11:04 Webinar
Community Spotlight with Charles Sheppard
Niki Armstrong sits down with Charles Sheppard for a community conversation on growth, learning, and career journeys.
This webinar first aired on 17 June 2026
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Welcome. Thank you. All right, Charles. Well, welcome to Fun with the Bun. Thank you. Our annual podcast here. thank you so much for being here.
We really appreciate you. It's an honor. Thank you. Ah. So, you know, you, this is a story about healthcare transformation at scale. And, you know, it's a 24/7 business, obviously, where downtime is never an option. complexity is the enemy for sure. Yep.
And, you know, you have small teams to accomplish, quite frankly, one heck of a lot. And so, you know, you joined St. Elizabeth's Healthcare in 1997. You've seen so much of that organization grow, really from like a family-like hospital with two- Yeah facilities to now more than 12 hospitals, or six major hospitals I should
say- Six and 12,000 employees. And so, you know, clearly you had, a part in that growth. And so, let's go back to 1997. Okay. I'd love for you to kind of walk us through that journey. How has your role evolved?
And, you know, what have you learned through leading technology in that kind of growth? So back in '97 when I started, I was on help desk and just running, fixing PCs, installing PCs. That grew into Novell administrator, GroupWise administrator, backups, and then to storage ultimately.
but in that small team, really what we learned was is that to be able to manage those large systems is you gotta have simplicity, a single pane of glass. That was really driven into our team by our previous director who retired not too many years ago, but he was a good mentor. And we found that simplicity w- using Pure, an EverPure.
I love that. And you've, you've been in storage for more than 15 years now. You've probably I know you've worked with just about every major platform out there. And so, you know, much of your time has been essentially working as a one-person, you know, one-man storage team.
And so, you know, I have to imagine this is a, an environment that never sleeps. So walk me through, what does that operational burden actually look like for you? So I, we have a small team. there's nine of us that deal with servers, storage, backups, our Epic. And but we're really focused on one piece.
So I have guys that help me out, but normally we have to call each other if there's an issue, and that takes time from family, from vacations. always taking a laptop when you're out of town. It, it, it, it's a real drain on outside life. Yeah, I believe that.
But at, at some point, there was a fundamental shift in how you spent your time, and I, I feel like you and I have talked a lot, and it went th- from a firefighting to, I call it, freedom. Yep. And, and, you know, I, I love how you've managed to keep the lights on, but also how this is now showing up in your everyday life.
So can you talk a little bit about that and how it's impacted you personally? Right. So having the simplicity, the single pane of glass, and then obviously the availability of Pure, EverPure, I don't have to worry about the systems being down. I'm not as worried about doctors calling saying, "We're not getting performance." I was actually able to go to my niece's graduation, and not get called last year.
That was the first time not being called on vacation. Um- Yeah, absolutely. So time back with family is the biggest thing, but it's also taken stress off of me, and it's given me the ability to re- to start learning and taking time to investigate pieces that I don't normally touch, like automation.
And I'm on, partially on the security team now to protect our data, with other tools. So those are things that it's opened up time to be able to investigate. I, I love that because these are the moments that you can't get back, so I'm so glad that we enabled you to go- Thank you and be at your niece's graduation and not get a call. That, that's a Were you nervous though?
Were you like, "Why is my phone not ringing?" Oh, there's a Yeah, there's always a little bit there in the back of your mind going, "What's gonna happen this time?" in 2012 I was a- actually able to go to Alaska. I got called while I was in, on, on the boat, so Oh. So this has been the first few, you know- Yeah you, you're now enjoying
vacation, which is awesome. Trying to, yes. well, we've seen growth at St. Elizabeth's and the storage environment kind of happen in parallel. And so you've gone from managing a couple of EverPure arrays to a much larger footprint. And so, how, you know, how are you able to scale from two to where you are today?
And, you know, I, I don't wanna let the cat out of the bag, but you and I have talked about- Yeah moving to an all EverPure footprint. And so, talk a little bit about that. Yeah, so- Why are you so confident about that? So the plan this year, hopefully by the end of next year, we'll be all EverPure.
We've got a large NAS that we're trying to migrate to FlashBlade E. and it's not a, it's not a technology problem, it's a legal problem, so maybe I can get you to help me with that. I can help you. I know people. It's a statement of work problem, but, you know, early on in my career with storage, it was always a mi- a foot- a
forklift migration. Yeah. So you had to plan that, and then you're spending six months doing that migration. We don't have to do that anymore- Yeah with, with EverPure. we have in the last 10 years, we've done over 100, hardware upgrades without downtime and over 150 purity upgrades without downtime.
That's amazing. So, 10, 10 years o- of runtime. We started on MA50 and MA20, and we're now all X90R4 with not an ounce of downtime to do that, so. I love that. Well, and you're s- You're literally saving lives. Yep. You don't have time for downtime.
I'm not saving lives, but the system's there- Yes, you are to provide. Yes, you are. the oth- the other piece is just that it builds trust with the organization. When we started doing upgrades, yeah, we had to do them in nights and weekends, but as they got more and more successful, our change board was, They liked the idea
of having me do the upgrades, especially a Purity upgrade, during the day when our team is there that can respond if we need to. And then it's easier to get a hold of support, and the support team for EverPure has been amazing. Awesome. Thank you so much. Yep.
Joe Pinto, you heard that, right? All right. So obviously, technology has played a huge role in your own growth, but, but also you and I have talked a lot about a different force that has been just as important, and it's the people around you. Right. And, I'd love for you to share with our audience a little bit more about what that
looks like. You've obviously earned some peak certifications, which I love. but you've also engaged with the broader EverPure community. So how has that actually enabled you to become a stronger technologist and a stronger leader? So, early on in my career, when we started, first started storage, a now EverPure employee,
Doug Robertson, was a, a contemporary at another hospital in our area, and we would get together to talk about issues that we were having, successes. "What are you looking at for backups? What are you looking at for storage? Where are you struggling?" And that community really helped me learn.
I didn't necessarily learn great by just sitting in a class and listen to an instructor go through slides, but being able to talk to the community, is a big piece of my learning skill. So Pure has been able to help me or give me the opportunity to lead a PUG in our area, in, in Greater Cincinnati. so that's something that I have reached out to
and embraced to try to lead the community and get more people around me talking, because selfishly, it's the way I learn. So I get more out of the PUGs than, than I think I give, but it's, it's very helpful. Well, I, Are there other, are there people out there in the Cincinnati PUG, PUG group? Anybody out there?
All right, who's it? Did I heard a yes. So, you know, you should, you should join this Pure user group if you, if you have not already. but you know, you didn't just benefit, right? You, you have given back. I think you're being a little bit more humble- than, than you need to be.
thank you for that. And so as a small, you know, token of our appreciation, we wanna give back to you because I heard that you don't have any EverPure- new EverPure branded swag. I do not. So this is for you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. So, you might
wanna take a look at that. And while he's opening that up, I wanna encourage anybody else who, Thanks. Look at that. Look at that. Thank you. Thank you. we need more community leaders like Charles.
And so for those of you out there that are interested in either leading or even perhaps, just joining, because you're gonna learn- Yeah much like Charles has, please snap the QR code that is up on the screen here. We'd love to have you, part of our Pure user groups. And now, Charles, I'm gonna throw some other crazy stuff out.
So- Oh, boy I like to ask really off-the-wall questions. We're gonna end with a rapid fire. I saw it last year, so, Okay. You know Mi- what Mike was up against. All right. What is a job title in tech that doesn't exist but should? I'm gonna go with director of it's not
storage's fault. Every problem's- I love that. I was- either network or storage, so. I was thinking like chief token budget m- officer- Yeah, that- because, somebody's gonna need to do that, too.
So, all right. What, Oh, what animal would make the best CIO? We just got a new CIO in the last couple years, so I've seen how busy he is. I'm gonna say an octopus. Right. You gotta have all those arms to, to touch
everything, so yeah. Smartest creature in the ocean, too, so. Did not know that. Yeah. All right. really fast, what would 1997 Charles say to the Charles of today? Get comfortable being uncomfortable, because that's how you learn.
Don't be afraid to fail. I love that. Awesome. Well, Charles, it's been a pleasure having you. Thank you. Thank you so much for being not just a wonderful customer to EverPure, but also one of our community leaders
Niki Armstrong talks with Charles Sheppard about career growth, customer community, and the role Everpure has played in his journey.
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