Full Speed Ahead: My Move to Solution Foundry as Senior Technology Advisor

2026-03-10

I’m thrilled to announce that on January 5, 2026, I joined Solution Foundry as a Senior Technology Advisor. While I’m publishing this a bit later than planned, I wanted to share this expanded role that represents an exciting opportunity to combine strategic planning, hands-on development, and team training in ways that build on my nearly two decades of SharePoint and Microsoft 365 experience.

What Solution Foundry Does

Solution Foundry has built a reputation on customer satisfaction over nearly 30 years, serving Federal and Industry organizations since 1997. Our tagline says it well: “Custom Solutions - M365 and Beyond. Built for your needs. By our experts.”

Rather than arriving with a requirements checklist, we show up with questions and a blank notebook, building relationships rather than one-off engagements. That mindset shapes our world-class team of developers, consultants, and Microsoft MVPs delivering custom M365 solutions across:

SPFx Development: custom SharePoint Framework solutions that extend what M365 can do out of the box
SharePoint Modernization: content migration and architecture updates for organizations moving off legacy systems
Data Visualization: Power BI dashboards that turn data into actionable insights
AI & Copilot Integration: AI solutions implemented in ways that actually fit how teams work
Power Platform: Power Apps and Power Automate configured to work together and connect to existing systems
Strategy & Consulting: guidance on adoption, architecture, and roadmap planning
Beyond M365: solutions that extend across various technologies beyond the Microsoft ecosystem

The Opportunity

This role allows me to use my extensive experience in SharePoint, M365 development, and Power Platform to help shape a strategic roadmap that continues the modernization of our solution capabilities. I’m helping the team adopt the latest tools and practices for SharePoint Framework (SPFx), AI, and Power Platform, while leading a training effort to integrate these tools into our delivery teams’ workflows.

This benefits everyone involved: we expand our solution offerings, our team members grow their development capabilities, and customers get modern, enterprise-ready solutions.

My Background

I’ve been building SharePoint solutions for almost 20 years, starting with SharePoint Server 2007 and evolving into the broader M365 ecosystem with the introduction of SPFx in 2016. Recent years have provided opportunities to learn the Power Platform and how to use it to build enterprise-level solutions that scale to tens of thousands of users. This 20-year journey has prepared me for exactly this kind of role at Solution Foundry.

Most recently, I served as an Enterprise Solutions Architect at Encora, where I designed and built solutions for large commercial clients and oversaw implementation with delivery teams. Much of that work was centered on Power Platform, so a major appeal of my new position is getting back to my core strengths: designing and writing custom coded solutions, both server-side and client-side.

The Role: Senior Technology Advisor

My core responsibilities fall into four essential areas:

M365 Technical Leadership

I offer expert guidance on Microsoft 365 development, including architecture decisions, toolchain configuration, and best practices for Commercial, GCC, and DOD environments. This includes advising on emerging M365 technologies and adoption strategies, and serving as an escalation point for complex technical challenges.

On the modernization side, I’m driving adoption of the latest versions of SPFx, Microsoft Graph Toolkit, and modern React controls, along with open-source solutions like PnPjs and other M365 and Power Platform Community libraries. I’m also ensuring our Power Apps and Power Automate solutions are enterprise-ready and scale to large user bases. Modern Application Lifecycle and DevOps practices are a core part of this effort, woven into every phase of solution development to support long-term maintainability.

Technical Training & Knowledge Transfer

I proactively research evolving Microsoft platform changes and federal compliance requirements to keep our team prepared. That means hands-on training workshops, documentation of standards, lunch-and-learns, and hackathons, working collaboratively with our tech leads to build the onboarding and upskilling programs the team needs.

Developer Mentorship & Standards

Mentoring our development team on best practices, patterns, and integrations is central to this role. I advise on coding standards, component libraries, and reusable solution templates. I also participate in technical reviews and support skills development initiatives across the organization.

Conference Participation & Industry Engagement

I represent Solution Foundry at selected conferences through presentations, workshops, vendor booth interactions, and customer engagements. Building industry relationships that strengthen our technical credibility is a key priority, and my years of community involvement provide a strong foundation for that effort. It doesn’t hurt that I love talking about development and sharing what I’ve learned with others!

Beyond my advisory role, I also contribute to business development across commercial and government markets, help shape our conference and event strategies, and support project teams as needed.

Continued Community Involvement

This position not only leverages my community experience—it actively supports my continued participation in it. One of the things that drew me to Solution Foundry is their genuine support for community involvement. To be clear: my contributions to the M365 developer community will continue, with plans to expand in several areas.

As a Microsoft MVP in M365 Development and Microsoft Graph for over 5 years, I’ve spoken at events of all sizes on topics including custom development strategies, Power Platform, and community engagement. I plan to continue sharing my knowledge through conference sessions, workshops, and online content, while also mentoring other community members and contributing to open-source projects. The M365 and Power Platform Community is a vibrant ecosystem of developers, and I’m excited to keep being an active part of it.

SPFx Advisory Committee

I’m honored to be one of the original members of the SPFx Community Advisory Committee, introduced by Microsoft to strengthen partnership with the community. This group consists of some of the most experienced Microsoft MVPs and interacts regularly with the Microsoft product teams. We actively participate in guiding new product capabilities and release planning for SPFx.

As Microsoft stated in their announcement:

“We will be using this new community advisory committee as our initial strategic review board for our future investments and community representatives for the future platform changes.”

Being part of this committee provides a deeper understanding of where Microsoft is heading with SPFx. I can use that insight to guide Solution Foundry’s strategy around offerings from Microsoft and other M365 vendors. It also provides a direct channel to share feedback with Microsoft product teams about how development teams and customers are actually using their tools, helping shape the future of those offerings. One of the most exciting aspects is the ongoing discussion about how AI can enhance developer capabilities across the Microsoft ecosystem.

Looking Forward

Now that I’ve settled in, I’m learning more about the specific work we’re doing with our customers every day. I was told I’d be joining a “train going full speed,” and that promise has proved to be 100% correct. Even as technology is rapidly changing, especially in the AI space, our pace of work with customers is accelerating, and I’m glad to be part of that momentum.

My community involvement continues to grow as well. This position is exposing me to markets I haven’t worked in before, giving me a broader perspective on the extensibility options available across the M365 and Power Platform space.

Speaking of AI: while there’s a lot of speculation about how AI will result in developers losing their jobs, I continue to embrace AI as a tool that makes me a better developer, and I’m encouraging our team and the broader community of professional developers I interact with daily to do the same. The future of development isn’t about AI replacing developers. It’s about developers leveraging AI to build better solutions, both in terms of quality and speed.

I’m excited about this new chapter and look forward to working alongside customers and the community, building solutions that make people more productive and showing what’s possible when great teams and great technology come together.

Stay tuned!

See ya soon & happy coding!
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Disclosure: This blog post was created in collaboration with the Ghostwriter AI platform. While AI assisted in drafting and editing the content, all opinions and insights are my own. For more details about Ghostwriter written by fellow MVP Elio Struyf, visit Getting interviewed by AI to write better blog posts.