Women Who Inspire Us
Education

Heather Osterloh


Heather Osterloh is president and managing director of IT Academy (now IntenseSchool), a permanent training facility specializing in Cisco and Microsoft accelerated training.

Prior to IT Academy, Heather managed a NetWare network at The Vallejo Company, a business owned by Gordon Getty. Heather had no networking experience, but at that time few people did. She simply knew the most about PCs in her office. Heather quickly learned whatever she could through books and the network engineers she hired as consultants, which weren't needed for long.

In 1989, Heather had a sudden revelation: There seemed to be no other women in internetworking. Heather decided to take a NetWare Administrator course at Novell with instructor Laura Chappell. "After meeting Laura, I knew anything was possible." Laura suggested to Heather that she would make a great instructor and Heather's professional path was born. She soon landed a job as a Novell instructor.

In the early 1990's, she started her own consulting and training firm, Contract Training. In 1998 Contract Training evolved into IT Academy. Heather developed courseware and training videos for Cisco and Microsoft certification training as well as developing the first accelerated CCNP course in the world.

Heather is the author of "CCNA 2.0 Prep Kit 640-507 Routing and Switching," published by Que/Macmillan. She has collected numerous certifications, including CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate), CCDA (Cisco Certified Design Associate), CCNP (Cisco Certified Network Professional), CCDP (Cisco Certified Design Professional), Network Associate Sniffer trainer, Novell CNI/ECNE (Enterprise Certified NetWare Engineer), MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer), and Microsoft Certified Trainer. She has also passed the written portion of her CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert) exam.

Also: Read the transcript of the GirlGeeks chat with Heather Osterloh.