Joy Laibl: Revolutionizing JPL's networks

Name: Joy Laibl (pronounced LIE-bull)

Age: 35

Organization: Computing and Networking Division at the Office of the Chief Information Officer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Title: Manager, Network Engineering Group

Nominated for: Leading the integration of processes, methods, activities and product/service delivery for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which builds and operates robotic planetary spacecrafts. She performs assessments of supercomputing architectures, mass storage, networking, visualization and audio/video post-production hardware and software, in addition to making recommendations on emerging network technologies.

First IT mentor: My first mentor is my dad, who taught me that a cool head and sense of humor will get you far. Anthony Martin gave me my first opportunity to prove myself, and most recently, Pat Kleinhammer and Mag Powell-Meeks provided me challenges to push myself farther than I expected.

Latest accomplishment on the job: My team architected, designed and implemented a fully redundant 40 Gigabit aggregate backbone. Our IT footprint was reduced, [and] we obtained logical and virtual path diversity and increased bandwidth capacity for our customers.

Career highlight: This award is pretty cool; I have to say this is the highlight.

Favorite job-related bookmark: Cisco.com.

Favorite app: Pinnacle Studio (video-editing software).

Dream non-IT-related job: News anchor.

Read more about Joy Laibl on GCN.com.

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