Meet The Team

As President and owner, Megan Hoelle oversees strategic planning, operations, sales, and marketing. She’s passionate about building a company where people at the top of their game provide outstanding service to customers doing extraordinary things. She’s dedicated to ensuring our Atlassian services provide lasting value with tailored solutions that address the unique challenges our customers face.

Before embarking on the journey to build HyperVelocity, Megan helped start Intersections International, a non-profit dedicated to forging common ground in New York City as the Director of Communications. She also led account management in the Los Angeles office of Blue State Digital where she designed and executed community mobilization and fundraising campaigns for clients including Stand up to Cancer, GODIVA, and the University of California San Francisco.

Most memorable customer challenge you solved?

When I worked in advertising, an Australian celebrity fitness personality was trying to launch her brand in the US. We needed to get 500 people to sign up to try her online wellness program for free and we came up with a campaign that ended up getting 1000 people to sign up within the first hour we went live. So many people were excited to have the opportunity to do something to improve their health, and that was really rewarding.

What you love most about Atlassian tools?

I’m addicted to Kanban boards. I’d be lost without them.

Fun fact about you?

I used to perform with an Improv team in NYC.

Favorite candy

Peanut M&M’s

Justin Leader provides technical and strategic counsel on DevSecOps tools and Agile processes to some of the largest and most complex organizations, including the US Air Force, Dell, Capital Group, Disney, Electronic Arts, Bank of Canada, and The Home Depot. He leads engineering and service delivery at HyperVelocity and has spoken at Atlassian and Agile events, including at interactive entertainment, finance, and government events.

He earned his Bachelor’s degree at Cornell University and a Masters Degree from Carnegie Mellon University. He values working with a talented team and building long-term customer relationships based on integrity and trusted partnership. Justin is also a father to three young children, a partner to Megan, and is his cat’s second-favorite adult human. 

Favorite software?

Zynga’s Boggle with Friends (previously Scramble with Friends). It has probably the best sound design of any casual game, or any piece of software, ever. Making words is fun, making them with a world-class sound designer behind you is like being a rock star.

Most memorable customer challenge you solved?

How to automate the weekly migration of Jira data between two air-gapped classified networks. It’s awesome, and involves burning a DVD.

Fun fact about you?

I’ve helped Gates McFadden with her laptop.

Favorite candy

Candy.

John Romano is an experienced Agile Coach and Scrum Master with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and gaming industry for over 10 years. He has a passion for helping transform organizations and the people within them. An experienced Agile Coach, John guides executives, leaders, and teams through definition and implementation of business and enterprise agility. SPC certified offering SAFe SM, PO, DevOps, Teams and LPM courses.

Most memorable customer challenge you solved?

Once I took on a very troublesome development team that was high energy but not very productive and using the agile tools and mindset we were able to uncover the real impediments in their work while keeping their culture intact. It wasn’t an easy hurdle and took months to reach fruition but, in the end, the team grew and their output was exponential comparatively.

What you love most about Atlassian tools?

The ability to bring an inventive and orderly process management system to the very chaotic and inefficient business world.

Fun fact about you?

I absolutely adore music and it is my third language, I can communicate to someone via sharing songs.

Favorite candy

Gummies

Katina White has worked in Operations and Customer Services for over 20 years in a range of companies from Fortune 100 to startups.  Having worked with IT companies for the majority of her career, she is able to understand company needs and translate them into actionable initiatives and outcomes.  She possesses an enormous amount of hands-on, practical experience that creates strong customer bonds and skillful, sustainable outcomes. Katina never shies away from a challenge, and her desire for continuous improvement has led to certifications in various applications and technologies.  She has also served in the military as an Army medic, which instilled a deep sense of compassion, discipline, teamwork, and loyalty.

Most memorable customer challenge you solved?

I worked at SprintNextel in the early days of porting telephone numbers Since all of my customers had at least 250 phone lines, the porting process was a nightmare, and customers were always super frustrated. Through trial and error, I figured out a way to do port implementations so that no issues occurred. My process became used throughout the organization, and I won an “Ah Ha” award for creatively using existing processes to make thing better for customers.

Favorite past job?

My favorite “job” was my time in the military. I loved the camaraderie, the discipline it instilled in me, and being pushed to my limits both physically and mentally.

Fun fact about you?

I’m a top photographer on Google Maps, and my photos have over 2.2 million views.

Favorite candy?

I love jelly beans and Mike and Ike’s. I’m a sucker for a hard candy exterior and a sweet chewy filling.

Judy is an accomplished and decorated leader with over 14 years of diverse experience achieved through worldwide support to the U.S. government, private sector, and non-profit organizations. She has served in capacities covering operational reporting and recordkeeping, training, strategic support to operations, and program management. She is committed to establishing and leading high-performing teams and integrating with customers to fully understand requirements and deliver tailored solutions. Judy’s leadership philosophy prioritizes people first as a cornerstone for success. She has proven that a team that is supported, challenged, and cared for produces outstanding results and hopefully has a little fun too!

Most memorable customer challenge you solved?

In all my years working in tech and training others to use applications, it is always rewarding to step my parents through a simple fix on their laptops or tablets to make their lives easier. They often resign that the app or the tool isn’t working but I always nudge them and say ‘let me take a look at it with you’ and it’s so rewarding to show them how to use their tools more efficiently or fix something they thought was broken. I get a lot of practice in my day-to-day work and I love using those skills to help them when they need it too.

What you love most about Atlassian tools?

As someone who has been accused of being ‘aggressively organized’ I love that the tools help everyone stay on the same page even when they are working from distributed locations. I like to be able to go in and see where people are in a project without actually having to disrupt them to ask for an update.

Favorite past job?

Hands down, my time in the Horn of Africa as an Army Reservist. So many days I said to myself ‘I can not believe I get to do this is my job!’ It definitely had it’s tough days but the experience is one that I will always cherish.

Favorite candy?

Chocolate covered pretzels

Tyler is an experienced and innovative operations leader with over 12 years of professional, performance-driven experience across multiple industries to include, Information Technology, Department of Defense Cyber and Intelligence operations, and Law Enforcement. He is a decisive leader, experienced at building and motivating high-performing cross-functional teams focused on technical innovation, rapid deployment strategies, and customer-obsessed tailored solutions in highly dynamic environments. Tyler is an empathetic and proactive leader that enjoys supporting and assisting teammates in achieving their desired goals and growth. He is committed to and enjoys assisting customers in decomposing large organizational efforts into manageable steps which lead to streamlined operations, reduced cost, and efficient use of limited resources.

Abe Durrant joins us most immediately from Atlassian Partner Modus Create, where he was a Principal Consultant and was closely involved in the work that won a Services Award from Atlassian. He’s been in IT and Engineering for 16 years, including time as a programmer, 6 years as an IT Business Analyst, and a time as Scrummaster.

Most memorable customer challenge you solved?

Setting up an Insight integration with Jira Service Management for a Federal entity. It allowed specific users nationwide to enter a ticket, and then allow Jira agents to create Insight objects on the fly and attach one to many to the ticket. This required serious whiteboarding, workflowing, and many dozens of hours of interviewing to document their current process. Working side-by-side with the customer to fully understand their challenges and then helping them overcome those challenges was very rewarding.

Favorite Software?

I’m data-driven and like to pick things apart…and Excel allows me to make comparisons and helps me make decisions both big and small!

Fun fact about you?

I have 4 kids and quite a few animals! 2 German Shepherds, 4 Rabbits, 1 hedgehog, 1 chinchilla!

Favorite candy?

Fun Size Butterfinger – perfect mix of chocolate, peanut butter and crunch!

Andrey Kozynets is the kind of engineer everyone wants on their project. He has very wide and deep experience in Atlassian feature development and scripting, with a specialty in complex data migration. During the five years he’s worked with HyperVelocity, Andrey has worked on many of our most complex enterprise clients, including film studios, finance companies, and biotechnology. His optimism and upbeat approach is a pleasure to have on any project.

Most memorable customer challenge you solved?

The biggest challenges i’ve come across lately have been when I’ve had to migrate Jira projects along with some add-on data that cannot be migrated out of the box. So some individual custom code had to be developed for each of those cases. Just recently I had to do this when migrating XRay add-on data along with Test Runs, Test Executions and Test Plans. Its a great feeling to be able to help a customer migrate data they didn’t think they would be able to take.

What you love most about Atlassian tools?

I sometimes see a new customers ask “how can we do X” and they find out that they can do what they wanted, and even more, and it is even more convenient then they thought it would be – this is the “wow” effect. And I love seeing that.

Fun fact about you?

I don’t eat berries :). Most of them.

Favorite candy?

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

Anthony Thompson has over 7 years of sales experience and brings his knowledge of products and passion to help the customer into every meeting. Anthony has worked in the SaaS tech space as well as the Fleet management tech space over his young professional career. With his positive attitude and growth mindset, he has constantly thrived in customer acquisition and customer retention. Solving customer issues and helping them create a better product is what drives Anthony.

Most memorable customer challenge you solved?

I was going through my lead list on a Monday morning and saw Jiffy Lube Corp in my list. Started off with an initial cold call which I continued weekly for 2-3 months. When they finally allowed me to propose a bid we were way off from what they were looking for. They gave our company one final meeting where we sat down with them and walked through the proposal line by line and custom fit it to their needs. We were awarded the bid largely on the fact that we took the time to custom-build their program based on their needs and not off of a template. This may seem standard in this business, but in the transportation industry most rates are capped and proposals are pretty standard with minor changes. If someone doesn’t fit the business model others generally move on because it is seen as a waste of time. Showing them that I would make adjustments showed I would do a good job with the account management as well.

Favorite past job?

Giving wine tours in Mendoza, Argentina.

One thing you love to do when you’re not working?

I love surfing.

Favorite candy?

Skittles

Caroline Hall is a certified Jira, Jira Service Management, and Confluence Administrator with experience providing solutions for diverse industry organizations, including the Department of Defense and United States Air Force. Specializing in process optimization, she has excellent communication skills and works closely with customers to identify their needs and design improvements. She loves what she does and the people she works with. Above all, Caroline is eager to help and offers strong analytical and organizational skills, including the ability to adapt to a dynamic project environment and handle multiple projects simultaneously to help our customers.

Favorite software?

Fitbit. I’ve been on a fitness journey recently and Fitbit allows me to track my process. Fitbit allows me to see my day-to-day statistics such as calories burned in my workout and how well I slept. I can also challenge my friends right along with me.

Most memorable customer challenge you solved?

A client needed their entire team trained on Jira and Confluence right away and I was able to pull together several hours of training and a workbook for the users to work through and meet their deadline, even though it was last minute. I have a fear of public speaking, so I was able to overcome that challenge for myself as well.

Favorite past job?

Camp Counselor for Easterseals which is a non-profit organization for kids with disabilities.

Favorite candy

Anything sour!

Catherine Harrell has worked in technology for over 10 years. Her experience in customer service, quality assurance testing, user experience design, and product management give her a unique view into managing a team and client relationships as a Technical Project Manager. She is able to understand client needs and plan for the big picture goals. Her mission is to deliver quality work and build meaningful relationships with her team and clients to create a fun and efficient project. 

Favorite Software?

Trello. Great organization tool for personal and professional projects. I created a sticky “Trello” board for our contractors when remodeling and they loved it!

Most memorable customer challenge you solved?

The most memorable challenge that I solved in a past job was changing the service we offered customers. The problem was the disconnect of unhappy customers with the service that they had asked for, weird right? The customer was asking for an Atlassian migration from on-premise to cloud. The repetitive unhappiness was coming from not solving for what the customer was not asking for. The support needed pre and post-migration to a new product is what made a successful migration. Training Admins on the new tool and the differences between products created a much better path and lead to much happier customers.

Favorite past job?

Assistant Merchandise Manager for Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (Coolest job to brag about… besides this one)

Favorite candy?

Reeces Pieces

Holan Sheltar is PMI PMP and Atlassian Jira Certified experienced Customer Success Manager who is Skilled in Account Management, Program and Product Management, and the Atlassian Tool Suite. Holan’s vast history includes experiences at Tele-Communications Companies (Sprint, T-Mobile) and the United States Army Department Contracting (Booz Allen Hamilton and L-3 Communications). Holan seeks to develop a positive customer experience and fosters relationships between all stakeholders. 

Favorite Software?

iOS reminders. I like to utilize the smart list features based on rolling dates, tags, or location.

Favorite past job?

Radio Personality for Top 40 and public radio stations.

Fun fact about you?

I spent most of my childhood living in Germany.

Favorite candy?

Crispy M&Ms

Jake Snellings has been in the IT industry for 8 years supporting everything from housing developers to healthcare organizations. Passionate about everything to do with computers and always looking to learn. With a broad spectrum of IT knowledge, he is able to adapt to new systems and processes easily.

Kevin Laster is a Senior Technical Project Manager Kevin comes to us after eight years at IGT, a giant in gaming with 10,000+ employees, where he spent time both in software development and project management.

The two main passions that define him are a drive for business process excellence and a love for the exciting world of electronic instrument technology. He finds fulfillment in explaining technical concepts and showing parallels between industries and the lessons we can learn from them.

He graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering in 2012 and a Master’s degree in Business Administration in 2022. During that time he has been a part of several high-performing teams, owned a recording studio, and has had two children. 

Favorite software?

GIMP: GNU Image Manipulation Program, essentially the open-source version of Photoshop. The ability to doodle and create art with zero expectations is truly freeing and allows for a creative outlet.

What do you love most about the Atlassian tools?

The ability of total customization to allow direct, clear communication, as well as the ability to gather relevant information and metrics that matter from an ocean of potential data points.

One thing you love to do when you’re not working?

Be outside with my family, running, biking, and making musical noise.

Favorite candy?

Peanut M&Ms

Kirk Shultz is an experienced Jira and Confluence Administrator. Most of his professional career has been working in government organizations to include the Department of Defense and the U.S. Air Force. Kirk specializes in workflow development and Jira project development for medium and large teams. Having spent time as an enlisted member of the Air Force, he has developed excellent leadership and communication skills that he uses to benefit his clients.

Favorite software?

Excel. I know, weird right? Who likes a spreadsheet software? For me I use it to stay organized, budget my work time efficiently, do my finances, calculate overall expenses to vacations and just have fun learning new formulas!

Most memorable customer challenge you solved?

The Director of a company I used to work for had VOIP and audio issues a half hour before a major conference call. It was the most rushed I’ve ever seen the teams. Myself, a colleague and two others from the broadcast team made a mad-dash to his office and got the issue fixed within 20 minutes. For our efforts, we got awarded our company’s Visionary Award for Services to the Director!

One thing you love to do when you’re not working?

Cooking! I absolutely love to cook for my family and friends. If I’m not finding new recipes from cooking shows or YouTube videos, I’m testing my own out or improving on ones I’ve already made myself.

Favorite candy?

Skittles

I started my technology career over 10 years ago at the Enterprise Service Desk, which is the helpdesk for the Air Force. I also worked for the Defense Media Agency for the past 7 years as a Website Migration Specialist. DMA has created websites for every agency in the Department of Defense. Along the way I got to meet many different and interesting people from all over the world. That was the most fun part of my job. Most recently I was an Atlassian Administrator in a small team environment.
My strength would definitely be customer service and really enjoy meeting and working with new people!

Megan specializes in customer service and accounting with over 10 years of experience working with customers, clients and professional teams in a variety of industries such as construction, retail, hospitality, family services, and education. Her breadth of experience allows her to find creative ways to help meet the unique needs of her customers and to support her surrounding teams and departments. She puts developing strong customer and professional relationships at the forefront of her daily work and enjoys finding administrative processes that encourage efficiency and positive collaboration. She has a knack for managing the details while keeping the broader goals of her team at the basis of her work.

Favorite software?

Excel, because it has such a wide application of uses and can be so powerful in working with data.

Most memorable customer challenge solved?

When I started my first accounting role with a construction company, our Contracts Manager noticed we were operating at a loss on one of our large contract jobs. She asked me to investigate. At the time I had very limited experience working with contacts, so I just started going through our documents and looking at our expenses and our progress billings up to date. I noticed we had been majorly over-billed by one of our vendors, and that we had also done some extra work that we had not documented as billable change orders. I was able to get the change orders signed off on by the general contractor so that we could bill them. And after three months of persistent back and forth with the vendor, I was finally able to get a large refund back from them. Overall I was able to make back around $70K on the project that otherwise would have been missed.

Fun fact about you?

I write and eat left-handed, but do almost everything else right-handed.

Favorite candy?

Home-baked cookies 🙂

Mina Gray is your go-to for taking an overly complex (or nonexistent) business process and making it simple, understandable, and easy to use. With customers including the Air Force and Department of Defense, Mina has experience performing business analysis, to include the steps of requirements gathering, product design & build, product demonstrations to leadership, product delivery, user training, and documentation writing. Using Atlassian’s many powerful features, Mina thrives on building creative solutions that make the Atlassian tools do the work for her customer, eliminating her customer’s frustration, confusion, and valuable time. With over a decade of customer service under her belt, Mina also excels at communication, time management, and prioritization.

Most memorable customer challenge you solved?

One of my previous customers needed a Hoteling system. They didn’t have one in place already, so I had to start from scratch. The first challenge with Hoteling was that I had to design a massive and complex system that included a lot of complicated automation using Groovy scripts that I wrote myself, workflow automations, and many other features…but design it in a way that was extremely quick and painless for my customer to use. The second challenge was that this customer, as an organization, didn’t like to use JIRA. They were a bit intimidated by it and generally steered clear. So, I adapted to that and figured out how to build the actual Hoteling system within JIRA, but put the interface in Confluence. In the end, Hoteling turned out to be a system that was very easy to use because it hid all of its complexity under the hood and it looked to my customer as if they were using Confluence when they were in fact using JIRA. That Hoteling system was my proudest and most challenging build.

What do you love most about Atlassian tools?

Their hidden powers. I absolutely love it when a customer asks me for an Onboarding system, a Visitor Approval Request system, or something similar and I tell them that can be built in Atlassian. They’re typically shocked to hear that because a lot of people don’t realize that the tools can do so much more than just “track tickets” and “store information like a Wiki”. They have SO much potential.

Fun fact about you?

Harry Potter is my life. I even have a room entirely dedicated to it – decorated like the Slytherin common room with stone pillars and a fake fireplace, and Harry Potter knickknacks everywhere.

Favorite candy?

This special gummy that is shaped like a sunny-side up egg that I can only find in France. Thankfully, it tastes nothing like eggs.

I have worked in IT for the past 9 years and served 6 years in the Texas State National Guard with 1 deployment to Afghanistan. I have a background in Cyber Security and provide support to several Air Force programs and the TSA. I am always looking to improve and learn new skills especially with Atlassian Tools and solutions. I rarely sit still and as a result I’m always working on something new in my free time, especially projects with local It affiliated groups in my area.

Steve Farmer is a versatile Agile Coach, with over 10 years of experience in both small startups and large enterprises. He is passionate about creating focused portfolio solutions that empower delivery teams and provide clarity to stakeholders.  

In his spare time, Steve runs a nonprofit solving humanitarian and environmental challenges through technology. He travels the world whenever he gets the chance and is fluent in four languages.

What do you love most about Atlassian tools?

I love how easy Jira makes it for Scrum Teams to see the progress of their epics, with clean progress bars available – zero clicks required.

One thing you love to do when you’re not working?

In my spare time, I run Terrabyte, a nonprofit that leverages technology to solve humanitarian challenges. I also write and direct independent Steampunk Fantasy films – Think Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, with an ever-so-slightly smaller budget.

Fun fact about you?

I’m boss-level at Sudoku and 2048. If you’re ever kidnapped, and you’ll only be freed if you can complete a Master level Sudoku challenge in under ten minutes or get a 16384 tile in 2048, call me. I’ve been training my whole life for this.

Favorite candy?

I’m a sucker for chocolate right now, I’ll eat an entire tablet in just one sitting. It’s how I keep a balanced diet.

Tim Howard is an experienced engineer with a demonstrated history of working in a variety of industries. Before coming to HyperVelocity Tim administered the Atlassian Suite for Enterprise Holdings and was a System Engineer for Spectrum. An expert in the administration of the Atlassian suite of tools, particularly Jira, Tim is also skilled in Python (Programming Language), Linux System Administration, Bash, and Domain Name System (DNS). Tim enjoyed creating bespoke Atlassian customizations that bring to life the business improvements his customers have only previously imagined. 

Favorite software?

Python.  The amount of things you can do with a little knowledge is amazing.  You are able to solve complex problems with just a few lines of code.

Most memorable customer challenge solved?

My most memorable customer challenge was solving intermittent authentication timeouts with the Atlassian tools & Active Directory. Sometimes users would receive a page timeout when attempting to authenticate for enhanced permissions. The internal AD team did not see any issues, the hosting provider saw no issues with the network or hosts, the internal networking team saw valid traffic. After some head-scratching and looking deeper, the internal networking team began to see the VPN tunnel between the hosting provider and internal network become disconnected and reconnected multiple times. This caused the session to terminate and authentication to timeout. Being able to look at the whole picture, engage the right teams, and coordinate communication, testing and the results was something that I am still amazed was able to be done in a timely manner with minimal impact to the userbase.

One thing you love to do when you’re not working?

I really enjoy playing escape rooms with my family. We have escaped almost 100% of those we have played.

Favorite candy?

Jelly Beans