John emigrated from Colombia to the US on December 4, 1972, and within a week was already working at a ladies’ handbags Canal Street sweatshop along his Mother in Manhattan, NY.  On October 3^rd, 1973, John joined the US Air Force and started his military service, he went to Lackland AFB for basic training and then to Chanute AFB for Airframe & Power Plant mechanics school, he later also studied Avionics. John participated in the Vietnamese Airlift and Vietnamese Citizens Relocation Program in 1975 while serving in the Indochina region, John has been recognized by the state of NY as a Vietnam Veteran.

Soon after getting honorably discharged by the USAF John married his childhood friend and sweetheart and have been married for over 44 years, they have two children and three wonderful granddaughters. After the AF, John joined the Long Island Railroad as an apprentice electrician and joined the local IBEW, eventually becoming journeyman. This was around the same time he started his first undergraduate program at SUNY in Farmingdale NY. John then moved on to his second undergraduate in Electrical Engineering at NY Tech while working full time and using the GI Bill. Subsequently, John also received an MBA from Maryville University in St. Louis MO and an MS from Stevens Institute of Technology in Telecommunications Management.

Before joining AT&T, John had various employment engagements with companies like Harris Corporation working on Satellite telemetry and Emerson Electric where John had a top-secret security clearance and worked on weapon systems integration for the GSSD division of Emerson. He also worked for Azimex supplying control center and oil field equipment for refineries in Eastern Europe and Southern Russia.

John joined the telecommunications industry in 1996 when he joined AT&T as a quality assurance supervisor in Bridgeton MO working in AT&T’s world class Global Network Operations Center (GNOC), during his tenure at AT&T John lead the planning and implementation through critical Layer 3 Network changes starting from the OC48 Avici core network and ending with the implementation of the current state of the art Disaggregated Distributed Core Network based on off the shelf White Boxes and third party Network Operating Systems. John was critical in the design and implementation of the first 10G ethernet Common BackBone at AT&T and prior to leaving AT&T led the L3 Current Planning team in the design, development and implementation of the new P-Core BackBone and migration of the existing CBB traffic into the new 400G network.

John has two grown children and three granddaughters and loves spending time with his family as well as camping with his 5^th wheel RV as well as paddleboarding and playing racquetball.

We are RocNet are thrilled to have John joining our team! Welcome to the RocNet Family!