Meet the Team
Marc has over 30 years of experience in technology professional services and software development. Over a wide-ranging career in consulting as well as line manager positions, Marc has proven himself as a problem solver and leader who can solve difficult technology problems for organizations across a wide variety of industries and organization sizes.
Marc is the developer of the jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services (SPServices) and The SPXSLT Codeplex Project. He is a repeat recipient of the Microsoft MVP award for Office Apps and Services (2011-2021) and a Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices team member.
Prior to cofounding Sympraxis Consulting, Marc was Director of Operations at Jornata, a Boston-based technology consulting firm, which was acquired by Vitale, Caturano in the Spring of 2008. Marc has also held positions at world-class services firms such as Bain and Company, KPMG, and Renaissance Solutions. Marc also had a “real job”, managing the systems for Staples’ delivery business as it grew from a $30 million “experiment” to an over $1 billion main line business unit. Having started his career as an assembly language and FORTRAN programmer, Marc truly knows what life is like “in the trenches” and brings that perspective to bear for all of his clients.
Marc has a Bachelors of Arts in Computer Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH.
Julie has been building software on primarily the Microsoft platform for over 20 years. With a degree in Electrical Engineering specializing in microprocessor system design from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, she came at software initially from a very low level but quickly realized a love and aptitude for developing rich user experiences and solutions. She worked her way up through internal IT ranks reaching a Director of IT position before realizing more impact could be made in consulting and really focused on the SharePoint platform in 2007. Since then her focus has been on the SharePoint platform, Office 365, Azure, and client-side development. She’s the co-author of the Widget Wrangler JavaScript library, M365 Learning Pathways development lead, and continues to try and help innovate SharePoint and Office 365 solutions for her clients. Julie is also a co-maintainer of PnPjs and hTWOo open-source initiatives. She also is the co-host of the CloudDev Clarity show and Browser Native. She’s also holds the Microsoft MVP award for Office Apps and Services since 2017, and is a core member of the Microsoft 365 PnP Team.
Todd has been a professional computer nerd for over 20 years, specializing in SharePoint for more than 15.
His love affair with SharePoint began one slow day at the office when he discovered SharePoint Team Services 1.0 on the Office XP CD that was holding up his coffee cup, and decided to install it. The rest is history. In 2006 he was honored to be awarded the MVP award from Microsoft for Windows SharePoint Services. He has had the pleasure of working with SharePoint farms both large small. For over a decade, Todd has presented sessions on SharePoint at many major conferences both in the United States as well as Europe and Asia and does the user group circuit, SharePoint Saturday events, and the occasional children’s birthday party as well. He has also written several books and magazine articles on SharePoint and related topics.
While SharePoint is first love, Todd isn’t a one-trick pony, he also works with other technologies like PowerShell, SQL Server, Office 365, OneDrive, and Azure AD. He spends his days consulting on various Microsoft Cloud technologies.
Derek is passionate about building visually appealing and intuitive applications, going beyond the development of efficient navigation structures to create interfaces and organizational structures that encourage and facilitate content authoring.
He has over 20 years of industry experience building customized intranets, extranets, and public facing websites based on the Microsoft stack. He specializes in front-end development and visual design/branding of SharePoint and Office 365. He brings a design eye to Sympraxis in addition to augmenting our development chops, information architecture, content architecture, and collaboration strategy skills. He also enjoys working closely with his clients and has a knack at quickly understand their business drivers and the “why” behind the project. He often describes his role as the “technical therapist” bridging the communication gap between designers, internal IT staff, and the end users.
Patrick Cash-Peterson is a UX Certified Nielsen Norman Group Professional with a specialization in user experience, site builds, and migrations. With over 20 years of experience as a project manager across a wide range of industries, Patrick brings a rare and valuable blend of design sensibility and user-centered thinking to every engagement.
His approach is rooted in balancing user needs with business goals, ensuring that project scope, stakeholder requests, and timelines are aligned without compromising the integrity of the user experience. He has a passion for working closely with teams to build strong and intuitive information architectures. Patrick also excels at educating clients on UX principles and best practices, empowering them to make informed decisions and implement strategies that enhance usability and engagement.
Keri Russo
Keri is passionate about forming strong working relationships with business owners to streamline processes and improve the overall user experience with engaging and content-rich SharePoint sites.
With a Bachelor of Science degree in Technical Communications & Internet Technologies, Keri graduated summa cum laude from Northeastern University in Boston, MA, earning the award for Academic Excellence, presented to the highest-ranking student. As a consultant, with over 14 years of experience, Keri has successfully delivered projects with several clients in various industries including pharmaceuticals, wealth management, non-profits, automation equipment, and consulting services focusing on SharePoint builds, process improvement, project management, and training.
Keri embraces the “people side” of things, sharing her knowledge and experience with others. She enjoys partnering with customers to meet their unique business needs, solve business challenges and collaborate on solutions that achieve their desired outcomes.
Mark is a respected Microsoft 365 Consultant with two decades of experience and in-depth knowledge as a Microsoft insider. He has a strong record of leading major product launches and is recognized as an engaging spokesperson. Mark combines creativity with effective teamwork to deliver compelling narratives and achieve strategic results. One caution: Mark believes the best intranet information architecture includes a robust taxonomy of humor — be forewarned of a pun term here and there with sole expectations of well-baked eye rolls. No doubt, Mark is always focused on SharePoint’ing you in the right direction.
To say we’re thrilled to have Mark join the Sympraxis team would be a huge understatement. Not only does he add his expertise and wit to the team he also expands our reach to better serve our west coast U.S. clients!