John Gemkow
Consultant at Microsoft

Crafting Modern Work solutions for Microsoft's Industry Solutions Delivery (formerly Microsoft Consulting Services) customers using technologies on our Microsoft 365 (SharePoint, Teams), Power Platform, and Azure clouds

• Delivered 25+ successful, customer-focused solution engagements that leverage client investment on the Microsoft cloud platform across customers in the public sector (US/Canada), global financial services and insurance, education, healthcare, and professional services industry verticals
• Provide technical quality assurance in delivery and pre-sales technical expertise in SharePoint Framework, Teams application development, enterprise search, and custom intranet applications/portals resulting in $3.6M of New Work Sold over 5 fiscal years
• Act as a global subject matter expert for standard practices and training in Leading Edge Delivery for consumption by 1,200+ staff
• Developed and own IP for 3 reusable solutions within the Modern Work Employee Experience portfolio for delivery globally
• Presented at multiple internal conferences to audiences of 100+ attendees for custom development on the Microsoft 365 platform
• Mentor and coach early-in-career consultants and engage in hiring and screening of intern, full-time, and partner vendor resources for the State, Local Government, and Education (SLGE) business

Client delivery highlights:

2023: Professional services firm

• Role: SharePoint development/design onshore technical lead; Reporting lead
• Technologies: SharePoint Online, Office add ins, Graph API, Azure Functions, Azure storage, Power Automate, PowerShell, Dynamics 365, Power BI, Azure DevOps
• As onshore technical lead for the SharePoint document management workstream, I collaborated with counterparts on the Dynamics 365 functional and technical teams to design a cross-cloud solution on Power Platform, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft Azure to transform end-to-end project delivery for a professional services client. This solution included SharePoint site and storage provisioning via Power Automate and Azure functions, document lifecycle management via Graph API webhooks and Azure Service Bus from Dynamics 365, and Office add ins for document upload with relevant cross-platform metadata of 100K+ engagements per year.
• As reporting lead, I designed and developed 12+ different Power BI reports and dashboards (including the solution landing page) that exposed analytics from Dynamics 365 data to 4.5K+ cross-geography professionals of varying levels in the organization (associate to managing partners).

2023: Government agency

• Role: Bot development advisory
• Technologies: Power Virtual Agents, Power Automate, Power Platform data gateways, Azure private networking, Azure storage, Azure AI services (Cognitive Services, Azure AI Search, Azure Open AI)
• Developed a pilot Chatbot application with Power Virtual Agents enhanced via Cognitive Services and Azure AI services and exposed in Microsoft Teams to answer questions and find information across disparate data stores in the organization.

2023: Professional services firm

• Role: Oversight technical consultant
• Technologies: SharePoint Online, Azure AD, Metalogix Content Matrix, Quest On-demand
• Alongside the delivery architect, provided oversight and technical expertise in the execution of a complex tenant-to-tenant from the Microsoft 365 commercial cloud to a new tenant on Microsoft 365 GCC High (GCCH) for one of the largest professional services firms in the world with 80TB+ of SharePoint content.

2023: Local government law enforcement agency

• Role: SharePoint migration lead consultant
• Technologies: SharePoint Online, Metalogix Content Matrix, SharePoint 2010, InfoPath, SharePoint Designer
• Led 4 consultants in execution of a SharePoint 2010 on-premises content migration and intertwined low-code InfoPath applications to SharePoint Online using a factory model with end-to-end support from pre-migration remediation and migration process design through velocity migration and post-migration content validation for 70+ complex and customized SharePoint sites. The migration allowed the agency to retire their on-premises SharePoint farm and realize significant cost savings in infrastructure and support.

2023: Healthcare & life sciences company

• Role: Lead Intranet Assessment consultant
• Technologies: SharePoint Online, SharePoint Framework, Azure AD B2B/MTO, Azure Functions, MSAL, Graph API, C#, Azure AD application/identity
• Driving adoption of a multi-tenant architecture to support future growth via M&A, I led the assessment of a broadly used intranet application and its supporting microservices for internal communications in the creation of a strategy for re-architecture and actionable recommendations for code changes to ensure scalability in a MTO architecture for 120K+ users across numerous entities globally.

2022: Professional services firm

• Role: Intranet portal design lead consultant
• Technologies: SharePoint Online, Power Apps, Power Automate, Azure DevOps, Azure AD, Microsoft Viva, PowerShell
• Guided envisioning and development of a transformative intranet portal solution on SharePoint Online and Microsoft Viva Connections. Completely new to Microsoft's Clouds, the portal laid the groundwork to make employees more engaged throughout the company and remove a dependency on a homegrown intranet solution supporting 135K+ employees and contractors globally across a M365 multi-geo tenant.
• Supported an additional workstream for multi-tenant management of Microsoft 365 tenant configurations using Microsoft 365 DSC, custom PowerShell scripts, and Azure DevOps CI/CD with various approval stages and automations to minimize configuration drift across four tenants and 5 multi-tenant geographies

2022: State of California government agency

• Role: Lead assessment consultant
• Technologies: SharePoint Online, Microsoft Access, Power Platform
• Created an automated approach for baseline assessment and analysis of Microsoft Access database applications to enhance SharePoint Migration Manager reports with information about database object content. This approach drove targeted prioritization of 81 databases compared to an initial 3,600 (scoped reduction of 98%).
• Advised on transformation patterns for prioritized database applications to Power Platform while creating a first-mover pilot application on Power Apps as a reference architecture

2022: Financial services & insurance company

• Role: Integration and development consultant
• Technologies: Azure Functions, Azure private link, Azure blob storage, PowerShell, Exchange Online, Splunk, Azure AD applications
• Designed, developed, and deployed a custom integration on Azure Functions for automating data integration of Exchange Online log information from M365 to a third-party (Splunk) log aggregation platform for alerting and monitoring. The deployment of the solution removed a key deployment blocker and migration concern for moving to Exchange Online.

2021, 2022: Four-year private research University

• Role: Lead developer
• Technologies: SharePoint Online, SharePoint Framework, React.js, PowerShell, Microsoft Graph API, Azure storage [Blobs, Queues], Azure App service, Azure Web Jobs, ARM templates, Azure private link
• Led three consultants (offshore) across two custom development workstreams to create tooling to help report on SharePoint security and permissions periodically with PowerShell scripts and in real-time with live indicators on SharePoint sites using a SharePoint Framework field customizer in a Microsoft 365 GCC High (GCCH) tenant.
• Assisted on an additional workstream as a subject matter expert for additional hardening of Azure resources with Azure private networking and infrastructure-as-code (IaC) deployment of Azure resources that improved the client's security posture and comfort with the Azure cloud.

2021: Financial services & insurance company

• Role: Power Platform Implementation lead
• Technologies: Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and Dataverse (Common Data Service)
• Guided implementation of a first-in-class Power Platform governance engagement for a LATAM banking customer. The implementation of the Power Platform Center of Excellence (CoE) aided the organization to align security goals and drive adoption of the Power Platform while reducing costs of low-code/no-code development.

2021: State of Oregon government agency

• Role: Lead consultant
• Technologies: SharePoint Online, SharePoint site design and site scripts, PnP provisioning templates, PowerShell
• Led design and implementation of a new transformative intranet portal on SharePoint Online (M365 GCC) from information architecture through development and deployment of a site provisioning solution to scaffold new sites in an accelerated manner. Replacing a legacy intranet solution, the time to add new sites was cut by 50%.

2021: Local government law enforcement agency

• Role: SharePoint Assessment lead
• Technologies: SharePoint Online, Power Platform, SharePoint 2010, InfoPath, Azure PaaS
• Engaged to deliver a SharePoint Application Transformation planning and assessment to provide prescriptive guidance and how to prepare existing 80+ low-code applications written in InfoPath on SharePoint 2010 for transformation to cloud-compatible technologies on Power Platform, SharePoint Online, and Azure PaaS, all while assessing migration blockers for content migration from the entire SP 2010 farm to SPO.

2021, 2020: US Federal government agency

• Role: Lead development consultant
• Technologies: SharePoint Online, SharePoint Framework, React.js, Power Apps, Power Automate, Azure Application Insights, Power BI, Azure DevOps, Metalogix Content Matrix
• Led the re-design and development of a modern intranet communications portal and landing site on SharePoint Online with custom developed SharePoint Framework web parts/extensions, usage tracking telemetry and reporting in Power BI, and request process automation in Power Apps and Power Automate. The portal is used daily by ~10K employees across the agency and facilitates efficient communications for levels all up to the agency Director's office.
• Advised on a SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint Online content migration workstream where I identified process bottlenecks and migration tooling inefficiency to reduce data migration retry rate by 70% and reduced migration time from 2 weeks to 3 days for comparably sized sites.

2019: Government agency

• Role: Search application developer/co-lead
• Technologies: SharePoint 2016, Azure Functions, Cognitive Services, Azure Storage
• Co-led and developed an AI-powered crawling and content processing subsystem for enhancing searchable metadata on documents indexed by SharePoint 2016 search as part of a transformative intelligent search portal solution.

2018, 2019: US Federal government agency

• Role: Delivery architect and technical lead
• Technologies: SharePoint Online add ins, ASP.NET, C#, Angular.js, SharePoint client side object model (CSOM), PowerShell, IIS and Azure App Service
• Led design, development, and deployment across multiple phases of delivery for the re-architecture and enhancement for a SharePoint Online provider-hosted add in solution used for facilitating the ideation and innovation process within the organization.
• The application was used as a platform for idea management and end-to-end project management that brought $10M of cost savings to fruition over multiple government fiscal years and scaled to support 60% more users over the course of the project.

2018: Financial services & insurance company

• Role: SharePoint Development consultant
• Technologies: SharePoint 2013/2016/SharePoint Online, SharePoint search, BCS
• Re-wrote custom SharePoint Search BCS crawling connector to reduce relevancy variability by 95%, thereby improving employee effectiveness to find the right information in SharePoint 2013
• Led a hybrid search strategy and planning workstream that identified gaps, migration blockers, and mitigations for a SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint Online search migration, which would reduce costs from an on-premises server footprint by 87%.

Served as a second level/advanced technical support associate for students, faculty, and staff in the McCombs School of Business; Directed an average of 20 support tickets per day to the correct teams and respond to support requests made by faculty and staff; Managed our department’s knowledge management system to improve understanding of technical operations; Developed process improvements using automated scripting in Windows-based PowerShell and Mac OS X AppleScript; Assisted with Active Directory remediation using Microsoft SQL Server

Former Teaching Assistant for MIS 374: Business Systems Development assisting Professor Clint Tuttle [Fall 2016]

Former Teaching Assistant for MIS 373: Mobile Apps and Web Services (formerly MIS 365: Data Communications) assisting Professor Joshua Rock [Spring 2016]

Developed course content for MIS 373, a survey course that covers various mobile applications, networking and web service material; Lead an initiative to add new topics covering object-oriented Swift iOS development using an application-based learning method; Assist students with concepts and exercises during office hours and grade assignments with an average turnaround of 0.46 days

Guided development of use cases and business functional requirements for payment functionality in a Force.com based system; Researched package solutions for integration with new system and created proof-of-concepts to ensure implementation feasibility; Owned formation of key client deliverables relating to the functional and technical design of the replacement to a legacy system

Facilitated project initiation by developing core project management deliverables for a custom Salesforce.com implementation; Created a comprehensive approach for implementing an externalized rules engine for a state Integrated Eligibility system; Engaged in defect validation, smoke test and pre-user acceptance testing for a new digital state Salesforce.com system

Worked on webpage improvement and development for new modules of the Trabajator online web applications using PHP/HTML; Created manuals for API integration with other organizations and generated audiovisual content to explain videos and tools; Led and directed a development team of 3 individuals in development of a Spanish-language based website for a white label client

Developed solutions for consumer and small business computer issues; Assisted with management of client accounts; Created invoices and processed payments for services rendered; Coordinated and trained a new intern for the firm’s high school internship program during the summer of 2013

Certified in basic, advanced, and health savings account tax return preparation to prepare and file returns at no cost for our low-income clients; Prepared over 53 unique tax returns, saving clients $14,363.00 in tax preparation fees and generating $91,869.14 in tax refunds

Developing a new PHP/MySQL-based website featuring database driven web applications that the facilitate more efficient chapter operations. The site uses Bootstrap 3 CSS frameworks, HTML5, and a variety of APIs as well. The site's development has been planned out using a software development lifecycle with a "big bang" implementation method. Previously have audited, secured, and optimized a variety of chapter IT assets. Recently secured a deal for sponsorship in exchange for virtual server hosting services, saving the chapter nearly $600 annually.

Selected as one of 83 students out of a pool of 1,500 applicants from the best universities spread out across the United States; Won first place out of 10 teams in the Building Bridges competition, comprised of team-building and project execution exercises; Improved and applied public speaking skills, communicational skills, strengths-based collaboration and project management; Gained valuable insight into the functions of Deloitte’s Audit, Tax Advisory, Financial Advisory Services and Consulting practices