Leadership
Shawn Usher
Founder & CEO
Shawn formed Sparkhound in 1998 with the mission to make a meaningful impact for clients by solving their business problems with technology and leadership. His results-driven approach helped the company quickly earn a solid reputation with mid-market and enterprise clients throughout the United States. Prior to starting Sparkhound, he joined a team of senior business consultants who successfully transformed IT systems and management for the parent company of three hospitals, a health insurance company, and 25 smaller healthcare-related companies. Shawn earned a bachelor's degree in quantitative business analysis and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree at Louisiana State University. He and his wife, Jennifer, have four children, and he serves on numerous professional and community boards.
Jocelyn Rone has over 20 years of experience in the consulting industry, specializing in transformational leadership. Currently serving as the Managing Director at Sparkhound, she leads the digital transformation team. With a keen focus on innovation, Jocelyn and her team partner to develop cutting-edge solutions, harnessing expertise in AI, automation, and custom app development to enhance efficiency and maximize value. Beyond her transformational leadership, Jocelyn also brings strong operational leadership skills to the table, ensuring seamless execution and sustainable results. Together, they are shaping the future of business.
Curtis Heroman is a seasoned leader in the IT sector, blending deep technological expertise with strategic vision. His leadership at Sparkhound, combined with his prior roles as a CIO, IT Audit Director, and Technology Risk Consultant showcase his ability to foster innovation, manage risk, and drive better business outcomes by leveraging technology. Curtis' consistent approach prioritizes delivering solutions that directly contribute to tangible results for our clients, focusing on enhancing operational efficiency, cybersecurity, and innovation in a way that drives meaningful growth and a competitive advantage in today’s landscape.
Derrick Helms
Managing Director
As Managing Director of Sparkhound’s Managed Services, Mr. Helms has overall responsibility for driving revenue and profitability for the business unit, overseeing business development functions, day-to-day client operations as well as recruiting and further developing the Managed Services team. He's held senior leadership roles with United Technology Group, Pinnacle Data Systems, SunGard Data Systems and served as a Sergeant in the US Army.
Sandy Michelet is the Vice President of Human Resources for Sparkhound’s growing team of 250+ employees and four regional offices. She joined Sparkhound
in 2014 with 20 years of senior human resources leadership, including tenure at a Fortune 500 company, experience in the public sector, and
work in
both the healthcare and technology industries. Sandy leads Sparkhound’s people-focused strategies and initiatives to develop a high-performing, engaged
culture. With responsibilities including
performance management, organizational development, employee relations, talent acquisition, compensation,
and benefits, she embraces two Sparkhound core values essential to the creativity and individuality that define a Sparkie: “Get Stuff Done” and
“Authenticity.”
Sandy is actively engaged in the community and frequently serves as a keynote and session speaker for multiple local and
national HR conferences and associations. She served as State Director of Louisiana
SHRM and President of GBRSHRM. She holds both the Senior in
Professional Human Resources designation and the SHRM-SCP. She earned a master’s degree in workforce development from the University of Southern
Mississippi and a bachelor’s degree from Louisiana State University where she
proudly served as a member of the LSU Tiger Band.
In addition to leading the Sparkhound Nation, Sandy is a dedicated advocate and powerful voice for the growing community of women who are unable to have
children. Her personal struggles with infertility
and firsthand realization of the lack of support and assistance for childless women led her to
launch TheChildlessLife.com, a blog dedicated to women for whom children are no longer an option. By sharing
her own story and empowering other women
to do the same, Sandy has created a network of compassion and support for those moving toward acceptance as a childless woman. In 2018, she partnered with
World Childless Week and was instrumental in motivating Louisiana and Baton Rouge to
become the first U.S. state and city to officially recognize
World Childless Week. As a result, she was selected as a World Childless Week Champion and served as a speaker for the Hope Narrative Conference.
Sandy
is also a lead singer with Trilogy and enjoyed playing with Something Blue, Stormy and Carbon Copy over the last 20+ years.
Alexander Drozd
Partnerships
Alex Drozd, based in Houston, is our Microsoft Channel Director serving as the sales and strategy liaison to our strongest partner. Prior to Sparkhound, Alex spent 11+ years in technology sales leveraging product and services knowledge of the Microsoft ecosystem to drive substantial ROI to enterprise customers across North America. Alex is a graduate of Clemson University and is actively engaged in philanthropic efforts across Houston.
DJ Evans is a seasoned software development expert specializing in the SMB sector with a focus on leveraging the M365 technology stack. With a background in software engineering for government agencies and a formal education in Software Systems Engineering, DJ brings a wealth of experience and a suite of certifications including Lean 6 Sigma, Scrum, and Product Ownership. He carries a CTO mindset and a philosophy of doing what it takes to achieve the results you want, DJ is at the forefront of exploring emerging technologies, particularly the impact of blockchain and proof of authority on society. His leadership not only drives his team towards innovative solutions but also contributes significantly to the technological advancement of the company and the industry at large.
Angela Schuchardt
Principal Consultant - Business Processes
Angela is a business and IT consultant specializing in enterprise business strategy and analysis, program and project management. She has a penchant for Office 365 tools and applications and relishes in driving successful enterprise adoptions by aligning business and IT. Her holistic view of a portfolio allow her to assimilate project-level details with a top-level view of enterprise, integrating business processes with effective technical solutions.
With experience in both software and infrastructure, she has a keen eye for identifying process improvement areas, and collaborates with IT and the business to identify, prioritize and execute strategies. Superior communications skills allow her to positively influence change through translation of technical details to a language tailored per target audience. The previous 5 years in a consulting role particularly, lend to her customer-centric service, organizational skills and energetic approach that help motivate teams towards execution goals and client satisfaction.
I am the Competency Manager for Web & Mobile at Sparkhound. I have been with the company for 6 years and have loved every minute of it! I am an avid Philadelphia Eagles fan and have been playing piano since I was 7. I am also extremely passionate about technology and programming, with a love for technical solutioning and problem solving.
Doug has over 22 years of experience building and managing IT Infrastructures. Extensive knowledge of Microsoft Directory and Messaging Services
on-premise and in the cloud. Broad experience with Servers, Storage, and Networking physical and virtual for all infrastructure services. He
currently uses that experience and wisdom to lead Sparkhound’s Managed Services Team with Tier 1 through 3, Field Services and Application Support team
members.
Combining Servant leadership with the style he gained in over 10 years of youth sports Coaching he strives to build a culture
of Cooperative teams fluidly moving to resolve customer problems and elevating each other in the process.
With a rich understanding of customer
business models and types he also brings a consultative mentoring approach to the support teams so they can fully understand their value and impact to
Sparkhound’s Full Managed Customer roster. By empowering the team with positive feedback, value understanding and rich technical experience the team
takes pride, and ownership in fulfilling our Customers needs and successes.
Leadership
Shawn Usher
Founder & CEO
Shawn formed Sparkhound in 1998 with the mission to make a meaningful impact for clients by solving their business problems with technology and leadership. His results-driven approach helped the company quickly earn a solid reputation with mid-market and enterprise clients throughout the United States. Prior to starting Sparkhound, he led a team of senior business consultants who successfully transformed IT systems and management for the parent company of three hospitals, a health insurance company and 25 smaller healthcare-related companies. Shawn earned a bachelor's degree in quantitative business analysis and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree at Louisiana State University. He and his wife, Jennifer, have four children, and he serves on numerous professional and community boards.
Jason Lasseigne
President & COO
Jason has over 23 years’ experience in executive leadership, consulting, process improvement, customer success, and operations. He joined the Sparkhound team in 2017 as the Managing Director of the Baton Rouge office and member of the Executive Leadership Team. After leading the company through an organizational change in early 2018, Jason was promoted to Chief Operating Officer overseeing the delivery of services at Sparkhound. In 2021 Jason became the President of Sparkhound, expanding his responsibilities to lead all areas of the business.
Prior to joining Sparkhound, Jason was the Chief Operating Officer at Envoc and was instrumental in their record growth and success. He’s also held management and executive positions at IBM Global Services, APPRO/Equifax, and TraceSecurity partnering with a broad range of companies to improve the operational efficiencies of their organizations.
As Sparkhound evolves our operating model, Jason’s experience will help drive growth and collaboration with our teams in Baton Rouge, Houston, Dallas, Birmingham, and beyond.
Jason holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Information Systems and Decision Sciences from Louisiana State University.
Dan Lynch
CSO
Dan Lynch joins Sparkhound to lead the sales organization bringing a distinguished career selling and delivering complex IT solutions for both start-ups and Fortune 50 companies. Most recently Dan served as Senior Vice President at Auritas and prior to that, Vice President of Sales for Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Technology Services Group responsible for Cloud, Hybrid IT Solutions and Consulting Services in North America. During his tenure HPE services sales outpaced the market with revenues, profits and order performance at a record best. Additionally, Dan established the global Business Intelligence and Analytics group to create targeted, predictable growth programs leveraging Direct and Channel buying trends, capability and capacity matrices to ensure ROI both short and long term. His teams consistently delivered YoY Growth in excess of over $1.5B annually. Prior to HPE, Dan served as vice president at two Fortune 500 IT companies.
Dan holds a Master’s degree in management from Webster University and a Bachelor’s in communications from the University of Maryland. He is based in Frisco, TX.
With over 13+ years of experience in marketing, sales and business consulting, Nathan Arant joins Sparkhound as our new Chief Marketing Officer. Prior to joining Sparkhound Nathan acted as Sr. Director of Strategy for Marketing and Technology at Baldwin Risk Partners (BRP), a public brokerage firm based out of Tampa. During his time with BRP, Nathan stood up a full in-house digital marketing team, streamlined processes across all marketing business units, and oversaw a multi-million dollar Salesforce build out. Prior to BRP, Nathan held marketing and sales leadership roles at Insgroup, Versa Integrity Group, Home Comfort Enterprises, and Envoc.
Nathan's approach to marketing is rooted in developing processes and strategy around each core business unit of our business and develop best-in-class content to target. With the goal of support business growth, Nathan makes it his mission to help develop a thriving culture where colleagues feel heard and have every opportunity to scale.
Nathan’s degree is in Visual Communications from Western Tech in Lacrosse, Wisconsin. He also has multiple Google Certifications in Ads and Analytics, and is a Certified Scrum Master. Nathan and his wife Natalie recently moved to Baton Rouge from Katy, Texas with their three children, Noah, Charlotte and Jude. Outside of Marketing and Sales, Nathan is an avid runner, enjoys being out-doors, reclaiming wooden furniture and spending time with family.
Better Business Outcomes Are the Destination— Thought Leadership and Technology Take You There.
