Craig Conrad:  

rst five families to move there as I was tasked to establish the computing center before the others arrived). In my first four years at IBM, I published a Technical Report, solely conceived and created (apart from my job duties) a program, "VM/370 to OS/VS1 Command Facility" [VMOCF], that IBM later sold as a product, spoke to large technical groups (IBM, SHARE and GUIDE) in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and New York City, and initiated and led the effort (technical and administrative) to bring a "Work at Home" program to IBM Charlotte. Served more than 38 years with IBM in positions of: Systems Programmer; Computer Center Manager; Banking Software Product Test Manager; Banking Microcode and Application Product Development Manager; Network Services Business Development Manager; Project Manager (PMI certified & many Agile Scrum certifications) consulting with major worldwide clients (banks, insurance companies, IRS, etc.) on data migrations in support of Mergers and Acquisitions and major system upgrades. These multi-million dollar projects typically ran from 5 to 12 months, in which I managed a team of as few as 4 or as many as over 100 people. I finally retired in 2015, with occasional consulting beyond that. My job afforded many travel opportunities (sometimes more that I wanted), and I've had the privilege of visiting around North America (including Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, Mexico); Caribbean (Puerto Rico, USVI); Europe (England, Scotland, Wales, Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Monaco, Vatican City); Asia (China, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan); Australia (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane); Middle East (Israel, including the Gaza Strip and the West Bank); Africa (South Africa). About the most rewarding thing I did in my job was to create software tools and processes to improve the productivity, quality and scope of our offerings. While some of these are market-worthy on their own, keeping them in-house maintained our competitive advantage.