Optistar Technology Consultants welcomes Johnny Vanni ’22, Manahil Mir ’19, Nathan Douglas ’22, and Philip Colladay ’22 to our AllStar team for the summer.
Over the summer, they will effectively put into practice their years of collegiate and cocurricular knowledge and experience. Through challenging project work, our interns will gain an understanding of enterprise-level organizations’ information technology architecture, including their network topology and cyber defense strategy, and have an opportunity to network with industry leaders in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Digital Technology, and Forensics fields. They bring with them collegiate and professional IT experience and will work alongside our IT Consulting Group and Operations team.
“Our internship program represents our ever-growing commitment to rapidly evolving cyber defense and contributing towards shaping the next generation of experts,” says Rohan Roger, Associate IT Consultant, who is managing this year’s intern program. “In just a short week, our interns are already embodying our core values: own it, always improve, and be happy to serve. I am very excited to be working with them over the summer as they are challenged to innovate, grow, and effect tangible, real-time change.”
Meet the Cohort
Johnny Vanni
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke. When Johnny was 14, he was gifted an iPod Touch for Christmas from his parents. Before his day with the iPod ended, John had installed a modified operating system to beat his high score in Doodle Jump. John realized digital landscape presented endless possibilities for creative outlets, and he wanted to explore every corner.
He attends Temple University’s Fox School of Business in Philadelphia, PA where he is pursuing Management Information Systems and Corporate Finance degrees. Throughout high school and college, he pursued various entrepreneurial ventures to make some money on the side. The challenge of building a business, whether it be success or failure, from the ground up served as a tangible outlet for innovation and creativity. John the utilized his knowledge to help digitize a brick-and-mortar business’s operations to counter the closures and restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, he looks to further pursue his passions in the digital landscape with Optistar Technology Consultants, more specifically in the world of cybersecurity. As the world moves towards a digital world, fast changes in technology are contributing to exponential growth in cyberattacks. John hopes to better understand and contribute towards data protection and privacy, threat intelligence, and security architecture.
Manahil Mir
Manahil graduated from Clark University in Worcester, MA in 2019 with a degree in Political Science and Psychology. Despite her interests in politics, Manahil decided to pursue IT after working at the University’s ITS Help Desk while at school. At the end of summer 2019, Manahil accepted a position working for a global innovation consulting and design IT firm. At that position, Manahil applied her IT knowledge to manage the help desk and engage in a company-wide migration during an M&A.  
Realizing her greater interest in the Cyber Defense world, she specifically spent more time working with physical network setups and implementations of firewalls. Manahil is looking forward to exploring network security in a real-world setting where the stakes are high, and she can make a difference for Optistar’s portfolio of clients. 
Nathan Douglas
Nathan Douglas is currently a senior at Roger Williams University in Bristol, RI, studying Cybersecurity & Networking along with a minor in Graphic Design. At Roger Williams, Nathan has had the opportunity of being involved in the cybersecurity club, barbershop club, while also being a member of the Track & Field team. He learned to manage windows user accounts, create and understand different types of programming, developing basic penetration testing skills leading to lots of self-learning troubleshooting and networking. He is passionate about troubleshooting user issues along with cloud security, and making sure business understand the importance of having strong security measures in place to mitigate the impact any security issues may have on the business.
While working as a COVID-19 contact tracer for eight months, Nathan was able to develop his communication skills, become detail oriented, and proved he can work effectively in intense situations. He brings strong technical skills, a positive attitude, strong work ethic, and an open mind to our summer internship program. While always looking to develop his technical & cybersecurity skills in his free time, he also enjoys taking photos and biking. He is looking forward to improving his technical skills, gaining hands on experience, and worked closely with respected professionals and experts within IT/Cybersecurity.
Philip Colladay
Philip Colladay is a fourth-year college student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and pursues computer engineering. Taking classes about how computer software and hardware operate and interact lead him to the realization that computers are vulnerable to attackers at every stage. By extension, he realized that society and businesses at large are vulnerable as our personal and professional lives are online and, thus are, at least partly, influenced by both computer software and hardware – and the security thereof. He began studying how security engineering and cybersecurity need to connect not only computer hardware and software, but also factors such as human psychology, risk analysis, government policy & law, and economics.
Cybersecurity combines the technical aspects of computer science and engineering with more humanity-focused disciplines, which matches well with Philip’s academic, professional, and personal interests as he is a computer engineering student with multidisciplinary passions.
Optistar is an exciting, fast-growth, value-driven, digital and technology managed services provider while also offering forensic services, custom software development, and 22 points of Cyber Defense. We operate with a constant sense of urgency with vCIO services for which we pride ourselves in leading the MSP market. Our blend of traditional managed services combined with cyber security solutions means we have seen it all. This breadth and depth of work bolsters our ability to handle a multitude of professional service clients from all industries. Schedule a 10-minute consultation with one of our Senior IT Consultants, email us at ask@optistartech.com or contact us. We will be happy to answer any questions you have or make recommendations on a plan for your business.
To learn more about our team, visit here .
