One Northerner talent spotlight: Zach Peer

The ‘Best Tech Manager’ award recognizes a leader who goes beyond requisite duties of a manager to empower their team through a clear and communicated vision. This person promotes career growth, ensures a great team culture, inspires innovation, and leads their team to produce a great product.

Ryan Horner, Zach Peer, Dom Vespo and Jonny Big at the 2019 Timmy Awards.

Zach is an incredibly deserving recipient of this award, not only because of his own professional accomplishments, but also (or especially) because of the way he leads and cultivates his team of systems engineers.

For more than a decade, Zach has made an incredible impact on the One North business, and specifically, the Managed Hosting team. He establishes and maintains the appropriate policies, procedures and controls for One North’s hosted offerings and works to ensure the availability, security and performance of our hosting environment. Zach also provides technical leadership and support for internal systems and initiatives, ensuring the seamless introduction of new technologies.

There is so much that his direct reports admire about him. Here are a few excerpts to demonstrate their appreciation for and dedication to Zach:

• “Zach is a strong leader and colleague that can work through and troubleshoot complex technical challenges. He is hands on collaboratively working together with others across departments to support our hosting clients and internal IT infrastructure. He sets a great example for his team by staying calm and having a great attitude when things get tough or late hours are required to get the job done.” – Ethel Crosby, Director, Technology Operations & Offerings
• “He leads by example. Even in the most stressful situations, you would never suspect anything is wrong from his demeanor. He stays cool under pressure, and that mindset permeates down to the rest of the hosting team and helps us work effectively in all types of situations.” – Dom Vespo, Senior Systems Engineer
• “Not everything we do is fun.  Some tasks are unpleasant or need to occur at unpleasant times (like midnight, when you’d rather be sleeping). Zach never asks his employees to do something he isn’t willing to do himself, so he is in our on-call rotation, he volunteers himself for off-hours work, etc.  These are things that as a Director, he could easily exclude himself from, but he doesn’t. He earns a ton of respect by doing so.” – Adam Moericke, Associate Systems Architect

Zach is constantly looking for ways to improve the profitability of the hosting team and increase their efficiency, which explains why his team is consistently one of the company’s most reliable sources of revenue, something they all take a lot of pride in. He is an excellent communicator, leader and mentor and we couldn’t think of anyone who deserved this award more than him. Congratulations, Zach!