As ProActive Solutions focuses on expanding our offerings, especially in cybersecurity, we look for IT professionals who can guide our efforts so that they align with what our customers need. Garry Meadows has the ideal combination of customer service experience and cybersecurity expertise that our team needs.
ProActive is excited to welcome Garry to our team. After discussing 2026 goals with ProActive leadership, Garry discovered that working with us as a Client Solutions Consultant would satisfy his desire to move back into educating and solving problems for customers.
Career Journey
Garry’s purposefully long and winding career path comes from following leadership advice to be well rounded. Although his professional career began while he was serving in the Army Infantry, his experience with computers and cybersecurity goes further back to his childhood.
Garry’s Beginnings
When Garry was growing up, his mother was in the military and was tasked with automating their systems and given a computer. Soon, Garry learned how to run the system and rebuild it after breaking his mother’s computer every night playing games on it. When he was in high school, he started the Alabama Computer Enthusiasts Society (ACES) and would go on base to teach soldiers how to disassemble and reassemble computers.
Army Experience
During high school, Garry was into sports but got involved with computers again when he joined the army. Garry worked for an internet provider when not participating in his Infantry training. Four years in, the Army recognized Garry’s experience and appointed him as an Information Management Officer for a 1,200-person battalion right before 9/11, giving him the responsibility of ensuring the Army network was being used appropriately and setting up networks within an hour of landing anywhere in the country.
After 9/11, Garry was deployed to Kuwait where he set up the voice and data networks for 4 of the camps that were used to invade Iraq.
Communications & Customer Care
When Garry’s contract with the military was over, he left the Army, started a degree in Kansas City at Devry, and then became a voice network design engineer for Sprint during the switch from copper to Voice-Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) based on his background in data.
In 2004, Garry met Lisa Qualls, who now works with ProActive, when they were both in the leadership development program. Garry led the design of the transformation effort for Sprint. Senior leadership suggested that he could leave to work for small vendors, and then return to Sprint, knowing everything about customer care and delivery. This path lasted 15 years because he was having so much fun.
Garry went to several foreign software companies that wanted to make an impact in the US, including an Israeli connected vehicle company, and left when each company got acquired. He then took over the mobile division of a small company, focusing on sales, business development, and customer solutions.
Center for Critical Infrastructure Protection
After the Sprint/T-Mobile acquisition, Garry moved to Colorado to follow his college-aged kids. He began teaching cybersecurity to Federal agencies, where he was then asked to teach at the Center for Critical Infrastructure Protection.
After Garry had taught for a couple of years, the opportunity arose to get back into project management, this time in rail transportation. His proudest achievement is serving as the project manager of the Federal Railroad Administration certification process for the country’s first hydrogen trainset, which holds the world record for the longest run on a single fuel cell.
Combining Customer Service & Cybersecurity
Garry’s career path has shaped his interest in helping companies go through transformation and understand how transformational technology works and benefits them.
When work at the Center for Critical Infrastructure Protection dried up, Garry wanted to get back into solving problems for customers, and a position at ProActive fit the bill. At ProActive, Garry can help customers negotiate life after Broadcom and meet Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) compliance. Recently, Garry completed his Certified CMMC Professional exam, the hardest test he has taken so far.
While in the Army, Garry learned that every device is a potential weakness that enemy nation states can exploit by going after the spouses and children of the military, their businesses, and schools. Garry can turn his knowledge and experience fortifying national infrastructure into advice for SMB customers of ProActive.
Helping ProActive Solutions Grow
Garry’s combined experience in sales, client success, and cybersecurity will help him do what’s right on behalf of ProActive customers. He likes working at ProActive because the team is serious about their work but likes to have fun.
With Garry on the ProActive team, we will be able to progressively expand our cybersecurity offerings while meeting client needs, because he brings a combination of hands-on technical, project management, and customer solution experience.
Experience the advantage of working with ProActive experts like Garry. Request a consultation for IT services.
