Mike is a data center facilities support and engineer specialist with Aurora Health Care. He has been associated with the IT support environments for the past 26 years, covering administration in areas of network, operating systems, and storage computing environments. In his current position of the past 10 years, Mike has focused on the facilities, electrical, and maintenance facets of the data center including design, build, and implementation of cooling and electrical architectures around both a primary and secondary data centers. Mike is active on the chapter board and some of his other activities include assisting and managing youth hockey and lacrosse programs, fishing, golfing, and tinkering with woodworking.

Melanie is currently working on the capacity / performance team at Northwestern Mutual. This roles deals with both IT and data center capacity issues. One of the foundations at Northwestern Mutual was built on is that we are stronger together; this fits into why she likes being a member at AFCOM. She loves collaborating with my peers to learn from their successes and challenges. Previously Melanie worked as data center managers at Rockwell Automation and Snap-on Inc. Melanie has a BA from Cardinal Stritch University. Melanie hobbies include; scrapbooking, traveling, and teaching ceramics.

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Bryan is a Wisconsin native and Milwaukee School of Engineering dual graduate who has managed critical power and data spaces for the past 8 years at Direct Supply, Inc. In addition to daily administration he has planned and helped implement both the installation of a new multi-building campus external fiber plant and an off-site disaster recovery initiative. Additionally, he is involved with various technical network duties which support the business on a daily basis. In his spare time he is an amateur musician and enjoys playing a variety of instruments and recording music both on his own and with others.

My name is Steve Lemkuil the New Membership Director for our local AFCOM Chapter, and I have been the Data Center Lead at Froedtert Health for the past 10 years. I have been in the IT field since 1987 where my first computer was the IBM AT 339. I started on the vendor side of IT as a sales person for Allied Computer Group. I worked in several support areas for Allied and then went on to several other companies before I ended up at Xerox. Then 10 years ago I decided it was time to try the customer side of IT and moved to my present role. My role here at Froedtert has allowed me to participate in the building of our new 8500 sq ft, Tier 3 data center. I have enjoyed being a member of AFCOM for the last 5 years.

Nathan was born in Illinois but can now state that he is from Wisconsin as he has spent over half of his life in the state. The initial draw was UW-Madison but the city provides a lot of reasons to stay and 20 year later he is still loving it. Nathan has been working in the data center for 9 years, 3 years on the IT side followed by a transition to power and cooling infrastructure 6 years ago. He supports engineers, contractors, and end users in the southwestern portion of Wisconsin. In the warmer months, biking, camping, golfing, and basically enjoying the outdoors are favorite pastimes of his.

Grant Horn is a Master’s Degree graduate of the UWM School of Architecture, class of 2005. He joined J . F. Ahern Co. in 2005 as a service sales representative, and has since earned Certificates in Sustainable Operation from MATC, Facility Management Professional Certification from IFMA, and Certificate of Sales Excellence from the University of Houston. In addition to his role on the board with AFCOM, Horn also served as President of the IFMA’s Southeast Wisconsin Chapter during his time at Ahern. His focus as a Senior Sales Representative as it pertains to AFCOM is on providing cooling maintenance and retrofit solutions for data centers. He has installed or retrofitted millions of dollars of Liebert cooling equipment for many of the largest employers in the State of Wisconsin and actively maintains well over 100,000 square feet of server rooms and data centers for clients throughout Wisconsin.