PAUL W. HILLMAN:
 
Paul Glantz




 
 
 
 
 
Partner and Director of Client Relationships at Conway, Dierking & Hillman, Inc. (CDH) in Grand Rapids. CDH has offices in Royal Oak and Grand Rapids, from which it provides consulting services in collaboration, infrastructure, access and identity management, and project management. CDH has recently purchased the Web development and SharePoint consulting team from Plante & Moran PLLC. This purchase, coupled with CDH's existing Microsoft SharePoint consultants, makes the CDH SharePoint consulting group the largest of its kind in Michigan. CDH is certified as a Microsoft Gold Infrastructure partner, a Novell Platinum partner, and has earned top levels of certification with VMware, Citrix, and Cisco Systems. CDH received Microsoft's Central Region Customer Experience Partner award and was named a Corp! magazine Economic Bright Spot in 2010. Under Hillman's leadership, CDH continues to grow. The firm, which started out as a partnership in Grand Rapids, expanded into the Detroit area in 2005 and now employs more than 25 people. Hillman has more than 25 years' experience in information technology. He specializes in providing strategy to schools, hospitals, banks, and professional service firms. He has worked on Novell technologies for more than 18 years and was one of the first 100 certified Novell engineers in the country. Hillman is responsible for CDH's day-to-day administration issues, strategic direction, and personnel management. Hillman is a Novell Channel advisory board member, a vice president and board member of the Project Management Institute, and founder and president of the West Michigan NetWare User Group. He's also a founding member of the Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning and hosts CDH's Knowledge Transfer 2.0 podcast. Hillman is a Project Management Professional, Master Certified NetWare Engineer, and Microsoft Certified Professional. He received his bachelor's degree from Michigan State University and his MBA from Western Michigan University.


WHERE BORN: “Detroit.”

MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS: “Bob Whiting, who was the president and owner of Whiting Public Warehouses. He grew up in the school of hard knocks and pointed out areas of 'broken glass' that he crawled over and I didn't need to, so that was useful.”

LAST BOOK READ: “Who: The A Method for Hiring by Geoff Smart and Randy Street.”

WORDS THAT DESCRIBE ME: “Spontaneous, creative, energetic, loud, and funny.”

WHERE MY FIELD/INDUSTRY IS HEADED: “IT departments will cease to exist in 10 years. What I mean by that is all of these companies that have computer nerds running around in companies, they'll be able to be rid of them. No more infrastructure people — servers, operating systems, devices — are needed. Only business analysts and people who work on collaborative technologies will be around.”

FAVORITE TECHNOLOGICAL GADGET: “Lync, Microsoft's unified communications solution. I can hit it with my iPhone, iPad, and PC, and use it for video conferences.”

FAVORITE PLACE: “Loon Lake Lodge.”

FAVORITE HOBBIES: “Listening to baseball, fancy dinners, musical theater, playing poker, sometimes all at the same time.”

FAVORITE FOOD: “Sam's Joint for ribs. They're all up and down the west side of Michigan.”

MY HIDDEN TALENT: “Musical theater, of course.”

HOW I WANT TO BE REMEMBERED: “I'd like to be around longer so I don't need to be remembered — as a great father to my daughters, best friend to my wife, and small-business owner with passion and heart.”


Grant Thornton Website At the annual awards reception in April 2014, one Leader & Innovator from the previous 12 months will be selected as the Grant Thornton Leader & Innovator of the Year.