As a global leader in technical education for the digital infrastructure industry, CNet Training is proud of its ability as a company to provide customers access to respected and technical minds in the data center and network infrastructure sectors. Within the technical education provider, there’s a great passion for education and a commitment to ongoing development for all of its team members.
In addition to education, CNet Training takes pride in that over 50 percent of the senior management team is female. Here, out of those many strong women, are two of CNet’s talented executives: Melissa Chambal and Jill Baldwin. They offer insight into their careers, their progression through the digital infrastructure industry and what advice they’d offer to aspiring data center professionals.
MELISSA CHAMBAL
US LATAM & Canada Technical Manager and 7×24 Exchange International Career Development Mentor at CNet Training, Melissa Chambal joined the company with more than 20 years of data center and network infrastructure experience, plus five years teaching data center design and network design programs. She has taught at the Top Gun Marine base in California and performed a data center audit on Department of Defense facilities. Today, Chambal produces CNet’s global data center programs, including Data Center Management, Design, Audit and Sustainability.
What do you like about working at CNet Training?
The best part about working at CNet Training is that we are a very close and agile team. We maintain a global reach as we constantly deliver technical education to data center and network infrastructure professionals. Yet we are always focused on future learning and development for ourselves, too. The entire Instructor team is interested in expanding their knowledgebase to deliver more award-winning programs to our customers.
How did you get a job in the data center industry?
When I was working in New York City with a union (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers IBEW), I was project managing installations of trading floor systems, phone turrets and market data feeds, all with trading floor connections happening in the “Equipment Room” (now known as the Data Center). It was an exhilarating, demanding and rewarding experience all at the same time.
What made you choose a career in the data center industry?
I have always been on the cabling-infrastructure side of the house. In a way, the millions of feet of cable that we pulled from workstations to some space where the connections were made and communication could occur always kinda had me in a data center… They just weren’t called data centers at the time. I referenced “equipment room,” but you also would throw around “switch room” and “MDF Room.” These spaces were the first generation of what we now call data centers.
What does your job role involve?
Well, my current job role includes ensuring that the US technical references and material in our programs is up to date. So, this sees to me attending the TIA meetings where I contribute to the TIA-942 and Edge subcommittee. This is vital to making sure that our customers receive the very latest technical information. Plus, I deliver our award-wining educational programs to international data center professionals. Most recently, I went through our internal train-the-trainer process to qualify me for teaching the Certified Data Center Sustainability Professional (CDCSP®) program – a super important subject for everyone.
