Mike Portera joined Cerium in October of 2018 as Director, PMO, bringing over 25 years of multi-industry experience. Mike’s role at Cerium is a culmination of roles as a technical support engineer, design engineer, project manager, program manager, consultant and educator—making him uniquely qualified to mentor, manage and support Ceram’s project management team and the customers they serve.
Mike spoke about what attracted him to this opportunity at Cerium, “The fact that four of Cerium’s founders also shared a background in telecom at AT&T provided a common thread. The fact that they grabbed an opportunity starting a business in a challenging market back in 2000 and have grown the portfolio and products since then is impressive.”
Mike’s portfolio of work aligned from both project management perspective and Cerium’s product offerings. His background in cloud services, information technology, cybersecurity, and data center make him perfectly qualified for the job. His previous work designing and improving project management processes coupled with Cerium’s focus to grow and develop employees from apprenticeship positions made the position more intriguing. “Our clients have more complex projects and to meet their expectations we must continue to grow our knowledge base, further refine our skill set, and develop the processes and procedures to deliver flawless engagements.”
Mike continued, “As Cerium broadens our product portfolio, each project is going to have unique characteristics which will bring unique challenges and that’s exciting. It’s exciting to be a part of that and it motivates me, and it keeps me interested and excited. I like to look at challenges as opportunities not yet identified.”
