Swipht Executive Bios
The fundamental conviction underlying the Swipht philosophy is that the people matter the most. As such, Swipht Technologies is more than process, technologies and methodology; it is a unique and unified community of developers, managers and designers whose blended talents help us deliver top notch solutions to our clients.
Jeff Jerome, Co-founder / Account Manager
Jeff was one FORTRAN course short of becoming an aerospace engineer before he decided to switch gears and pursue ethnographic film production. With post-baccalaureate work in Visual Anthropology and a B.A. in Journalism, Jeff started his media career making animated commercials for companies like Frito Lay and Dole.
He transitioned into the internet in 1999 and used his previous skills to revamp the management style at his former company, Rapidigm. Notably, “Jeff is one of the first creative focused resources here at Portland Solutions Center that was able to gain the respect of many with a more technical focused career," says John Homer from Rapidigm. Jeff’s balance approach and leadership skills enhance projects and client relationships alike. Jeff complements the Swipht team with his breadth of experience, interpersonal style, as well as his technical, managerial and creative know-how.
As the Account Manager (AM) for all of Swipht’s projects, Jeff uses the abilities and capabilities of available resources within the organization to design and deliver a software product of the highest quality that meets specifications, scheduling demands and budget constraints. The AM reviews and approves all deliverables and their approval is considered the official notification of milestone completion before the client review.
Brian Payne, Co-founder / Sr. Solutions Architect
Brian has been designing and developing enterprise applications and database driven websites since 1996. He has extensive experience working with a wide range of technologies, but it is his ability to provide simple solutions to otherwise complex problems that really sets him apart.
Before co-founding Swipht, he helped his former company, Rapidigm, define and implement a successful onshore/offshore delivery model. Rapidigm looked to Brian to run its first large-scale, e-business project offshore.
In his role at Swipht, Brian oversees the technical architecture of all our projects. He works closely with all developers to help ensure that every team member is as productive as possible and constantly improving their skill set.
In addition to his work for us, Brian continues to teach courses covering assorted Web technologies at Portland State University. Brian received a Bachelor of Science degree from Oregon State University where he graduated Magna Cum Laude.
Meghan James, Project Manager
Meghan has been involved in the project management of interactive products for over five years. Beginning her career in educational publishing, she has overseen the production of market-leading educational tools from McDougal-Littel, Thomson Heinle, and Prentice Hall. Having left the world of publishing to focus on web technologies, she brings creative problem solving and fresh ideas to the elegant solutions devised by Swipht, from small, single websites to large-scale web applications for Kettle Foods, Jobdango and the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse, among others.
Meghan has a B.A. in English Literature from Lewis & Clark College and a Masters of Publishing and Writing from Emerson College.
Robert Foley Jr., Drupal Expert
Robert has over thirteen years of professional experience; during his career he has held the role of interface designer, internet advertiser, usability designer, senior developer, and business analyst. Robert has directed a variety of projects focusing on e-learning education design and learning systems, tradeshow management, marketing strategy and systems, business management systems, and business automation and process analysis.
For the past several years Robert has served as Swipht’s lead Drupal developer, overseeing the development of countless Drupal sites, including shepherding a 120+ multi-site Drupal deployment for Portland State University from concept to production.
Robert has an A.S. in Graphic Design from Mt. Hood Community College and a B.S. in Information Technology (with a specialization in software programming) from AIU.
Matt Whiteley, System Administrator
Matt has over a decade of experience in Information Technologies. He has worked in the public sector for both Oregon State University and Portland State University in system administration and web application security and intrusion detection systems like Tripwire and Samhain. While at PSU he was in charge of over 100 servers and 1000 websites as the Unix System Administrator at the Office of Information Technology. Matt has also setup one of the largest intelligence traffic system in the University system with over a terabyte of information.
Matt helped configured and deployed one of the largest multi-site Drupal systems to date with over 130 websites running on a single code base. He has extensive experience with performance tuning Drupal systems, reverse caching using Varnish and web server caching with Memcache, eAccelerator and XCache.
Matt is currently designing a multi-site deployment and configuration system at Swipht to be used to host very large, multi-site Drupal instances. He supports all of our clients' Drupal installations and works with the Solr enterprise searching platform. He has also worked with Aegir and Pressflow as part of Swipht’s Drupal deployment and performance package. His education is in Computer Science at PSU and OSU and has experience with Unix, Mac and Windows servers.