Mike began his career in software development in 1992.   Before founding Light Mountain, Inc., he worked as a consultant for G. A. Sullivan, Avanade, and SBS Creatix.   He continues to hold a position with SBS Creatix.  During his career, Mike has been involved in all stages of software development, including requirements gathering, architecture, design, development, testing, deployment, and documentation.  Early in his career he focused on application development and worked with tools such as C, Clipper, PowerBuilder, and Visual Basic.  In recent years his focus has been on Internet and Intranet architecture and development using tools such as ASP.NET, C#, Visual Basic .NET, AJAX, Active Server Pages, and Visual Basic).  Database design and development, first with Sybase SQL Server and more recently with Microsoft SQL Server (versions 6.5, 7.0, 2000, and 2005), has also been a focus of Mike's career.

Mike has contributed to one book, Special Edition Using Microsoft Backoffice (1997), and has authored several white papers: Document Management With Exchange Server (1996), OLAP Analysis With Microsoft SQL Server OLAP Services (1999), The eXtensible Markup Language: A Primer (2000) and Building A Web Site With XML And SQL Server 2000 (2001).

Mike holds the titles of Microsoft Certified Solution Developer and Microsoft Certified Database Administrator.  He was educated in the School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, earning a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science in 1992.  He is a lifelong resident of St. Louis, Missouri, and currently resides with his family in the St. Louis suburb of Kirkwood, Missouri.

The company name, Light Mountain, is an approximate translation from German to English of Lichtenberg.  Click here to visit the home page of the town of Lichtenberg, Germany.   Click here for an English translation of a page from that site which offers an explanation of the town's name.