Starting a new chapter - Maxady welcomes Dave DelVecchio

This past spring, our two daughters graduated college - one from Denison University in Ohio, and one from Concordia University in Montreal.  Since their celebrations, both have moved to new cities and started exciting new chapters in their life stories.

After over 32 years of consecutive service within the same IT Services/MSP organization, including 19 years as President and nearly 4.5 years since we integrated into a larger organization, I’ve decided it’s time for a new chapter of my own.  I’ve left my job as VP of Marketing and Communications at Sourcepass to join my wife, Colleen DelVecchio's, consulting practice at Maxady, helping develop the next generation of leaders through a Strengths-based approach.

I will take credit as the person who first introduced Colleen to the book StrengthsFinder back on our first (blind) date in 2010.  Colleen, whose squiggly career has included career counseling and development throughout, took to the concept and after having become certified, incorporated it into her trainings, presentations, and curriculums while working in higher education through the 2010s, up until starting Maxady in 2019.

During that first year, I was a client of Maxady, as I had Colleen run leadership development training for the managers in my organization.  I saw firsthand the positive impact the training had on my staff.  My former service manager shared the following note with me on how he operationalized the lessons learned:

“Many interactions require repositioning perspectives from the employee, client, and/or organization while maintaining an approach that is open minded and reasonable. I learned to be  engaged and listen to what and how is being said in order to appropriately demonstrate empathy, understanding, guidance, and authority throughout the conversation.”

After having sold my business in 2022, I committed to the journey of the new org as we built a scaling MSP practice, first serving as VP of Culture and Communication prior to transitioning into my Marketing leadership role.  I, too, became a certified Gallup Strengths coach in 2023, and continued to serve on the Culture Committee, as well as mentor emerging leaders in our organization.  One of my proudest accomplishments, however, was that my exit was a non-event for my team, as I had long prepared them to work without me.  After all, as Colleen likes to say as one of Maxady's tag lines, leaders execute through others.

(*The thumbnail photo is from daughter Emily's graduation, when two random but fun-loving guys jumped into our photo for a well-timed photo bomb)