Juneau resident and University of Alaska Fairbanks information technology student Stephanie Harvey was selected to go to Cisco Live in Las Vegas as part of the Dream Team. To be able to go to Cisco Live, which is an education and training destination for IT professionals worldwide, and as part of the Dream Team, is considered a big opportunity for those working in the IT field. Only 10 people in North America are picked to go along with the team captain and two instructors to go to the convention.
Dream Team members are responsible for a variety of duties, such as working with Cisco Network Operations Center (NOC) engineers to deploy over 850 Cisco wireless access points and antennas providing more than 28,000 users with flawless connectivity during the conference; deploying over 400 Cisco Catalyst 3560 switches with Cisco (NOC) engineers; on site troubleshooting; attending technical briefings during the conference; working as a team to anticipate, avoid and resolve network problems from start to finish, from installation to tear-down; attending pre-conference planning calls with Cisco Network Operations Center engineers; additionally, the team assembled over 12,000 meals to help stop hunger during the event.
Harvey met with Cisco executives, the CEO Chuck Robbins, Cisco’s global systems engineer Chris Riling and Laura Quintana, the vice president of corporate affairs at Cisco. Quintana inspired Harvey because she has both a successful career and is mother, Harvey said, saying because she is the mother of two children and is currently trying to start her own career.
Harvey was encouraged by her professor Rick McDonald to submit her video application for the Dream Team. On McDonald, Harvey said “without his guidance and his belief in me, I would not be where I am today. As a woman in a field that is predominantly male, it is so important to have people who believe in you and want to see you win.”
Harvey already has two certificates within the IT field, has been named student of the year by UAF, honored by the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library and had a bookplate placed in the copy of “The Universal History of Computing: From Abacus to the Quantum Computer.”
