Our Team

My goal as the owner of SJI Maintenance is to be an employer that understands the needs of their employees and customers.  Here at SJI we are a crazy, growing, lovable family, with our own families at home.   We understand the need for work-life balance, for our team and for the customers we work with.  We hope our commitment to family and balance is felt while we are working with you.  

Will and I married in 1998, and raised our five boys, Austin, Ethan, Brett, Jacob, and Trase in Louisiana/Bowling Green, MO for 18 years.  In 2016, Will had an opportunity present itself that he was excited about in Florida, and having vacationed in Sarasota for the past 11 years we knew we would love to live there, so we moved the family to Plant City, FL.  My pride and joy is my family, and our oldest 4 boys have all graduated from Plant City High School. Austin graduated in 2017 and joined the Navy, got married to Kalin in 2019, had our first granddaughter Athena in 2019, and our second granddaughter Amber in 2021. Ethan graduated in 2018 and attended UF where he got a degree in Anthropology in Dec 2022. Brett graduated in 2019 and attended FSU, during the pandemic he came back to Plant City to pursue a career as an electrician and is currently working on an electrical engineering degree while living in Lakeland with his girlfriend Taylor, and working for SJI as a maintenance technician. Jacob graduated in 2022 and is currently working on computer coding while working for SJI as our parts coordinator. Trase is in high school and studies electricity with plans to work with SJI in the future. 

I enjoyed being a stay-at-home mom for most of the time I was raising my family, holding jobs while the boys were in school, such as the school cafeteria, a weekend job as the Postmaster (in a town of 900!) and school secretary.  My entrepreneurial fire was lit when I opened an eBay store selling penny stock.  I learned about computers, designing a storefront on eBay, communication and dealing with the general public.  The times changed, and companies changed the way they dealt with penny stock, so we closed the business, but we learned how much we enjoy owning our own company.  I was introduced to Real Estate appraising in 2005 and went to school to become an appraiser.  I passed the state exam on the first try!  After two years of apprenticing, I opened business #2.  This role allowed me everything I wanted in a career, flexibility to be home with the kids, being able to meet new people and be involved in the community and the opportunity to work with a complex computer program. 

During 2021 with time on my hands I opened FL Mobile Maintenance, connecting contractors with qualified employees. FL Mobile gave way to SJI Maintenance.

My goal as the General Manager of SJI Maintenance is to develop our SJI Family to have pride in a job well done, support one another, and always take care of our customers’ needs with an owner-like mentality.  Our commitment to the customer is to build a valued partnership through honesty, transparency, and our ability to adjust the solution deliverables according to reliability data analysis.  

God has blessed me with everything I have, and I am a husband, father, and son first and foremost!  My wife and I have been blessed with five sons and two granddaughters that we love spending FAMILY time with.  In my personal time, I am an avid outdoorsman who enjoys sporting clays, hunting, fishing, hiking, ATV’s and almost anything else to be outside!

I have 24 years of experience as a Maintenance Professional in various positions and industries, and I hold a bachelor’s degree in information technology project management.  I started my professional career as a millwright with a great company in the Midwest.  What is a millwright everyone asks? A millwright is a craftsperson or skilled tradesperson who installs, dismantles, maintains, repairs, reassembles, and moves machinery in factories, power plants, and construction sites. – I have been fortunate enough to perform all aspects of the definition! In case you were curious:

• As the name suggests, the original function of a millwright was the construction of flour mills,          sawmills, paper mills, and fulling mills powered by water or wind, made mostly of wood with a limited number of metal parts.[3] Since the use of these structures originates in antiquity, millwrighting could arguably be considered one of the oldest engineering trades and the forerunner of modern mechanical engineering.

I worked on re-tooling projects for the 3 main USA Automotive manufacturers in the late ’90s. Primarily dismantled specific conveyors or tooling lines and replaced them with new conveyors, robots, and tooling lines to support new model-year vehicles. All re-tools required substantial start-up support by our lead technicians to ensure no interrupted production time due to installation issues, electrical faults, machine/robot malfunctions, or program issues. I have personally led teams to complete these re-tools in GM, Chrysler/RAM, and Ford manufacturing facilities.

Following my time with Alberici, I transitioned to Macy’s in the maintenance and engineering department during the .com boom of 2006 - 2007. Responsibilities included the recruiting and development of technicians to properly service high-speed MHE solutions that were evolving with greater technologies rapidly. During my 10 years with the company, I was privileged to work with 2 mentors who drastically helped me develop the leadership skills required to grow into a well-rounded executive, leading high-impact teams of engineers, technicians, specialists, and control experts.

As the Accelerated Growth Strategy’s Project Director for Macy’s, I successfully negotiated, awarded, and implemented complete MHE system solutions with budgets greater than $250MM. I worked closely with the following manufacturers and integrators during my time at Macy’s and developed a network that allowed me to further develop my knowledge base on the value individual components can bring to a solution that is sized appropriate to the need! 

Near the end of 2016, I was introduced to a Wine and Spirits Distribution team in central FL. After reviewing their multi-manufacturer and multi-vendor solution to 4-part wave across the conveyor solution, I was convinced to join the team in hopes of resolving some reliability opportunities. After 3 years dedicated to educating myself on how wine and spirits have corrosive properties that do interesting things to conveyor components, structures, and control components we were able to develop a PM program tailored to the environment ultimately reaching >98% reliability by year 4. This was done through data tracking. Ultimately baselining expectations and then backing into the service level was the solution for this scenario, as well as rolling out a CMMS system to support in those efforts.

Around mid-2020, I was promoted to a corporate position where I oversaw construction projects specific to new buildings which included automation. While very successful in this role, including 5 new build completions from concept to commissioning, some with a budget of +$200MM, I realized my passion was not in a project management role. Our team was great and I enjoyed the relationship aspect of this role, however, I was missing my passion to solve for the right-sized maintenance solution that could serve multiple customers.  

As the CMMS Program Director at SJI Maintenance, my goal is to provide support by servicing multiple customers and making an impact on the data gathering and process building for successful maintenance programs.  

I love spending time with my wife Chelsea, and children Cali and Jordy.  I am a huge Gators football fan and love spending my time outside of work watching football, fishing, hunting, and riding UTV’s.  

I have seven years of maintenance experience for a major distribution organization on all levels and started my career in multiple operations roles that included controlling HMIs, sortation processes, logistics coordination, and inventory systems controls.  After a few years of familiarizing myself with the MHE systems in place, I moved into a Parts & Inventory Specialist role in 2016.  This is where I started working with my first CMMS and continued gaining experience in the field.  In 2020, I was promoted to a Maintenance Supervisor role, where I had the opportunity to share my CMMS knowledge on a regional level.  From there, I moved into the National MHE Maintenance Manager role overseeing 37 CMMS sites.  

In 2022, I joined SJI Maintenance, where my passion for the CMMS portion of the maintenance field can be utilized and I am excited to be a part of this amazing team.