Employee Spotlight: Austin Bland

C-Forward’s motto of being personal, proactive, and reliable has been the center focus of our company since its inception. Being personal, proactive, and reliable in our services allows our customers to feel assured their networks, cybersecurity needs, disaster recovery needs, etc., are taken care of by people who care about their business. Austin Bland, our Centralized Services Engineer, is one of the key figures making sure the company lives up to that motto. 

Coming all the way from Chicago, Bland moved to Cincinnati and went to school at Northern Kentucky University where he pursued his love for computer information technology. After graduating, Bland states that finding C-Forward in 2019 was a perfect fit for him, “C-Forward was a well-established MSP in the Greater Cincinnati area and had a full-time position for Centralized Services which is exactly what I was looking for.” 

On the day to day, Bland’s job is to monitor and troubleshoot any issues with our disaster recovery solutions, as well as help support our technicians with any ‘day-to-day’ challenges they run into with our internal support software. He also works on automating our systems so, as Bland says, “C-Forward can focus more on being proactive, just as in our motto.” Since working here, Bland was nominated for an internal “You’re Awesome” Award in March of 2022 and has continued to live up to the award title. Brent Cooper, owner and founder of C-Forward, states, “Austin is a pleasure to work with! He’s become a critical part of our C-Forward team.”

Austin has been working at C-Forward for almost four years now and enjoys coming to work every day. Bland states, “Everyone is always willing to help each other out and we all joke around with each other. I also enjoy all of the social events that C-Forward has held over the past few years. It’s nice to get together with everyone and get to know them better.” 

In addition to the people, Bland is proud to work at C-Forward because of the office culture that has been cultivated around living up to our motto. He states, “I really enjoy the work culture. I’m proud to feel that my opinions and ideas are taken into consideration when I have input on technical or business decisions. I think it’s important that everyone feels they have a voice and I feel that is the case at C-Forward.” Bland also noted that the positive work culture translates to how we interact with our clients, stating, “I think we leave a good impression through our personal focused customer service and our philanthropic efforts to help the community.”

Bland states he has also been able to grow his skillset since starting at C-Forward, “I have gotten to touch a lot of technology that I did not have the opportunity to previously. Some examples are getting more familiar with backup technology, learning how to configure and troubleshoot Storage Area Network (SAN) devices, and working with automation tools to make tasks easier for our technicians and customers.” These opportunities have allowed Bland to not only help more clients, but to also grow as a technician.

Outside of C-Forward, you can find Bland spending the majority of his time with his wife, Amy, and their daughter, Nora, practicing his bass guitar for his future band, or playing video games with his friends. Austin Bland has a bright future at C-Forward and we are grateful for all his hard work!

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