From Military Signaler to State CIO: Alan Cunningham’s Unfiltered Career Journey | Ep032

Episode Information Show Notes In this captivating episode of Career Downloads, Manuel Martinez sits down with Alan Cunningham, a technology leader with a rich and varied background. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Alan shares his remarkable journey from working at age 12 to becoming the CIO for the State of Nevada. Alan walks us through his early fascination with electronics, building sound-to-light units for his DJing career despite being colorblind. His path took him through the British Army where he worked as a signaller, which sparked his journey into technology. After moving to the US in 1995, Alan quickly established himself in the tech world, running a computer store by his second day. Throughout his career, he’s worked as an IT technician, software expert, consultant, ISO for Washoe County School District, and ultimately CIO for the State of Nevada. What stands out in this conversation is Alan’s unwavering commitment to honesty and integrity, which has guided his career decisions even when they led to challenging transitions. He offers practical wisdom for those entering the tech field, emphasizing the importance of building a solid foundation of knowledge through help desk positions or working at small computer stores where problem-solving skills are constantly tested. Alan also shares valuable insights about critical thinking, continuous learning, and the reality behind trending technologies like AI and cloud computing. His straightforward assessment of these tools cuts through marketing hype to reveal their true utility. Whether you’re just starting your career or looking to advance to leadership positions, this episode provides a wealth of practical advice and inspiration from someone who’s navigated the ever-changing technology landscape for four decades. Listen to the full episode to learn how Alan’s commitment to quality work and straightforward communication has shaped his successful career in technology. #CareerDownloads #TechLeadership #CyberSecurity #CIOAdvice Transcription Manuel: Welcome everyone, my name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads. For each episode, I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to learn more about their career and their experiences, to really uncover any actionable advice that you can use as you’re managing your own career. So for today’s episode, I have with me Alan Cunningham. So we’ve crossed paths a couple of times, most recently at a couple of networking events. But when I first met him, he was actually the CIO for the state of Nevada on public sector. Kind of speaking to a couple of contacts that we have in common, they mentioned they had a very interesting story, interesting background, looking at his profile. So me and him have chatted prior to this and I feel like there’s gonna be a lot of good information and a lot of good stories just for people to kind of understand, you know, again, and just find areas that they can find, that you can find that would be beneficial in your own career and help you improve and progress as you manage that. So with that, I will bring on Alan Cunningham. Alan: Good afternoon, how are you? Manuel: Doing very well, thank you for taking the time to come and speak and really just share your experiences. Alan: Yeah, thanks for the invite. It’s always good to try and give back to the community in whichever way we can. Manuel: Definitely. If you could just start by just giving us a brief summary of kind of what your current position is and just some of the roles and responsibilities that you’re in charge of today. Alan: At the moment, I’m working with Cyroot.io You had Asal Gibson on your last show, who is the CEO. I actually worked with her at the contract position at Clark County School District about a year and a half ago. We both got along really well. So when my contract finished with the county, Asal asked if I’d become the CIO. So really I’m the lead technical contact for the company. We’re working a lot on federal, state and government bids. So I look at all the technical requirements and see if we don’t have that talent in-house, where can we reach out to partners and make partnerships to be able to satisfy those bid requirements. So that’s mainly my duties, if you want to call on that at the moment. I’m also on the board of the Cyroot Academy, which is Asal’s nonprofit, which provides free technical training to transitioning military veterans or transitioning military and veterans and underserved communities who are looking for technical training. I’ve been a trainer most of my adult life in various subjects. So I think that’s really important. I’m a British army veteran. I’m not an American army veteran. So I do resonate with the needs of that because military is the same the world over, whichever way you go for it. So that’s really what I’m up to right now. Manuel: And I kind of looked at your profile and I did see that there’s a bit of security background. So I’m really interested to kind of dig into that, as the conversation progresses. But really at this point, what I want to kind of now transition into is, if you can kind of give us just a little bit of background of where you grew up and eventually what got you kind of interested in technology. Everybody’s different, different stages in life. Alan: Yeah, and it’s funny, like once upon a time in a land far, far away, that lived an ogre, because everybody goes with the accent. So I always get the Mike Myers thing with Shrek. And it’s great, like I was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Eastern General Hospital. The reason that kind of came up in top of mind, when I applied for my citizenship here after 20 years, I had two green cards. And I went in for my second INS interview. And the lady standing behind her desk with her back to me, she said, sit down, Mr Cunningham. And then she kind of turned her head and said, which maternity hospital were you born in in Edinburgh? And I’m like, well, Eastern General. And she said, well, I was born in Simpson’s Hospital, which is this other maternity hospital two weeks after you. So it was just serendipitous that that happened, which led to me getting all the easy questions on the test, which was funny. But that whole citizenship process was enlightening. And it’s interesting when you look into some of the coincidental. I don’t think they were coincidental. I think they happened. We can talk about that later as well. But so born in Scotland, lived in the country until I was 19. Left school when I was 15 and a half. I’d been working since I was 12 and a half. Evenings, weekends, anything I could get. Then at 14, when I was 14, I started working in a record store, which led to DJing. And eventually, it’s like I’m a great Scottish comedian because I can go around elliptically around the subject and then come back to it again. Billy Connolly, if you ever look him up, he’s phenomenal at that. He’ll talk on something for 20 minutes and then come right back to where you thought you were going in the start. So once I got into DJing, I started building my own electronics for sound to light units, because you couldn’t they were very expensive at the time. So I did some studying at the library at the time because you couldn’t just jump on YouTube because this is pre-internet days and start designing my own PCB boards and putting transistors and stuff together, which was a major challenge for me because I happen to be fully colorblind. So that’s a major challenge for more jobs than you can imagine. Just totally barred just because you’re colorblind. And then once I DJed for years and I joined the army and I’d been into CB radio and just general technology stuff. And then when I joined the military, I was in the infantry and one of the parts of those is communication. So I became a signaller doing radio communications for AhF, satellite, VHF, bus transmissions, all that kind of stuff, encryption, and then transitioned as the military started to get computers. You know, it was like, well, here’s a piece of technology. You know technology. Fix it. No training. No, nothing. I remember the first kind of computer I worked on was a word star word processor. It had a single line of LCD text that you could go in and had a daisy wheel printer. And I remember fixing those. And just before I left the military and came here in 1995, I was working at the signal school as an instructor teaching instructors how to teach. And we were putting in a local area network there. So I was working with the civilian company, digging trenches, laying coax cable, putting on 51 resistors, building star topology networks and ring topology networks and learning all about that before I left the military. And the British Army has some similar programs, the American Army, for transitioning out of military service. So I did like six months at a local college, public community level college, it would be here, on networking, database design, IT administration. So that kind of set me up when I arrived here in 95. I got a job at a local computer store as an IT tech. I was running it the second day I was there, because I just can’t stand disorder. I have to put order where chaos is. And that was great. A place called Technology Center still open today. Curtis and Tim, if you get a chance to watch it, keep going guys. And thanks for everything you taught me. Those are two guys who worked there. Manuel: And I don’t mean to interrupt you, but I question there. So understanding, running the coaxial cable, doing the trenches, was it something that you… I mean, you were part of not just laying the coaxial, but you actually had to dig the… You were doing everything top to bottom? Alan: Yeah. It was on a military base. And I was kind of like the liaison between the civilian company and the military side. So wh...