Meet Our Speakers

Tim Ford, B-Side Consulting & SQL Cruise Events

Tim Ford is a Senior DBA & DBE and SQL Subject Matter Expert for SurveyMonkey with over 25 years of experience in working with the Microsoft Data Platform. He is also the Founder of SQLAgentMan Consultancy & SQL Cruise Events (now Tech Outbound) and enjoys taking vacation from one job so he can work on another that helps to foster the strength of the next generation of technology professionals.

Tim is an author of articles for SQLMag.com, MSSQLTips.com, SQLServerCentral, and Simple-Talk.com. His first book, co-authored with Louis Davidson, Performance Tuning with Dynamic Management Views is widely available. He speaks routinely at events across North America and internationally.

He has been a volunteer leader within PASS since 2002, serving on the board of directors since 2014. He is the Vice President (Elect) of Marketing for this association for Microsoft Data Professionals.

Itzik Ben-Gan

Itzik Ben-Gan is a Mentor and Co-Founder of SolidQ. A Data Platform Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) since 1999, Itzik has delivered numerous training events around the world focused on T-SQL Querying, Query Tuning and Programming. Itzik is the author of several books including T-SQL Fundamentals Third Edition and T-SQL Querying. He has written articles for SQL Server Pro, SolidQ Journal and MSDN. Itzik’s speaking activities include SQLPASS, SQLBits, SQL Nexus, SQLU, SQLTeach and various user groups around the world. Itzik is the author of SolidQ’s Advanced T-SQL Querying, Programming and Tuning and T-SQL Fundamentals courses along with being a primary resource within the company for their T-SQL related activities.

Aaron Bertrand

Aaron is a senior consultant for SQL Sentry, Inc., makers of performance monitoring and event management software for SQL Server, Analysis Services, and Windows. He has been blogging since 2006, focusing on manageability, performance, and new features; has been a Microsoft MVP since 1997; tweets as @AaronBertrand; and speaks frequently at user group meetings and SQL Saturday events.

Jes Borland, Microsoft Corporation

Jes Borland is a Premier Field Engineer - SQL Server for Microsoft, where she is a trusted technical adviser, deep technical support, and teacher for her customers. Her experience as a DBA, consultant, and 5-time Data Platform MVP allow her to help the business and the IT teams reach their goals. She has worked with SQL Server as a developer, report writer, DBA, and consultant. Her favorite topics are administration, automation, and performance. She is a former President of FoxPASS, founder of Tech on Tap, and a LessThanDot.com blogger. She frequently presents at user groups, SQL Saturdays, and other community events. She is also an avid runner and chef.

Argenis Fernandez

Argenis Fernandez is a former SQL Server MVP and SQL Server Solutions Architect for Pure Storage based in Redmond, Washington. He has worked with SQL Server for approximately 17 years and enjoys large SQL Server farms, high-end OLTP databases, managing Windows environments, performance troubleshooting, high availability, disaster recovery, best practices, and PowerShell scripting. Prior to Pure Storage, Argenis worked as a Lead Database Operations Engineer for SurveyMonkey and as a Senior Consultant on SQL Server Core for Microsoft Consulting Services. In 2013 he founded the Security Virtual Chapter for the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) security.sqlpass.org. Argenis is a SQL community enthusiast and speaks frequently at major SQL Server conferences, including PASS Summit, PASS SQLRally, IT/Dev Connections, SQLBits, and TechEd. He is also a Microsoft Certified Master, an avid Twitter user (you can follow him at @DBArgenis), and an occasional blogger on SQL Server topics at SQLBlog.com and PureStorage.com/Blog.

Amy Ford, BlueGranite / SQL Cruise

Amy Ford has over 20 years of human resources and recruiting experience as well as two years experience working with SQL Server and Business Intelligence Microsoft Partner BlueGranite. She also serves as Co-Founder and COO of SQL Cruise and provides professional development consultation and resume critiquing services aboard SQL Cruise. Amy is also our liaison to all the "Plus-Ones, Twos, and so-forth" that come on a SQL Cruise.

Grant Fritchey, Red Gate Software

Grant Fritchey, Microsoft Data Platform MVP, has more than twenty years’ experience in IT. That time was spent in technical support, development and database administration. Grant currently works as a Product Evangelist at Red Gate Software. Grant writes articles for publication at SQL Server Central and Simple-Talk. He has published several books including, "SQL Server Execution Plans" and "SQL Server Query Performance Tuning." Grant Fritchey currently serves on the Board of Directors of the PASS organization, the leading source of educational content and training on the Microsoft Data Platform, as the Executive Vice President in charge of governance and finance. Grant teaches and presents at events, large and small, all over the world.

Joseph Guadagno

For 20+ years Joe has been in Software Development. During that time he have used many tools, languages, and technologies, starting with QuickBASIC and later moving on to Visual Basic for DOS. As Windows evolved Joe started his journey with Visual Basic for Windows then Visual Basic .NET and eventually ending up with Visual C#. Joe works as a Team Leader at Quicken Loans, based in Detroit, MI. He's a public speaker and presents internationally on different technology topics. A list of them are available at www.josephguadagno.net/presentations.  He has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP in .NET (since 2009) and a Friends of Red Gate program (since 2015).

Jason Hall, SQL Sentry

Jason Hall leads SQL Sentry's Product Management team, which is responsible for managing product design, development, and delivery. Jason specializes in new and existing product enhancement for SQL Sentry Performance Advisor, Event Manager, and Plan Explorer. For many years Jason was the go-to support point for all things SQL Sentry!

Andrew Kelly, SolidQ

Andrew J. Kelly is a Mentor with SolidQ (www.solidq.com) and lives in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. He has over 20 years experience with relational databases and application development on both UNIX and Windows platforms but his main focus now is SQL Server. In addition to general SQL Server training and Mentoring he specializes in Performance, Scalability and Maintainability of large scale SQL Servers. He is a regular speaker each year at many conferences and user groups and has been a SQL Server MVP since 2001.

David Klee, Heraflux Technologies

David Klee, VMware vExpert 2013, is a SQL Server performance and virtualization expert. With over sixteen years of IT experience, David spends his days handling performance and HA/DR architecture of physical and virtualized mission critical SQL Servers as the Founder and Chief Architect for Heraflux Technologies. His areas of expertise are virtualization and performance, datacenter architecture, and business process analysis. You can read his blog at davidklee.net. and reach him on Twitter at @kleegeek. David speaks at a number of national and regional technology related events, including the SQL PASS Summit, VMware Partner Exchange, numerous SQL Saturday events, SQL PASS virtual chapter webinars, and many SQL Server User Groups.

Kevin Kline, SentryOne

Kevin Kline (@kekline) is Principal Program Manager of SentryOne, responsible for expanding the company’s technical sales, marketing, and product design initiatives. He is a founder and former president of PASS and the author of popular IT books including SQL in a Nutshell. Kevin is a renowned database expert, software industry veteran, Microsoft SQL Server MVP, Google Author, and long-time blogger at sqlblog.com and at kevinekline.com.

Steph Locke, Founder of Locke Data

Steph Locke, Microsoft Data Platform MVP, founded her own consultancy to help organisations get started with data science. As well as running Locke Data, Steph helps people around the world get started with data science by delivering talks, organising communities, and publishing content in blog and book form.

John Martin, SentryOne

John Martin (@SQLDiplomat) is the Product Manager at SentryOne, responsible for SQL Sentry and the core monitoring suite. John is also a Microsoft Data Platform MVP with more than a decade of experience with SQL Server and the Microsoft Data Platform. John is an experienced DBA, Developer, and former Microsoft Premier Field Engineer. Having worked with SQL Server for the last decade, he has gained a broad understanding of how you can use, and misuse, SQL Server. With the latest PASS Board Election Results, John will be the EMEA representative effective January 1, 2018.

Bob Ward, Microsoft

Bob Ward is a Principal Architect for the Microsoft Data Group (Tiger Team) which owns the development and servicing for all SQL Server versions. Bob has worked for Microsoft for 24 years supporting and speaking on every version of SQL Server shipped from OS/2 1.1 to SQL Server 2016. He has worked in customer support as a Principal Escalation Engineer and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) interacting with some of the largest SQL Server deployments in the world. Bob is a well-known speaker on SQL Server often presenting talks on internals, SQL Server latest technologies, and troubleshooting at events such as SQL PASS Summit, SQLBits, SQLIntersection, GroupBy, and Microsoft Ignite. You can find him on twitter at @bobwardms or read his blog at https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/bobsql.

Allen White

Allen is the Business Development Manager for SentryOne. He's been both a developer and an administrator so understands both perspectives towards database technology, and loves sharing his experiences and helping people learn how to use SQL Server. Allen has spent over 40 years in IT and has been using SQL Server since 1992 and is certified MCITP in SQL Server and MCT. Allen has been awarded Microsoft’s MVP Award for the last ten years, and is the PASS Director of Partnerships

Chris Woodruff

Chris Woodruff (or Woody as he is commonly known as) has a degree in Computer Science from Michigan State University’s College of Engineering. Woody has been developing and architecting software solutions for over 20 years and has worked in many different platforms and tools. He is a community leader, helping such events as GRDevNight, GRDevDay, West Michigan Day of .NET and CodeMash. He was also instrumental in bringing the popular Give Camp event to Western Michigan where technology professionals lend their time and development expertise to assist local non-profits. As a speaker and podcaster, Woody has spoken and discussed a variety of topics, including database design and open source. He has been a Microsoft MVP in Visual C#, Data Platform and SQL and was recognized in 2010 as one of the top 20 MVPs world-wide. Woody is a Developer Advocate for JetBrains covering .NET, Web and Data technologies in North America.

Buck Woody, Microsoft

Buck Woody works on the Microsoft Machine Learning and Data Science Team, using data and technology to solve business and science problems. With over thirty years of professional and practical experience in computer technology, he is also a popular speaker at many conferences around the world; the author of over 650 articles and seven books on databases and Machine Learning technologies, teaches Database courses and sits on the Data Science Board at the University of Washington, and specializes in data analysis techniques.