Ben Johnson is a 40-year-old serial entrepreneur who has started not one, but a total of three businesses during economic downturns with little or no startup capital. He graduated from Gordon College with an AA in Psychology, from the University of Georgia in 2000 with a BA in English Literature, and completed his Master of Science in Computer Information Systems from Georgia State University in 2002. He also has both attended and taught at then Griffin Technical College, now Southern Crescent. He holds certifications from Microsoft, Cisco, Apple, VMWare, and Intuit, among others. He also holds a Georgia Low Voltage-Unrestricted License. Ben currently serves as CEO of Liberty Technology, a company focused on making technology easy for both businesses and consumers. He also is Publisher of Kitchen Drawer, a local magazine and blooming media platform for individuals to collaborate and promote the advancement of middle Georgia. Liberty Technology was named the 2012 Lon Touchstone Small Business of the Year by the Griffin Chamber. In 2013, Liberty was named to the MSP Mentor Top 501 List, CRN Next Gen 250, CRN Fast Growth 150, the Bulldog Alumni 100, and INC 5000. Ben has served on the board of directors of Griffin Rotary Club, on the board of the Griffin Spalding Education Foundation and in multiple roles in the local, district and state GOP. Ben currently serves on the board of the Griffin-Spalding Chamber, is Chairman of the Spalding County GOP, is Chairman of the Georgia Republican Liberty Caucus, is a board member of the nonprofit, TogetherWorks, has co-organized seven Craft Beer festivals in downtown Griffin and facilitated bringing fresh, healthy food to families participating in a Consumer Supported Agriculture program. Additionally, he serves on the Cisco SMB Advisory Board, a select group of less than 25 Cisco partners that advise senior Cisco Executives on go to market strategies for the small and mid-market. In 2012, Ben was named as one of the top 150 most influential SMB consultants in the world, and was also one of five nominees for the Georgia SBDC Business person of the year. Ben has been happily married to Tracy, his high-school sweetheart, for over 14 years. They have a 4-year-old daughter, Alexa Morgan. In his spare time, he reads obsessively both online and offline, enjoys high-definition anything, and attempts to spend time with family and friends. Expertise: Why should you care what Ben has to say? Ben has spent the past half dozen years immersed in the Cisco ecosystem, primarily with the Collaboration, DataCenter, and Cloud practices. Relevant Certs: VMWare VCP 5.5 CCNA-Voice CCDA DCUCI DCUCD MCSE Beta/EFT for Cisco: -OnPlus -UC500 (CCA) -BE3000 -SA500 -Various Cloud Collaboration (Spark, Huron, Webex, Webex Telepresence, Tropo API Integrations) -BE6000 (All components, CUCC tool, CTOP program, Jabber(s), various other tools/pilots/use cases) Cisco Street Creds: -Longest tenured member of Cisco's SMB Advisory Board, now in his 6th year of service. -Led Liberty to become the first Express Collaboration Specialized partner in the world. -Deep knowledge in official and unofficial Cisco Collaboration ecosystem from EFTs of new Cloud Platform -Designed "private dCloud" for high velocity sales demos -Designed Custom BE6K offering with CUBE-less, SRST-less, Meraki Site to Site VPN on MX platform, with triple WAN redundancy, and clustering over WAN to kick Avaya/Shoretel/Etc butt on pricing and features - that scales from 10 handsets to thousands