AvePoint's Community Champions

Joy Apple is a Microsoft MVP and the Chief of Operations & Technical Delivery for PAIT Group, leading their Modern Work practice. As a seasoned information technologist of over a decade, Joy strives to ensure technology is implemented with a purpose-driven, “human-first” approach. Teaching is one of her passions, and Joy finds personal and professional fulfillment volunteering in the Microsoft Community, speaking and educating others on best practices for success with Microsoft 365.

When Joy isn’t working with her PAIT Group team or speaking as the “Joy of SharePoint,” she can probably be found at a music venue or the newest fun spot in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She makes her home there with her husband, Stewart, and 3 fur-kiddos. If Joy can’t be found at home, then she and Stewart are traveling, and he’s probably telling her to log off Teams.

With over With 10 years of experience in digital transformation, including 6 years in the Microsoft 365 cloud environment, Laurent is a Microsoft MVP and digital workplace consultant based in France.

He works with worldwide clients in business and education sectors, designing and implementing modern workplace/modern teaching with Teams and other Microsoft 365 tools.

Focused on the WHY and HOW and the "indispensable but often forgotten" translation between IT and users, he loves sharing his dual expertise in adoption change management & technical governance and can be found presenting in many languages (french, english, japanese) at international conferences and user groups.

My Microsoft journey started in 2012 when my Manager told me to start learning SharePoint. I learned how to build a SharePoint server, build forms, and give tech solutions from blogs, tutorials, and the tech community. Everything changed when Microsoft 365 has released. After that, my field of expertise widened. I am now working as a Productivity Analyst focusing on Microsoft 365 and Power Platform.

I am curious about how things work, especially regarding technology. Learning and connecting with people have been my great companions since then. I want to help others by leveraging the value of the services offered by Microsoft 365. In any way possible, I try as much as I can to help the tech community and the business as I love doing it.

Senior Office 365 and SharePoint Consultant and Office 365 MVP with over 15 years of experience in public and private sector and various verticals. Since 2003 I have been focusing on SharePoint, delivering solutions and contributing as a SharePoint consultant, project manager, business analyst, and trainer. In addition to my professional tenure I've always been a big proponent of sharing knowledge and giving back to the community through presenting at numerous conferences and networking meetings on the topics of utilizing SharePoint for various business verticals, SharePoint and business process optimization as well as managing projects. Prior to entering the SharePoint arena, I spent a number of years in the medical imaging industry where I helped launch an orthopedic software division and published four patents and numerous articles. I hold a Masters of Science in Computer Science with a specialty in Computer-Assisted Orthopedic Surgery from Queen’s University and a Master’s Certificate in Project Management from the York Schulich School of Business, and am a PMI-certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP).

Stacy Deere, MVP is the Owner of Focal Point Solutions LLC, a Cincinnati, OH based company that provides SharePoint Solutions for all and focuses on doing so by following best practices and doing it the right way. Previously, Stacy led a rapidly growing SharePoint practice where she engaged in a wide range of consulting projects across various industries. With 20+ years of experience in the IT Industry, Stacy has mainly focused on Collaboration Solutions such as IBM’s Lotus Notes\Domino and Microsoft’s Messaging and Collaboration Solutions. She has numerous environment deployments, upgrades and many other SharePoint & M365 projects under her belt.

Within the SharePoint community, Stacy is a SharePoint MVP and is known for topics such as Governance, User Adoption, Administration and planning. She is actively sharing her real world expertise through her blog http://www.spmindmelt.focalpointsolutions.co, and speaking engagements such as SharePoint Saturday’s, Collab365, ITUnity, SPTechCon, SharePoint Fest, SharePoint Engage, and User Group events. She has also co-authored two books called SharePoint 2013 and 2010 Using Managed Metadata.

I have for several years been working as a consultant mostly focusing on Microsoft products and cloud technologies. Today I work to empower businesses with the help of Microsoft 365 and modern tools - helping customers collaborate better, work more efficient and be more productive. I’m also an active Office Apps and Services MVP, doing community work like speaking at events, co-hosting the European Teams User Group and contributing to the Microsoft TechCommunity.

With almost 20 years of experience in the IT Sector, Stephanie is a leader, an innovator, and skilled problem solver. She has a passion for technology and innovation that led her to co-found the PAIT Group. Stephanie believes that technology can minimize risk and maximize business growth and potential. Stephanie is a recognized member of the SharePoint community where she speaks, writes, and organizes SharePoint events both locally and nationally. Stephanie's community engagement helps keep her fingers on the pulse of technology to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to emerging technologies. She leverages her knowledge and relationships with vendors, peers, and thought leaders into innovative business solutions for each of PAIT's clients. As president and managing partner of PAIT Group, Stephanie leverages her experience and develops relationships to build a dynamic environment for her clients that ensure the right solutions are developed to address their unique business critical projects and issues

Paul come's with unique skill-set of having a great technical knowledge whilst maintaining a strong connection to the end user. He understands how individuals and teams operate today and finding bespoke means for improving their individual effectiveness and efficiency is key to their successful adoption of Microsoft 365 products. Paul has recently worked with organisations such as The Houses of Parliament , NHS England and Scope charity.

Blog:http://pauldredge.co.uk

I am a US Navy Veteran and lead Reputation Management and Social Selling thought leadership. I'm the architect of the official state websites of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which are powered by Microsoft SharePoint technologies.

I served a key technical advisory role in several political campaigns, including the re-election campaign of a US governor. I am an Amazon Best Selling Author and acting President of SCORE Greater Baltimore, a resource partner of Small Business Administration responsible for the launch of 191 new businesses and the creation of 147 new jobs in 2019.

I am the leader of the longest running Microsoft training and User group community in Maryland and host of Microsoft SharePoint Saturday, an annual one day conference which is currently in its 13th year.

I specialize in high visibility, public-facing consulting engagements with a key focus on information and platform architecture, on-premises to cloud migrations, enterprise social media, governance, instructional systems design, and information worker training.

I am the founder of Managed Path Solutions, a Microsoft partner which focuses on post deployment support of Microsoft technology.

Richard Harbridge is the Chief Technology Officer at 2toLead. Richard works as a trusted advisor with hundreds of organizations, helping them understand their current needs, their future needs, and what actions they should take to grow and achieve their bold ambitions.

Richard remains hands-on in his work and has led, architected, and implemented hundreds of business and technology solutions that have helped organizations transform both digitally and organizationally. Richard has a passion for helping organizations achieve more; whether it is helping an organization build beautiful websites to support great content and social strategy, or helping an organization leverage emerging cloud and mobile technology to service better their members or the communities that they serve.

Richard is an author and an internationally recognized expert in Microsoft technology, marketing, and professional services. As a sought-after speaker, Richard has often had the opportunity to share his insights, experiences, and advice on the digital workplace, Intranets, collaboration, social networking, ROI, technology/process adoption, and Microsoft technologies at numerous industry events in around the globe. When not speaking at industry events, Richard works with Microsoft, partners, and customers as an advisor to business and technology, and serves on multiple committees, leads user groups, and is a Board Member of the Microsoft Community Leadership Board.

With over 20+ years of experience within IT industry Robert has always strive to assist companies globally to achieve sustainable Designs, Strategies and Implementations regarding Restore, Disaster Recovery, Proactive Monitoring and Business Continuity that really works in a crisis situation. A key differentiator is the specific focus of not focusing on backups, simply restores and recovery capabilities first.

Robert owns and runs the companies sumNERV and sumNERV Provider located in Sweden that offers their services globally helping companies achieve true Recovery by making them understand the actual business need when it comes to suitable RTO, RPO, RLO and what the business really expect.

Robert has repeatedly been awarded with the Microsoft MVP award ten times in a row due to his knowledge and commitment to Microsoft and the community. He is often seen on stage presenting with different product group members from Microsoft at Ignite, Inspire, MMS, ExpertsLive and many more global conferences. He has also authored four books within his field of knowledge.

Feel free to reach out to Robert any time at Robert.hedblom@sumnerv.se

Paul Keijzers is founder and co-owner of KbWorks. A company which is specialized in Microsoft Teams and Office 365. He is responsible for the technical innovations and implementations with Microsoft 365.

Paul started working with SharePoint in 2001 and worked with the online versions since Bpos which now is Microsoft 365. He did a lot of development within SharePoint. Since Microsoft Teams came out, he specialized himself in Microsoft Teams and everything that’s connected with Teams.

He is an expert around strategy, development and adoption of Microsoft Teams and with his knowledge of collaboration he knows what it takes to fully embrace Microsoft products.

Paul posts a lot of blogs and video’s on Social Media. He is also available to give a presentation on conferences, workshops of within companies.

Hi! I’m Joanne Klein, founder of NexNovus, an Office 365 Consulting company, and a 3-time Microsoft MVP in Office Apps & Services. What this really means is I spend my time working with customers across different industry verticals on Office 365 collaboration tools and services, specifically SharePoint, and sharing my knowledge with the larger technical community.

One of my SharePoint specialties is modern site and information architecture since I believe it to be the critical underpinning to any great SharePoint environment (so much so that I wrote an eBook about it!).

Another area of focus for me is the Office 365 suite of tools built to help organizations protect and retain their unstructured content now being produced at an exponential rate. This is an important shift for organizations and information workers to make in the modern workplace. I have substantial practical experience in Office 365 working with customers to help them make this shift.

Christian is the Founder and SharePoint Consultant of Ka’ana IT GmbH based in Austria. Christian is specialized in guiding clients to their best digital Workplace Solution or getting their governance policies done in Office 365 or On-Premises. His many years of experience and numerous implementation and migration projects makes him and his team an excellent Partner for Enterprise Customers in the DACH Region.

Kirsty McGrath is an awarded Microsoft MVP and the Managing Director of OnPoint Solutions. Kirsty founded the Australian Office 365 Business User Groups and runs the Australian Microsoft 365 Adoption User Groups in both Sydney & Melbourne plus is a regular on the speaker circuit. Kirsty is also the author of the Office 365 ‘Wheel of Fortune’ Infographic. OnPoint Solutions is a leading Australian Adoption practice helping organisations maximise ROI through best practice adoption methodologies, accelerating team collaboration and communication in the cloud. Kirsty is a highly experienced Adoption Specialist having trained over 180,000 people, worked on over 60 Office 365 projects and built alongside Microsoft their Work Wonders adoption program with their top 200 clients, leading businesses through large and complex transformation projects.

Working with Microsoft collaboration technologies for more than 10 years, Rene has lived and worked in Europe and Asia Pacific. He's an Office Apps & Services MVP, and runs the Singapore SharePoint+Office 365 User Group. In his role, he is responsible for the rollout and adoption of collaboration technologies in APAC.

Vesku is a Modern Worklife and Workplace Principal Consultant focusing on Microsoft Teams, SharePoint and Office 365. He works for Sulava (https://www.sulava.com/) and is also a Microsoft MVP for Office Apps & Services. Yes, his real name is Vesa but he prefers to be called Vesku.

He helps and coaches customers to find benefits, solutions and value when adopting new tools, methods, ways or working and practices into daily work-life equation. He is always eager to challenge current situation and dig out new possibilities and ways to think and work. You could describe him as a jack of all trades but his main focus area and deep personal driver is Microsoft Teams since it has changed the way I work and did a giant step forward to make it possible to work from anywhere - the location does not matter even us much as it mattered before. Microsoft Teams opened the path for many organizations to rethink their practices, worklife, culture and start the change.

Vesku is also active Microsoft Teams community member and organizer. He is part of EuroTeams User Group, #TeamsFest co-organizer and is the main organizer of Teams Community Finland. He has presented sessions live and online in different events like Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft Techdays Finland, SharePoint Saturdays and TeamsFest.

Feel free to connect with him at Twitter!

Gokan is an independent SharePoint and Office365 consultant for Neoxy where he assists customers with building innovative, intelligent and responsive cloud driven solutions. With the Mobile first, Cloud first ideology, his goal is to empower every person and organization to do more with the Microsoft cloud and the ecosystem is perfectly aligned to accelerate this. Creativity, automation and perspective are what he loves most when using the Microsoft cloud, so every customer can be more agile, responsive and competitive. Gokan is a frequent – and funny – conference speaker. He presented at numerous national and international conferences and is actively involved in European and American conferences: Microsoft Techdays, Microsoft Experiences, European SharePoint Conferences, SharePoint Days and SharePoint Fest are a few major ones.

A proud author of books that reached the half million of downloads and founder of several communities, Gokan is a real community warrior. Due to his active contributions in these domains, he has been honoured with Microsoft Regional Director and Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award. Additionally, he is an active Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) and a Microsoft Regional Lead for all MCTs in Belgium.

You can always talk to me about: Soccer. World Traveling. Food. Next-Gen Cloud Systems. Architecture & Strategy. SharePoint + Office365!

Hi, My Name is Nati Papirovitch - I own PointU – a “boutique” SharePoint & Office 365 Productivity Consulting Service (SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, Planner, Yammer, Office 365 Groups, Forms etc..)

My expertise is helping customers migrate from SharePoint on-premise / File Servers to SharePoint Online and Migration from any other Cloud Sturge to Office 365.

With more then 15+ years I’m building SharePoint Portal’s from scratch in Office 365, plus consulting, training, development, etc. My love is to define the requirements from the customer and build the best solution with the best tools in Office 365.

In the last 8 years I’ve lead the Office 365 & SharePoint Community in Israel, speaking and organizing events for technical community members.

I work as a consultant with a strong focus on making modern work possible with Microsoft 365 Apps and Services. The apps I focus on the most are Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Loop, and parts of the Power Platform. Besides the tech aspects of this challenge, the changes people and organizations have to cope with to adapt and use the solution in the best possible way also count to my favorite topics. An excellent way to achieve this, in my opinion, is to create added value in all areas of the organization through the new possibilities and, in doing so, to make the future of modern working a hands-on experience for all employees. My bachelor’s degree in business administration and my experience in this field give me the necessary knowledge of how the divisions and departments of the organizations work and which problems often exist in their context.

• • A Futurist and Technopreneur with a mission to accelerate Filipino lives through Business Applications
  • First MVP for Business Applications in the Philippines

Loryan Strant has been in IT for over 20 years working across web design, network infrastructure, servers, IP telephony, with the majority spent designing productivity and communications solutions. He has lived & breathed Office 365 for almost a decade; writing blogs, speaking at conferences, consulting to organisations, and has co-authored two books. Loryan is passionate about enabling people and organisations using technology, enabling them to become more productive.

Matt is an engineer-turned-IT nerd and Microsoft MVP. His career began in the nuclear power design field and ended up in SharePoint adoption, pretty much by mistake. He’s best known for his multiple books on Microsoft 365, his SharePoint and Microsoft 365 infographics, and advocating Microsoft Teams as the foundation of the modern workplace. He is the co-founder of jumpto365, Inc. and lives in Upstate New York. Find out more at: https://linktr.ee/thatmattwade

Sharon is the founder and CEO of Smarter Consulting, a business and technology consulting services company. As a Microsoft Regional Director, Microsoft Certified Trainer, Process Improvement, and Productivity Expert, Sharon's background in Software Development, Business and Systems Analysis, Project Management, and Agile combined with her Developmental Psychology degree and Six Sigma Black Belt blend perfectly with her love of helping and training people to make her a well-rounded leader, consultant, and coach.

Being part of the community is extremely important to her and she is an active leader, participant, and mentor. She is the lead organizer for SharePoint Saturday Kansas City and the Kansas City M365 User Group. She is an active board member of the Kansas City IIBA chapter and Digital Women of Kansas City.

In her “spare time”, Sharon speaks professionally at local, national, and global events and teaches subjects such as Office 365, Business Analysis, Six Sigma, Leadership, and other continuing education courses publicly as an adjunct instructor for the local community college and privately for business all over the country. You can find great tips and tricks around productivity on her blog at https://sharoneweaver.com/blog/.

Jeremy Wood is a Federal IT implementer, strategist, and enthusiast specializing in complex business systems. His expertise and career spans infrastructure, service desk, software development, budget, policy, and architecture. He continues to focus on providing value to business through technology solutions to reduce costs and increase efficiency. He is currently in a pivotal role at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that will help transform both the business and IT systems. Jeremy has a special focus on mentoring and helping those early in their career, or even those seeking to understand how to get started in a career, within the government/contracting space. He volunteers with the ACT-IAC Associates leadership development program and was a vice-chair in 2020 and the government chair in 2021.

I am a Microsoft MVP recognized for adding value to higher education using SharePoint, Power Automate and Power BI. I blog, speak, contribute to the community, and evangelize Office 365.