader. He has been at Black Box (formerly Norstan) for 7 years. He mainly supervises IT analysts at the Service Desk and Data Center Operations. Most of his 13 years of IT experience has been providing 1st and 2nd level support in help desks or service desk large and small environments. Some of those companies include IBM, Possis Medical and CSM Corporation. Prior starting employment in the IT field, Chris worked 14 years in Social Services as a department team leader for Opportunity Partners, a non-profit agency serving persons with disabilities.

Chris has a B.A. degree in Organizational Management and Communication from Concordia University. He also has a Help Desk Manager certification.

Chris stays busy spending a time with his wife and 2 children. Their favorite family activities are shopping, dining out and traveling during the spring and summer. He is a fitness addict who balances running, tennis, basketball and weight lifting as his main forms of exercising. He also enjoys writing and playing music.

He became an Officer for the HDI Mn. Chapter because I wanted to contribute to an organization that provides support and recognition to the Help Desk and related IT support industries.

Rachel Hogan
  Robert Half Technology