OUR TEAM

Born and raised in Lincoln, Zach is an avid Husker fan, golfer, and sand volleyball player. Zach was reluctant to become a programmer, but after giving it a try he instantly became hooked and has been programming professionally since 2008. Upon working at DPL he began to learn how to better architect software and became hooked to IDesign.

Zach enjoys traveling and hopes to see more the world in the upcoming years. Outside of work you can find Zach eating at taco joints around the town. A lifetime goal of his is to compete in a steak eating challenge.

Read Zach’s blog posts.

Todd is a planner. He has a list for everything, makes sure things get done and don’t fall through the cracks. These are just a few of the responsibilities in his Project Management role that he loves.

Outside of work he loves spending time with family, traveling, golf, bowling and going to dirt track racing events. Todd lives in Lincoln with his wife Susie. His son, daughter-in-law and 3 precious grandchildren also live in Lincoln. They are his pride and joy in life.

Read Todd’s blog posts.

Ever since he was little, Andrew has been drawing. It began with sketching pictures of his favorite cartoons with his grandmother. He even sent plans he drew for a toy (life-size robot) to Santa. After graduating high school his creativity led him to study graphic design.

Today he bridges the worlds of coding and design. Regardless of which side he’s on, Andrew finds most of his satisfaction in solving problems. For him, design is more than a job; it’s a passion that exceeds the bounds of a typical work day.

He lives in Lincoln with his wife and daughter and spends most of his free time writing dad jokes. Even though Santa didn’t deliver on the life-size robot, Andrew believes it’s because technology is still catching up to his plans.

Read Andrew’s blog posts.

Phil is a .NET programmer who loves SQL Server and thinks Typescript is alright too. He has worked on apps and databases to help banks and hospitals do their thing.

Once when he had spare time he wrote a system for a local nonprofit organization.

Nathan loves answering questions. It is a quest of discovery for Nathan. From business processes to software system architecture to program bugs, Nathan will try to identify what the root issue is and then solve the problem efficiently. Along the way, he enjoys helping others do the same in their work. At Don’t Panic Labs, Nathan gets the opportunity to tackle a wide variety of questions. That is why you will often find him at his desk happily struggling to find an answer.

When not answering questions at DPL, you can probably find Nathan at home watching TV shows like NOVA or Mythbusters, or reading about the sciences. He’s also been known to put together a few small electronics projects with an Arduino board or Raspberry Pi. He also loves playing games of all sorts with his fiancé and son.

Read Nathan’s blog posts.

Jeff is a former middle school science teacher turned software engineer. As a teacher he ran several programming clubs as well as encouraging problem solving and engineering in and out of the classroom. He has always enjoyed seeing how things work and solving problems, which is what drove him to pursue a career in software development. Every day he strives to learn more about software and the techniques of modern programming.

When he’s not writing code you can find Jeff in his two-garage woodshop brushing up on his skills. He also enjoys many other hobbies like board games, homebrew, and flying model airplanes. When he’s not engaged in making something he’s usually kicked back watching movies.

Jeff was born and raised in Schuyler, Nebraska but came to Lincoln to play trumpet in the University of Nebraska marching band. He has loved every day of being in Lincoln since then and considers it his new home.

Santi enjoys solving problems. Whether it is a customer’s business problem, a crossword puzzle, or “why this damn thing won’t work”, he enjoys the challenge of analyzing a situation and coming up with simple, efficient solutions.

Outside work, he enjoys riding bikes in the dirt, Sunday night fútbol, and playing the bass guitar without an audience.

Santi lives in Lincoln with his wife Sarah and son Alister.

Read Santi’s blog posts.

It’s the excitement and challenge of the journey that drives Everett. He sees software development as providing endless learning opportunities.

He feels lucky to have had a high school physics teacher who taught a programming class as a hobby and gave Everett his first real introduction to software development. He has been driven to learn more ever since. And he will tell you that he learns more every day.

Continual self-improvement is Everett’s goal and that extends beyond his professional career. Outside of work, he has many hobbies that rotate often as he tries and learns new things. Many of his interests involve the great outdoors, with camping and hiking as mainstays. Whenever he can, he brings his family along for new adventures.

Chris is one of the younger specimen of the DPL crew. He joined the team right after he finished playing college basketball, and has been learning from his colleagues about the depth of programming since. It turns out that there are a lot of things that college doesn’t teach you about what it means to be a good software engineer.

Most days you will find him in the office, but he also like to stay close to coffee shops when he is writing code.

In his free-time, Chris likes to participate in all kinds of sports. Crossfit, golf, volleyball, basketball and foosball are just a few of them. On nice days he likes to take his German shepherd for an adventure, but on bad days he prefers to play simulation or RTS games. Farming Simulator 2017 and Starcraft 2 are his current favorites.

Read Chris’s blog posts.

Krista is not a Nebraska native and you will know within a few minutes of talking with her. She grew up in Tennessee and moved to Nebraska in 2000 after graduating from college. Krista has spent much of the last 15+ years doing product development work on a variety of software applications. Working closely with clients and customers over the years, Krista is passionate about finding a solution to a problem and simplifying the work. Krista also considers herself a student of agility and actively embraces improving her knowledge of the various software development methodologies. Her favorite core value for succeeding with Agile and life in general is being a servant leader.

When she’s not working, you will find Krista with her husband and two kids. She loves being outdoors especially in the spring, summer, and fall but often questions why she lives in Nebraska when winter arrives. Running and cooking are among her other hobbies along with traveling whenever she gets the chance.

Read Krista’s blog posts.

Doug has over 30 years of experience with software engineering and development in aerospace and defense, healthcare, manufacturing, ecommerce, consumer web applications, and internet network services.

He’s passionate about the process of software design and development and the application of sounds principles and patterns to these efforts.

He is a co-founder of Nebraska Global and Don’t Panic Labs.

Read Doug’s blog posts.

Some of the younger DPLers probably weren’t even born when he accidentally took a programming course. He discovered that he could create something new simply by thinking it into existence! Typing is just a conduit.

That sparked his passion for learning new things. At DPL, you’ll find him excited learning about new business models, new projects, new products, new Frameworks, etc. He’s part of many DPL projects: EliteForm (Custom hardware for weightlifting performance tracking), Beehive Industries (Asset management for cities), FourStarzz (Influencer search engine), and many more.

Hari’s passion for learning extends beyond DPL walls. At home, he built a 3D printer from scratch, taught himself how to design custom circuit boards, and recently he discovered the fun of creating YouTube videos. His videos have been featured on many websites including DPL Blog, Hackaday, and Reddit.

Hari enjoys living in Lincoln, which he considers to be a small town. He lives 10 minutes away from the DPL office, so he often goes home to have lunch with his wife.

Read Hari’s blog posts.

Small town Nebraska born and raised, Bill is has spent the last couple of decades finding ways to build cool things with his buddies. In that time his circle of “buddies” has grown and the “cool things” have morphed from building software platforms to building communities and ecosystems of software engineering, corporate innovation, and entrepreneurship.

His first real job at a Silicon Valley startup in the early 2000’s set the stage for a career of creating innovation. His next stop at TAG/TMI transformed both TAG and its client insurance companies into innovation leaders in the industry. That innovation lead to the creation and growth of an ecosystem of companies in Lincoln, and Omaha and ultimately the acquisition of TAG/TMI by Perot Systems.

Currently Bill is happily creating a groundswell of change and innovation in the Silicon Prairie ecosystem with his buddies at Don’t Panic Labs. He can be found regularly at community events or busily working in coffee shops and boardrooms to create opportunities from collisions of entrepreneurs, community leaders, and the ecosystem.

When not at a coffee shop he is likely with his wife Tina and his kids at a cross country meet, concert, or ball field.

Matt Will, not to be confused with any of the other dozen or so Matts that we have walking around the DPL office, is a self-proclaimed code wrangler who has a great passion for developing quality software. He has been developing software for a while and his love of writing code was reignited when he heard about IDesign during his first interview with Doug, Ganz, Todd, and Chuckles.

Being a code wrangler means he spends a lot of time looking at bad code and knowing that there has to be a better way to do it. This is where DPL and IDesign come in. Since joining the team, Matt has worked on a wide variety of projects. Most recently, his interests in building his own mobile applications has grown based on what he has learned working with partners on their mobile apps.

Outside of work, Matt loves spending time outdoors including camping, hiking, running, and bicycling. He is also a dog lover as proved by his ever growing collection of bite marks and scratches from his dogs.

Matt has 2 claims to fame. 1 – he ran down Carl Lewis in the Omaha airport when he was 8 years old to get an autograph, and 2 – he made an appearance in an Indian reality TV show – Lift Kara De – where he was a passenger on a rickshaw riding thru the streets of Delhi.

Read Matt’s blog posts.

Andrew is constantly challenging himself to try new things, both professionally and personally. This attitude has served him well both in his 10 years of service in the Nebraska Army National Guard and at Don’t Panic labs where he has worked mostly in web and mobile development.

He pursues his hobbies with the same dedication and completed his first Ironman triathlon in 2015 after finishing several sprint and Half Ironman races. He enjoys collecting travel experiences and tattoos. His most recent piece was a koi fish he got while on a trip in Japan.

When they aren’t travelling, Andrew and his wife Kayla can usually be found at their home in Lincoln with their dogs and cat, reading and figuring out what to do next.

Read Andrew’s blog posts.

Kyle grew up just outside of Lincoln. A computer programming class he took in high school got him interested in development and he decided to pursue it as a career.

When it comes to web development, Kyle feels right at home. He has spent the last ten years developing web applications and services and has worked on everything from simple web sites to large, ecommerce systems.

In his spare time, Kyle enjoys reading comics and playing video games.

Chris is the Don’t Panic Labs software quality assurance engineer. He supports multiple software applications ranging from desktop to mobile. He ensures the team releases quality software before it is deployed to the public through automation and manual testing on multiple devices and browsers.

When he is not traveling with his wife he calls Lincoln home.

Brian became deeply interested in software and technology when he saw the difference it could make in people’s lives. He found a passion for innovation (defined as transforming ideas into market-sustainable products and companies)—especially when technology is leveraged as part of the solution. It might be hard to find him at his desk—he’s generally out meeting entrepreneurs and corporate innovators to help them take the next step or explore how we might turbo-charge their efforts.

In his downtime, Brian spends time with his wife and daughter. As you might expect, he has a few geeky hobbies including automating his home, playing strategy board games (Star Wars Armada), and enjoying a good Xbox game (Titanfall).

With that said, he still exercises his farm roots by spending way too much time on his lawn.

Read Brian’s blog posts.

In 2000, Chad graduated with a degree in Computer Engineering. He then graduated from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln in 2003 with a Masters in Computer Science. After college, he worked for STI, MindVision/eSellerate/DigitalRiver, and Internap before ending up at Nebraska Global / Beehive Industries / Don’t Panic Labs.

Chad is the Software Architect working at Don’t Panic Lab projects.

Chad is a life-long Nebraskan. He grew up in rural Nebraska and now lives in Lincoln. Chad and his wife have a son and daughter.

Read Chad’s blog posts.

Tony is driven to find solutions. Whether he’s designing a system, or writing a single method, he strives to create simple yet complete solutions for customers’ problems. The only thing he enjoys more is sharing his experience and teaching others.

He divides his spare time between being a handyman, (very) amateur carpenter, occasionally playing a video game, and being a dad.

He lives in Crete with this wife and three children.

Read Tony’s blog posts.

Lori helps connect all the teams and partners together and keep projects moving on schedule. She helps keep track of and report on things so her engineers don’t have to worry about them. She enjoys the chance to explore challenges across a variety of companies and industries.

At home, she partners with her husband John as they try to keep up with their son Owen.

Her random claim to fame is that she has won 5 “Food for a Year” prizes at restaurants.

Andy has a passion for software architecture and building software with a disciplined engineering approach. He has been working for the last six years with local companies and startups for Nebraska Global and Don’t Panic Labs.

At home, he enjoys reading, cooking for his family, and getting in as many rounds of golf as he can. He enjoys volunteering as a youth basketball, baseball, and soccer coach for his kid’s teams, and is a huge fan of all things Huskers and of the U.S. Soccer team.

He lives in Lincoln with his wife and three kids.

Read Andy’s blog posts.

Driven by a love of solving problems, Chris is a jack-of-all-trades that comes to DPL offering a wide range of experience. From starting as a graphic designer at an advertising agency, doing development for several local company, and even working as an solutions architecture at a fortune 500 company, Chris enjoys working with smart people to solve hard problems. You’ll find him spending his time keeping our clients projects and products on track.

At home, he loves to tinker with a wide range of hobbies. For a technical hobby, he enjoys annoying his wife with new home automation routines. For a something that’s non-computer related he designs board games and hopes to get his first game published in the near future.

He lives in Lincoln with wife and several furry companions.

Read Chris’s blog posts.