Spotlight on KOVA’s Joel Throckmorton

Now that we’ve all had a chance to settle into 2020, we thought we’d introduce a new series for our blog. Every so often we’ll be taking a little time to introduce you to one of our incredibly talented employees. When we started thinking about who to shine a spotlight on first, it took nearly no time to settle on Joel Throckmorton.

Joel is a Technology Solutions Architect and serves as our FSO, Facility Security Officer. While he serves as FSO because, in his words, “somebody has to do it,” he wears a number of hats. He is involved in “all things technology,” as well as marketing and design. He’s been working with the Carrier-Advanced Reconfigurable Training System (C-ARTS) as the System Architect. C-ARTS is exactly what it sounds like: a mobile training unit designed for the U.S. Navy for the purpose of bringing training to the Sailors rather than having the Sailors go to the training. Joel designed and implemented the IT systems in the units and served as the technical lead attaining the Authority to Operate (ATO) for the C-ARTS network. In addition, he works as an Infrastructure Engineer for a Department of Defense project architecting a Kubernetes cluster utilizing Nvidia DGX systems for GPU-optimized AI/ML (Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning).

This is the "best picture" that Joel had of himself

Joel has been with KOVA for three and a half years. When asked what his favorite thing is about KOVA, Joel replied, “We work hard and since we are small, many of us have to ‘wear many hats.’ However, our hard work pays off and brings everyone closer together.” With a work atmosphere like that, it’s easy to want to come to work every day.

When asked to describe himself, Joel responded with, “hard-working and lazy.” We think you begin to understand what a character he is. He strives to find the most efficient way of doing things so he has to put forth the least amount of work. So, as he says, his “laziness” actually contributes to his efficiency. He also takes pride in the fact that he can be tasked with projects he’s never done before, and he will learn what he needs to know to deliver a high-quality end result. “I believe in doing things right,” he emphasized. “Cutting corners or not doing thorough research is a recipe for disaster.”

Busch Gardens Winter Wonderland

Away from KOVA, Joel is a family man. Married with three “terrible children” (his words not ours!), Joel enjoys spending his free time with them. “They’re not really terrible,” he clarified, “they’re actually completely awesome!” Since they’re 9, 8, and 5, he’s pretty busy with kid activities outside of work.

Joel has been a Department of Defense contractor since graduating from James Madison University, where he studied Computer Science. His dedication to providing quality products for our defense industry motivates him to continue in this career path. He wants to be a part of KOVA’s growth while helping keep our culture intact. We’re pretty sure his zany sense of humor and willingness to do what needs to be done will be a large contributing factor to our continued success.

We decided to ask Joel to share a little-known fact about himself. Yes, we were a little scared to hear what he’d say, but we couldn’t contain our curiosity. Imagine our surprise when he said, “I’m pretty good at cooking eggs. I can make a decent omelet. I’ve almost mastered pan-flipping the omelet.” We’re thinking once he masters it, we’re going to give him another KOVA hat to wear: chief cook. Because who doesn’t love a good omelet?

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