Leadership
Shawn Usher
Founder & CEO
Shawn formed Sparkhound in 1998 with the mission to make a meaningful impact for clients by solving their business problems with technology and leadership. His results-driven approach helped the company quickly earn a solid reputation with mid-market and enterprise clients throughout the United States. Prior to starting Sparkhound, he joined a team of senior business consultants who successfully transformed IT systems and management for the parent company of three hospitals, a health insurance company, and 25 smaller healthcare-related companies. Shawn earned a bachelor's degree in quantitative business analysis and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree at Louisiana State University. He and his wife, Jennifer, have four children, and he serves on numerous professional and community boards.
Jason Lasseigne
President & COO
Jason has over 23 years’ experience in executive leadership, consulting, process improvement, customer success, and operations. He joined the Sparkhound team in 2017 as the Managing Director of the Baton Rouge office and member of the Executive Leadership Team. After leading the company through an organizational change in early 2018, Jason was promoted to Chief Operating Officer overseeing the delivery of services at Sparkhound. In 2021 Jason became the President of Sparkhound, expanding his responsibilities to lead all areas of the business.
Prior to joining Sparkhound, Jason was the Chief Operating Officer at Envoc and was instrumental in their record growth and success. He’s also held management and executive positions at IBM Global Services, APPRO/Equifax, and TraceSecurity partnering with a broad range of companies to improve the operational efficiencies of their organizations.
As Sparkhound evolves our operating model, Jason’s experience will help drive growth and collaboration with our teams in Baton Rouge, Houston, Dallas, Birmingham, and beyond.
Jason holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Information Systems and Decision Sciences from Louisiana State University.
Nathan Arant
Chief Marketing Officer
With over 13+ years of experience in marketing, sales and business consulting, Nathan Arant joins Sparkhound as our new Chief Marketing Officer. Prior to joining Sparkhound Nathan acted as Sr. Director of Strategy for Marketing and Technology at Baldwin Risk Partners (BRP), a public brokerage firm based out of Tampa. During his time with BRP, Nathan stood up a full in-house digital marketing team, streamlined processes across all marketing business units, and oversaw a multi-million dollar Salesforce build out. Prior to BRP, Nathan held marketing and sales leadership roles at Insgroup, Versa Integrity Group, Home Comfort Enterprises, and Envoc.
Nathan's approach to marketing is rooted in developing processes and strategy around each core business unit of our business and develop best-in-class content to target. With the goal of support business growth, Nathan makes it his mission to help develop a thriving culture where colleagues feel heard and have every opportunity to scale.
Nathan’s degree is in Visual Communications from Western Tech in Lacrosse, Wisconsin. He also has multiple Google Certifications in Ads and Analytics, and is a Certified Scrum Master. Nathan and his wife Natalie recently moved to Baton Rouge from Katy, Texas with their three children, Noah, Charlotte and Jude. Outside of Marketing and Sales, Nathan is an avid runner, enjoys being out-doors, reclaiming wooden furniture and spending time with family.
Derrick Helms
Managing Director
As Managing Director of Sparkhound’s Managed Services, Mr. Helms has overall responsibility for driving revenue and profitability for the business unit, overseeing business development functions, day-to-day client operations as well as recruiting and further developing the Managed Services team. He's held senior leadership roles with United Technology Group, Pinnacle Data Systems, SunGard Data Systems and served as a Sergeant in the US Army.
Justin Thomas
Sr. Accounting & Finance Manager
Justin Thomas has joined Sparkhound as our new Finance & Accounting Manager to bring our accounting function in house and to find and create efficiencies within our accounting processes. This will allow for smoother processing and set up the department for Sparkhound’s continued growth
Justin was previously a senior accountant at Compass Development Marketing Group for 4 years in which he helped create and grow the department from 30 projects to over 200 projects nationwide processing tens of millions of dollars in revenue for Compass. In his tenure he also worked closely with the team on their yearly audits as well preparation for Compass’ IPO. Prior to Compass Justin has worked in the non-profit and group insurance industries.
Alexander Drozd
Partnerships
Alex Drozd, based in Houston, is our Microsoft Channel Director serving as the sales and strategy liaison to our strongest partner. Prior to Sparkhound, Alex spent 11+ years in technology sales leveraging product and services knowledge of the Microsoft ecosystem to drive substantial ROI to enterprise customers across North America. Alex is a graduate of Clemson University and is actively engaged in philanthropic efforts across Houston.
Angela Schuchardt
Principal Consultant - Business Processes
Angela is a business and IT consultant specializing in enterprise business strategy and analysis, program and project management. She has a penchant for Office 365 tools and applications and relishes in driving successful enterprise adoptions by aligning business and IT. Her holistic view of a portfolio allow her to assimilate project-level details with a top-level view of enterprise, integrating business processes with effective technical solutions.
With experience in both software and infrastructure, she has a keen eye for identifying process improvement areas, and collaborates with IT and the business to identify, prioritize and execute strategies. Superior communications skills allow her to positively influence change through translation of technical details to a language tailored per target audience. The previous 5 years in a consulting role particularly, lend to her customer-centric service, organizational skills and energetic approach that help motivate teams towards execution goals and client satisfaction.
Leadership
Shawn Usher
Founder & CEO
Shawn formed Sparkhound in 1998 with the mission to make a meaningful impact for clients by solving their business problems with technology and leadership. His results-driven approach helped the company quickly earn a solid reputation with mid-market and enterprise clients throughout the United States. Prior to starting Sparkhound, he led a team of senior business consultants who successfully transformed IT systems and management for the parent company of three hospitals, a health insurance company and 25 smaller healthcare-related companies. Shawn earned a bachelor's degree in quantitative business analysis and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree at Louisiana State University. He and his wife, Jennifer, have four children, and he serves on numerous professional and community boards.
Jason Lasseigne
President & COO
Jason has over 23 years’ experience in executive leadership, consulting, process improvement, customer success, and operations. He joined the Sparkhound team in 2017 as the Managing Director of the Baton Rouge office and member of the Executive Leadership Team. After leading the company through an organizational change in early 2018, Jason was promoted to Chief Operating Officer overseeing the delivery of services at Sparkhound. In 2021 Jason became the President of Sparkhound, expanding his responsibilities to lead all areas of the business.
Prior to joining Sparkhound, Jason was the Chief Operating Officer at Envoc and was instrumental in their record growth and success. He’s also held management and executive positions at IBM Global Services, APPRO/Equifax, and TraceSecurity partnering with a broad range of companies to improve the operational efficiencies of their organizations.
As Sparkhound evolves our operating model, Jason’s experience will help drive growth and collaboration with our teams in Baton Rouge, Houston, Dallas, Birmingham, and beyond.
Jason holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Information Systems and Decision Sciences from Louisiana State University.
Dan Lynch
CSO
Dan Lynch joins Sparkhound to lead the sales organization bringing a distinguished career selling and delivering complex IT solutions for both start-ups and Fortune 50 companies. Most recently Dan served as Senior Vice President at Auritas and prior to that, Vice President of Sales for Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Technology Services Group responsible for Cloud, Hybrid IT Solutions and Consulting Services in North America. During his tenure HPE services sales outpaced the market with revenues, profits and order performance at a record best. Additionally, Dan established the global Business Intelligence and Analytics group to create targeted, predictable growth programs leveraging Direct and Channel buying trends, capability and capacity matrices to ensure ROI both short and long term. His teams consistently delivered YoY Growth in excess of over $1.5B annually. Prior to HPE, Dan served as vice president at two Fortune 500 IT companies.
Dan holds a Master’s degree in management from Webster University and a Bachelor’s in communications from the University of Maryland. He is based in Frisco, TX.
With over 13+ years of experience in marketing, sales and business consulting, Nathan Arant joins Sparkhound as our new Chief Marketing Officer. Prior to joining Sparkhound Nathan acted as Sr. Director of Strategy for Marketing and Technology at Baldwin Risk Partners (BRP), a public brokerage firm based out of Tampa. During his time with BRP, Nathan stood up a full in-house digital marketing team, streamlined processes across all marketing business units, and oversaw a multi-million dollar Salesforce build out. Prior to BRP, Nathan held marketing and sales leadership roles at Insgroup, Versa Integrity Group, Home Comfort Enterprises, and Envoc.
Nathan's approach to marketing is rooted in developing processes and strategy around each core business unit of our business and develop best-in-class content to target. With the goal of support business growth, Nathan makes it his mission to help develop a thriving culture where colleagues feel heard and have every opportunity to scale.
Nathan’s degree is in Visual Communications from Western Tech in Lacrosse, Wisconsin. He also has multiple Google Certifications in Ads and Analytics, and is a Certified Scrum Master. Nathan and his wife Natalie recently moved to Baton Rouge from Katy, Texas with their three children, Noah, Charlotte and Jude. Outside of Marketing and Sales, Nathan is an avid runner, enjoys being out-doors, reclaiming wooden furniture and spending time with family.
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