Tom Vincent (left) and Mo Davidson (right).

The Manager position for the Compass technical team has been open since August, so while the search for a candidate continues, Tom Vincent has agreed to step into the role of Interim Manager. The team is in the middle of a large tools upgrade and is preparing for an application upgrade in the fall.  Tom has always been a willing candidate to lead, but in this more formal interim role, he will gain more management experience which aligns with his chose career path.

Tom joined Emory University in 1998 as a developer on the implementation project for PeopleSoft Student Administration (OPUS). With 10 years of experience, he joined the project team as the Technical Lead for Project Compass in 2008. Clearly, he is a sucker for implementations!

Tom lives in Lawrenceville with his wife and their three teenage children. They are very involved with their church and are currently enjoying their brand new puppy, Delilah, who is a long-haired miniature dachshund. During basketball and flag football season, Tom coaches his boys in their local league.

Michael Dell was quoted as saying, “Don’t spend so much time trying to choose the perfect opportunity that you miss the right opportunity.” I hope this proves to be the right opportunity for Tom and Enterprise Applications.

I am also excited to announce that Michael “Mo” Davidson will be moving into the role of manager for the Data Warehouse/Business Intelligence technical team. Back in 2005, when he was just Mike, Mo joined Emory as a PeopleSoft Administrator to support the middleware for the PeopleSoft Applications. In 2012, he was promoted to manager over his team, but still carried a part-time technical role.  With the addition of the DW/BI Tech team, he will move into a full-time manager role. As a DBA earlier in his career, Mo has experience supporting data warehouses and PeopleSoft EPM, as well as decision support systems like Oracle BI.

Mo and his wife, Jean, have twin girls who will be 15 years old this summer. The girls are already talking about what kind of car they want to drive and they both have an eye on their dad’s 1972 MGB convertible. Mo is an avid aviation enthusiast (read: “airplane nut”) and hopes to someday learn to fly and get his private pilot’s license. He picked up his aviation bug when he was quite young, and helped quench his thirst for aviation by serving for six years in the U.S. Air Force.

Mo got his start in the IT industry, and his career path of being an Oracle DBA, while working for the Air Force Systems Command at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. Before eventually landing at Emory University in 2005, Mo continued his IT career at Starbucks Coffee Company in Seattle, Washington and then Nike in Portland, Oregon.

Please join me in congratulating Tom and Mo on their new opportunities!