Executive Spotlight: Jason Shirdon, EVP & General Manager, Mid-Atlantic

Welcome back to another installment of our “Thrive Employee Spotlight” blog series.

Our featured Thrive Executive is Jason Shirdon. Jason is the EVP and General Manager of the Mid-Atlantic region at Thrive.

Jason is responsible for growing Thrive’s footprint in the Mid-Atlantic while also maintaining its loyal client base. His expertise in strategy and process development allows him to focus on helping businesses evolve by providing custom Cloud solutions for clients of all sizes.

You’ll find Jason attending regular meetings alongside the executive management team to discuss budgets, business operations, downstream communication, and strategies to best engage Thrive’s customers. He ensures that Thrive delivers both quality service and the best NextGen cyber security and managed services for its clients, especially in the Mid-Atlantic region. Jason also oversees employee development, day-to-day operations and the delegation of duties to his team of talented employees.

Jason lives in Pennsylvania with his wife Gabrielle and two teenage sons, Anthony and Alex. While his two boys keep him quite busy, he enjoys golfing with his wife, which they recently picked up. Jason also loves spending time with friends and family and hosting backyard BBQ’s. As a family, the four of them enjoy camping, hiking, boating, and all beach/lake/river time they can get — really anything outdoors!

Hi Jason! Can you tell us about your background and how you came to Thrive? 

In 2019, Ease Technologies was acquired by Thrive. I ran the managed services business at Ease Technologies for 15 years with a strong focus on Cloud computing. We were driven to have a ‘Cloud-first’ mentality, which I now incorporate into my work here at Thrive. 

Where did you go to school or get training? 

After high school, I attended the California University of PA, but after my first year, I decided to transfer to York Technical Institute, where I formed my base knowledge for electronics, robotics, and programming. After school, I landed a job with a nuclear medicine company in Columbia, Maryland, working with diagnostic imaging machines that required CT scans to be pushed over networks. Hence, my move into the IT world. From there, the rest is history. Back then, we mostly used UNIX and IRIX, but that quickly changed to Windows in the mid-’90s.

What do you most enjoy about working for Thrive?

No question — The people. I have never been a part of an organization with so many talented individuals who are driven to produce a quality product and want to improve daily.

Any recent exciting projects at Thrive that you can tell us about?

About three months before the pandemic hit, Thrive engaged with a 100 person accounting firm that was completely dependent on its physical office and aging IT infrastructure. After many meetings and analysis, we convinced the client to move to an Azure infrastructure, so they would never have to purchase another server again. As you can imagine, this paid for itself 10 fold.

As a result, Thrive saved this client approximately $500,000 within the first year in hardware costs alone. After about six months into the pandemic, during our Technical Business Reviews that we do with strategic clients, the accounting firm told us that if they hadn’t moved to the Cloud with Thrive, they weren’t sure where their business might be today. Knowing that we changed someone’s view of Cloud computing and saved their business is what I love doing most!

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