This month we have three major anniversaries to celebrate at J2 Innovations! Our Director of Training, a longtime developer, and a newbie who is quickly making positive changes for customers and employees. Meet Gerard Huff, Andrew Tuma, and Morgan Whalen.

Gerard Huff: Director of Training

If you've ever been through our FIN™️ Training courses, then you've met Gerard, our award winning Director of Training. Gerard recently celebrated his nine year anniversary at J2 Innovations! Over the course of nine years, Gerard has certainly left his footprint on the industry, training hundreds of FIN Framework users, developing certified trainers of FIN Framework, and making the Smart Building Industry easy and more accessible for end users, system integrators, and OEMs.

Here are some of Gerard's highlights:

• Working with brilliant and creative people
• Traveling around the world to educate about the power of FIN
• Helping OEM partners develop their own training programs around the FIN Framework
• Seeing the company grow from just a handful of people to the global force it is today
• Building an online learning portal (FINstitute) to deliver world-class training courses.

Gerard is currently traveling and training new FIN Stack users during our FIN Stack Roadshow. You can catch him in Timonium, Maryland, September 19-21 at M&M Controls. Learn more about our FIN Training programs and options here.

Andrew Tuma: Software Developer

We have so many talented developers who work behind the scenes, making magic happen so that FIN Framework and its applications are easy and accessible for all. One of those developers is Andrew Tuma, who recently celebrated his 8th anniversary at J2 Innovations! We're so proud to have a core team of people who have been with us since the beginning. Andrew has grown with us over the years and continues to be a valuable team member. 

 Andrew's highlights:

• Helping develop System One through its release (prior to the Siemens acquisition)
• Maintaining and updating FIN 5 while also offering assistance or knowledge to other developers
• I’m proud that I’ve been able to tackle all the tasks given to me, even ones where my initial knowledge on the subject was lacking or I had never done anything like it before, like file encryption or creating a reverse proxy.

"The eight years have really flown by. It’s hard for me to pick a highlight in my career since, to me, it is still in its infancy, and there is still so much to do. If I had to pick at least one moment that sticks out, it would be the first release of FIN after I started (I think it was FIN 4.5). It was the first time code I wrote was part of an actual product that people used, not just a school or side project."

Morgan Whalen: Knowledge Base Manager

Morgan is celebrating his 2nd anniversary at J2 Innovations. He joined us in 2021 as an Operations Intern and was officially brought on as our Knowledge Base Manager last August. Morgan's role is to develop our support resources to improve the customer experience. This is a massive undertaking that will result in a streamlined, easy user experience for all who use the FIN Framework. In addition to creating and managing our customer portal, Morgan has also taken the lead on other initiatives: 

• The J2 Innovations office move
• Ongoing support in the marketing and customer experience processes
• Defining roles and responsibilities within J2 Innovations 

His highlights are the projects he has been working on, but also the ability to travel while working. Because J2 is a remote and distributed company, Morgan has been able to lead many projects while also going to:

• Peru – Got to see Machu Pichu, Lake Humantay, the Sacred Valley
• Brazil – Got to see Christ the Redeemer statue, the Sugarloaf Mountain, and Copa Cabana
• Argentina
• Columbia
• Holland
• Italy 
• Mexico

Congratulations to these J2 team members on their accomplishments thus far! We are so grateful for their contributions to our growing, distributed company.