Brent Chapman

Brent Chapman is the founder, owner, and technical lead of Great Circle Associates. His professional interests include information technology infrastructure design, deployment, and management; enterprise networking; system administration; startup companies; professional education and training; Internet security; and incident response. He is the coauthor (along with Elizabeth D. Zwicky and Simon Cooper) of the highly regarded O’Reilly & Associates book Building Internet Firewalls. He is also the founder of the Firewalls and List-Managers Internet mailing lists, and the creator of the Majordomo mailing list management package. In 2004, Brent was honored with the annual SAGE Outstanding Achievement Award “for outstanding sustained contributions to the community of system administrators”.

Brent has over 20 years of information technology experience. He has worked as an information technology manager or consultant for hundreds of organizations worldwide, across a wide range of industries. In particular, he has helped a number of Silicon Valley startups define and develop their information technology infrastructure at the critical early stages of their growth, including Tellme Networks, a profitable pre-IPO Silicon Valley startup which develops and operates automated systems to process over 1 billion phone calls a year, bringing to the telephone network many of the same ideas and breakthroughs that made the Internet great, where he served as Senior Manager of Network Operations and Senior Manager of Network Architecture; as well as Covad Communications Company, the world’s leading broadband service provider, where he served as Director of Network Architecture, Interim Director of IT Infrastructure, and Director of Technical Marketing.

Brent holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Melbourne Business School (Australia) and a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. His personal interests include aviation and emergency services. He is an instrument-rated private pilot, and a Civil Air Patrol search and rescue pilot, ground team member, air and ground operations director, and mission coordinator.

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