Kerry Sutton  (ksutton@risingtideconsulting.com)
As the President of Rising Tide Consulting, Mr. Sutton oversees all non-practice related phases of the organization's growth - including client and partner relationships, business development, and human resources. Mr. Sutton brings a mixture of business and technical experience that leave him well prepared for this challenge.

Mr. Sutton brings 18 years of experience in the Information Technology industry to this position. His experience managing a consulting office through the rise and fall of the dot-com era have provided him with the knowledge and experience necessary to focus on the right projects at the right time. Prior to the establishment of Rising Tide consulting, Mr. Sutton spent the previous 7 years opening and developing offices for national and international consulting firms. During this time Mr. Sutton mixed his management responsibilities with hands-on tasks for customers that varied from project management of a standardized desktop rollout for a Fortune 25 customer to interim CIO for a pair of regional businesses.

Prior to entering the consulting industry, Mr. Sutton spent 8 years working for State Farm Insurance developing mission critical applications on IBM and HP mainframes as well as leading the first client-server application development performed by the company. He led IT teams in the field to provide support for disaster relief efforts at Hurricane Andrew (Miami, Florida 1992), the Northridge Earthquake (Los Angeles, California 1994), and other major disasters. Folling this effort, Mr. Sutton led a team that developed the first digital dashboard that merged data from 12 heterogenus systems to measuring success and failure of various regions, product lines etc.

Mr Sutton is a graduate of Illinois State University with a Bachelors in Accounting. Mr Sutton has since attended the University of Florida and is in the process of obtaining his MBA. He has been a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) since 1994 and currently holds his MCSE+I, MCDBA and MCT certifications in addition to passing strategic product certifications on other industry products. He has been a speaker at regional and national conferences. Mr. Sutton has also authored 3 books focused on his area of greatest interest - Microsoft SQL Server products and certification.