Tom Lasswell

I run technology organizations for a living and still like to know how the machine works. Over twenty-five years I have gone from wiring a middle school for its first computers to setting enterprise IT strategy, and the thread through all of it is the same: technology should shape what a business can do, not wait to be told.

What I believe about IT

Most IT organizations are run as a queue. Requests come in, tickets go out, and the department's reputation rises and falls with response times. That is order-taking, and it caps what technology can contribute.

Order-shaping is different. It means understanding the business well enough to bring options before anyone asks, building platforms that make the next request unnecessary, and treating reliability as the price of admission rather than the finish line. It is the difference between an IT department and a technology function that the business plans around.

That philosophy shows up in how I run teams: service management that moves at the speed of the business, governance that filters decisions instead of blocking them, and infrastructure treated as a product with customers, not a cost center with users. The essays on this site are my working notes on all of it.

Now

At DC BLOX, a Southeast data center and connectivity operator, I lead enterprise IT strategy and infrastructure operations. The work is about building automated, resilient systems for a company whose entire business is resilience.

I also serve on the board of Atlanta Technology Professionals as Director of Technology, where I own the technical side of the organization's programs and flagship events, including the ATP Awards Gala and the annual golf tournament. ATP is where I met most of the people who taught me how to lead in this city, and giving some of that back matters to me.

Career

1. 2025 – now

   Director, ITDC BLOX

   Enterprise IT strategy and infrastructure operations for a Southeast data center and connectivity operator.

2. 2026 – now

   Board of Directors, Director of TechnologyAtlanta Technology Professionals

   The platforms behind ATP's events, communications and member engagement.

3. 2023 – 2025

   Senior Director, IT Infrastructure and ServicesEdible Brands

   Cloud-native Azure infrastructure for a national e-commerce and franchise platform; DevOps and automation culture, enterprise governance and PMO, Zero Trust with security leadership.

4. 2018 – 2023

   Vice President, IT OperationsCortavo

   Built a managed services business from the ground up: product design, pricing, team formation across help desk, NOC, field and projects.

5. 2013 – 2018

   Architect, then Director, Engineering and Support Servicesivision

   Led a team of more than sixty engineers, analysts and service professionals; redesigned the managed services model around effort-based pricing and contract-level profitability.

6. 2011 – 2013

   Systems Engineer, NetAppCDW

   National consulting engineer, more than a hundred thousand miles a year, deploying storage and virtualization for enterprise clients.

7. 2005 – 2011

   Technical Engineer to Manager, Infrastructure EngineeringCBS Corporation, Los Angeles

   Storage, data center strategy and disaster recovery for broadcast and digital media, including cross-country data center builds.

8. 1999 – 2005

   Technician, junior engineer, co-opsComputers NLA, Bain & Company, EZE Castle Integration

   A high-school job in Carson, California, then co-op and contract roles through Wentworth. Where the hands-on habit started.

Education

• Carnegie Mellon University, Heinz College. Chief Information and Digital Officer (CIDO) Certificate Program, Cohort 13, September 2026 to January 2027. In progress.
• Kennesaw State University, Coles College of Business. Executive MBA, October 2023 to May 2025. Inducted into Beta Gamma Sigma, the international business honor society.
• Certifications. ITIL Foundation, LogicMonitor Certified Professional, Evidence-Based Management.
• Wentworth Institute of Technology. B.S. in Computer Engineering Technology and A.A.S. in Electronic Engineering Technology, 2001 to 2005, on a five-year co-op program that alternated study with industry work.

Elsewhere

• Insights at the Intersection, my LinkedIn newsletter on where technology strategy meets business results. Several of the essays here started there.
• Profiled in Cobb in Focus magazine's Leaders of Cobb series in 2022, while running IT operations at Cortavo.
• A contributor profile at CIO.com.
• Finalist, Emerging Leader, Atlanta Technology Professionals Awards, 2025.
• Member of the Technology Association of Georgia since 2020, and of the Beta Gamma Sigma and Phi Kappa Phi honor societies.

Still an engineer

I have never fully handed the keyboard to someone else. My daily machine runs Omarchy, an Arch Linux and Hyprland setup, my home runs on Home Assistant with a good deal of custom integration work I publish on GitHub, and I keep a personal software project or two alive so I never lose the feel for how things actually get built. It keeps me honest when I ask a team for an estimate.

The longer-form technical writing, going back to 2007, lives on my other site, TechColumnist.

Off the clock

I live in Marietta with my wife Shannon and four cats who believe they run infrastructure operations. We travel whenever we can, and the further off the standard route the better: Colombia, Belize, Morocco, French Polynesia, and a mission trip to Malawi that reset what I think a good week looks like. At home I take on renovation and lighting projects with more precision than is strictly necessary, and on weekends you will find me on a golf course, on West Point Lake, or in the infield at the Daytona 500.

Get in touch

Email works: tom@lasswell.me. So does LinkedIn, and I post shorter takes on X. If you are working on IT leadership, service management or an Atlanta technology community project, I would like to hear from you.