Our Educators
Ann Marie started her education and development career with Benchmark Learning in 1995 as an application trainer. Ann Marie earned her Masters of Arts in Communication in the spring of 2009 and teaches a wide variety of professional skills classes including Effective Business Writing, Time Management and Team Building. Recently, Ann Marie collaborated with 18 organizations from across the Twin Cities to develop the IT Leadership: Principles and Practices program for Benchmark Learning to help IT leaders become valued partners with business units. In addition to classroom education, Ann Marie has worked with clients to scope and develop a wide variety of training projects including Office 2007, SharePoint and Supplier Relationship Management. Ann Marie has the skills to understand the business problem, communicate with subject matter experts, elicit project requirements and conduct solution analysis. Ann Marie’s unique skill sets gives her the ability to understand a client’s needs, develop content and deliver effective training solutions.
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Bob brings over 20 years of IT and training experience into his classroom. He garners rave reviews, no matter the format: in front of a classroom of students, over the internet via remote tools or in a mentoring or consulting situation. Bob is the IT Project Lead and has guided the successful rollout of programs such as our FlexLearning solution. Bob played a key role in Microsoft's MCDST curriculum development and has created custom course material for key clients. He has recently developed and designed a Windows 2008 PKI course, Windows 2003 PKI Course, Windows 2003 Clustering Course and several Windows Vista awareness seminars as well as a course for Benchmark Learning on Windows Vista for IT Support Professionals to update their skills from previous versions of Microsoft operating systems. When he’s not in the classroom or writing curriculum, he provides Windows networks consultative services to both small- and medium-sized businesses, including 3M, MoneyGram, Deluxe Corporation, the Mayo Clinic and Caribou Coffee, just to name a few.
Author of Windows Vista
Personal Mentoring topics:
Implementing an Active Directory Integrated [Digital] Certificate Infrastructure (Windows 2003 or 2008)
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Brady joined the Benchmark Learning team in September of 2009. He is a self-proclaimed tech junkie who enjoys keeping up with the latest trends and devices in the consumer marketplace. He possesses a wide range of creative and technical skills which he has been told is unique for an “IT guy”. Brady has a great deal of experience doing web design work and calls upon his on-the-job design and troubleshooting techniques to teach and mentor students at Benchmark Learning. He enjoys interacting with and helping students and will gladly spend one-on-one time with anyone who asks for his help. Brady uses real world knowledge, along with his training and certifications to bring the best experience to his students. He joined Benchmark Learning after spending the previous 10 years working for a large marketing company as an IT Analyst. While working there, Brady specialized in application and desktop support, web design, and technical documentation and training.
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In April 2005, Brian Bandelin joined the Benchmark Learning team. Brian is ITIL certified, and his teaching spans a wide array of classes at our facility - everything from Word, Excel, and Access to VBA, SQL, InfoPath and many others. Brian has earned the title Microsoft Certified Application Specialist Master, having displayed a combination of breadth and depth of knowledge across all Microsoft Office products. Brian has taught Access since the 97 version to thousands of users throughout Minnesota and the USA. His knowledge of SQL and VBA has helped him troubleshoot difficult issues for clients, and assist them in creating databases from the ground up.Having taught SQL for the past 5 years, Brian can help troubleshoot SQL queries from SQL Server, Crystal Reports, SQL Server Reporting Services, and Microsoft Access. In short, if it has SQL in it, Brian can help train it and troubleshoot it. His ‘beyond the book’ knowledge has helped clients save time and effort by being able to suggest anything from ‘best practice’ solutions to some that are more unorthodox.
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Brian is an all-around talented Educator with a wide variety of skill sets primarily focusing on web-related technologies and trends. With over 15 years of experience in the industry, Brian has moved through the roles in the programming world from UI Designer to Architect. He is continually customizing his training to the goals and abilities of his students. In 2009, he was named one of the Top 10 instructors in the world by our previous franchisor, which consists of over 240 centers worldwide.Brian has a focus on development and is the lead .NET instructor at Benchmark Learning. Among his many qualifications, he has achieved his Microsoft Certified Professional Developer certification. In 2008, he was asked by Microsoft to write courseware for Silverlight, WPF, WCF, Workflow Foundation, Application Lifecycle Management and data access. This offering has been delivered both locally and remotely to universities around the country. In 2011, he was voted by members of an IT consortium to deliver a cloud computing course in North and South America. He was accepted as a member of Microsoft Learning's MCT Advisory Council. The council consists of Microsoft Certified Trainers from around the world and works with Microsoft Learning to provide feedback on a variety of initiatives. Brian is one of two MCTs representing North America.
Author of Developing Web Applications using Microsoft Silverlight 2.0
Personal Mentoring topics:
.NET Cafeteria
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Dan takes pride in adding extra value to classes by finding and presenting information beyond what you would get out of a book. Our students’ high information retention rates are a testament to his superior presentation skills. These qualities have helped him become one of the top five Exchange 2003 instructors nationwide for our previous franchisor, which consists of over 240 centers worldwide. Dan’s dedication doesn’t end in the classroom, as he frequently travels to deliver on-site consulting and mentoring to clients upgrading or migrating to new Microsoft Exchange and/or Citrix XenApp technologies. He also develops and teaches custom classes based on clients’ exact needs. His specialties are Microsoft Exchange Server (2000/2003/2007/2010) and Citrix products such as XenApp (4.0/4.5/5.0/6.0), EdgeSight 5.0, and Access Gateway 9.x (both Advanced and Enterprise editions). His certifications include the "Microsoft Certified IT Professional - Enterprise Messaging Administrator" and the prestigious "Citrix Certified Enterprise Engineer for Virtualization." He is also a Microsoft Certified Trainer and a Citrix Certified Instructor. Dan won the Instructor of the Year award for us in 2005 and was chosen as the #4 IT Instructor in the World at the conference hosted by our former franchisor in August of 2006. He is also now the primary Lync Server 2010 Educator at Benchmark Learning.
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Gail joined Benchmark Learning in 2007 as a Business Software Educator. Before coming to Benchmark Learning, Gail worked in IT with Target Corporation for almost 10 years as a Systems Analyst where she gained experience in Business Analysis and Project Management. She also spent 3.5 years running her own business. Her IT background serves her well at Benchmark Learning. She was quickly able to transfer her IT experience into the Microsoft Office Suite and currently teaches Windows XP, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Project in addition to business skills classes, including Project Management Fundamentals and How to Deliver Exceptional Customer Service amongst others. Gail is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and is ITIL v3 certified in Foundations, Operational Support & Analysis and Service Operations.
Personal Mentoring topics:
Features of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
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As a Senior Educator on the Business Applications team, Helen Krone has been training students on various business and proprietary applications since 1993. Her training expertise includes delivering education through a wide variety of modalities, including instructor-led training, classroom facilitation, web-based delivery, lecture/seminar presentations and mentoring/consulting. Helen also works with clients on instructional design, curriculum development, and project management. She has developed and written curriculum, both for general use and customized for specific business policies and procedures. In addition to her education and curriculum development capabilities, Helen is skilled at creating custom educational solutions in a variety of modalities to meet clients’ needs and goals. These solutions have included one-time custom needs as well as large migration and upgrade projects.
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With a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Industrial Education, John has been delivering technology and computer education since 1982. He has a passion for education and is experienced in a wide range of technologies including all Microsoft operating systems including DOS 2.11, Active Directory, VB scripting, PowerShell, application and desktop deployments, Exchange and SQL Server. Currently John is focused on Windows 2008, VB Scripting, PowerShell v2, SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server high availability including Windows failover clustering. John has been working with SQL Server since version 6.5. He specializes in database design, database programming, administration tasks and high availability technologies, including SQL Server Integration Services, Analysis Services, reporting and data mining. With the introduction of SQL Server 2005, he has observed a Business Intelligence tidal wave and has developed training paths to address those needs. He is also the lead for the Microsoft Hands-on Labs for SQL Server in the North Central District.
Personal Mentoring topics:
Learn SQL Server Performance Measurement, Monitoring and Troubleshooting
Create SQL Server Maintenance Plans
Analyze Your SQL Server Security and Implement Solutions
Automate Your SQL Server with Jobs and Alerts
Implement Database Mirroring for High Availability
^Top In July of 2007, Kent Huelman joined the Benchmark Learning team. Kent carries several Microsoft and CompTIA certifications but is proudest of his Microsoft Certified Trainer status. His certifications include MCSE 2003: Security, MCITP: Enterprise Administrator, CCENT, CCNA, A+, Network+, Security+, CTT+, CISSP and the prestigious "Citrix Certified Enterprise Engineer (CCEE) for Virtualization.". Kent’s teaching and mentoring spans a wide array of IT infrastructure and security topics in our classrooms and FlexLearning Classroom. The FlexLearning students he has worked with are the first to attest that he has been a valuable resource to their learning. Kent never hesitates to start up an impromptu whiteboarding session or in-depth discussion to help students better understand the material. Kent enjoys combining his years of real-world IT administration experience and his computer training background to provide additional content and context to his classes.
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Before coming to Benchmark Learning, Lu provided desktop software support, implemented software solutions and was a systems manager for LANs and VAX systems. In addition, she spent four years as an independent consultant and trainer, specializing in assisting companies with their SMS 2003 and MOM 2005 deployments. In addition to the core operating systems, she focuses on SMS, MOM and systems management, and also teaches VB and WMI Scripting. Lu co-authored the course PowerShell for Administrators and in 2010, wrote the course PowerShell v2 for Administrators. For the fourth time in her career, Lu was selected to support the Hands-on Labs area at Microsoft’s premier technical education conference, Tech•Ed 2009. She has also supported the Hands-on Labs at Microsoft’s Internal Technical Education Conference, TechReady, several times. In 2010, Lu was invited to speak on PowerShell v2 at the UK Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) Summit.
Lu is the Author of: System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Skills Update for SMS 2003 Administrators; Microsoft Windows PowerShell v2 for Administrators; Monitoring Your Environment with Operations Manager 2007.
Personal Mentoring topics:
Automating Processes with SMS or SCCM
Deploying Applications with System Center Configuration Manager 2007
Deploying Operating Systems with System Center Configuration Manager 2007
Working with Operations Manager 2007
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With a Bachelor of Science degree and Master of Education degree from the University of Minnesota, Mark has been delivering education to various audiences for more than ten years. He has a passion for education, especially when delivering SQL Server and ITIL classes, which makes Mark one of the most diversified yet relevant Educators to our students today.What further makes Mark unique is his business acumen, stemming from his real estate business that he has co-owned for nine years. Being responsible for the operation of a business allows Mark to share stories with his various IT and business students on how IT and business interface through strategy, service, perceived value and results. While Mark is one of Benchmark Learning's SQL and ITIL leads, he also has many other strengths and competencies in teaching, including Crystal Reports, Microsoft Excel VBA and Microsoft Access.
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Matthew joined the Benchmark Learning IT Educator staff in 2005. Prior to this position, he worked for eight years designing numerous solutions for SMS infrastructures. He is able to use his prior experiences in the IT trenches to help his students more easily take their classroom education and apply it immediately in their work environments. Matthew currently works full time at Carlson as a SCCM Administrator. He also teaches courses covering SCCM 2007, Server 2008 Administration, WMI, VB Scripting, SQL 2008 Administration, SharePoint 2012 Administration, ITIL and PowerShell. He co-authored the course “50025 PowerShell for Administrators”. Matthew approaches each class with technical detail and know-how but also with humor.
Author of PowerShell
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Mike brings over 17 years of IT and training experience into his classroom. Several years were in highly regulated enterprise environments. In fact, Mike was the senior Systems Engineer and architect for an Active Directory and Exchange messaging implementation that also relied heavily on SQL Server. Mike was also the production DBA for a major financial institution's data warehouse run on SQL Server. Over the last few years, SharePoint design and implementation have been a large part of Mike's responsibility as well. Mike has held over 20 certifications in the IT industry including "Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer", "Microsoft Certified Trainer", "Microsoft Certified Database Administrator", "Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist" on multiple technologies, "Master Certified Novell Engineer" and "Certified Novell Instructor".
^Top Tony joined the Benchmark Learning Team in November 2010. He graduated from the University of Minnesota Duluth with a BAS degree in Mathematics Education. In 2000, he graduated from St. Mary’s University with a Master’s Degree in Education. After 17 years of teaching and coaching at the secondary level, he has moved his passion for teaching and learning to the technology arena. Tony’s plans are to further develop his expertise as an IT and Business Applications instructor. His specialty areas include A+ content, as well as Access and other Office 2007 and 2010 business applications. He will be earning his Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) Master certification in 2011.
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