The 2026 PDQ Sysadmin Hall of Fame recognizes six IT professionals whose technical skill, reliability, curiosity, and commitment to service make a measurable difference for the people they support. This year’s inductees work across higher education, local government, K–12 education, manufacturing, and healthcare, but they share one defining trait: When IT matters most, they show up.
Meet the class of 2026:
Andrew Chandler
Zebulun Velez
Brady Widener
James Williams
Eric Crawford
Todd Moyer
Andrew Chandler: Systems architect at Mississippi State University
Andrew Chandler is a systems architect at Mississippi State University, where he manages thousands of endpoints across Mississippi. With nearly 20 years in IT, he has become the person colleagues trust with tickets that require experience, persistence, and a clear understanding of how every part of the environment fits together.
Ask around campus who should pick up your IT ticket, and one name keeps coming up: Andrew Chandler.
His coworkers call him The Oracle. That’s a hefty nickname for anyone who doesn’t own a crystal ball, but Andrew has the track record to make it stick.
His IT career started, as many great IT careers do, with video games. At 6 years old, Andrew taught himself how to use the command line so he could run Doom on the family computer. Some kids were mastering shoelaces. Andrew was negotiating with a PC that refused to cooperate.
By high school, he was building computers. By college, his path was clear. Nearly two decades later, he’s managing thousands of endpoints and earning the trust of an entire campus one solved problem at a time.
Andrew never chased recognition. He just quietly became the person everyone wants on the other end of the ticket. Or, as they call him at Mississippi State, The Oracle.
Zebulun Velez: Senior network and systems administrator for Dona Ana County
Zebulun Velez serves as senior network and systems administrator for Dona Ana County, where he builds and supports automation, replication, and failover systems that help keep public safety services running. His work is grounded in deep technical curiosity and a habit of solving problems before they become visible to everyone else. Zebulun has a straightforward philosophy about IT: If you really want to learn something, break it … then figure out how to fix it.
That mindset took him from teaching himself Linux to becoming the person his coworkers count on to prepare for problems they haven’t encountered yet.
He goes to DEF CON for fun, which is a fairly efficient way to tell people that he enjoys a challenge. At work, he has built automation, replication, and failover systems that keep essential services available when failure isn’t an option.
His coworkers say he solves problems before anyone else even knows they’re coming. And when something does break at 2 a.m., chances are Zeb was already awake, already working, and already halfway to fixing it.
Not because someone told him to.
That’s simply how Zebulun Velez works.
Brady Widener: IT professional at Maryville City Schools
Brady Widener manages roughly 7,000 endpoints for Maryville City Schools as part of an eight-person IT team. He is known for stepping into unfamiliar systems, learning quickly, and helping staff with the same level of care whether the ticket involves mobile device management or a classroom plant in need of water.
Brady graduated from high school … and then came right back.
Only this time, the teachers weren’t handing him hall passes. They were handing him IT tickets.
When a new MDM platform arrived and no one had time to take ownership of it, Brady walked into his boss’s office and said, “Give me access. I’ll figure it out.”
He did.
That willingness to step up is a defining part of Brady’s work. He doesn’t wait for someone else to become the expert. He digs in, learns the system, and makes it useful for the people who depend on it.
He has even been known to water a teacher’s plants after they submitted a help desk ticket asking for it. That request probably wasn’t covered in the troubleshooting documentation, but good customer service is good customer service.
That’s Brady Widener — the kind of sysadmin every school hopes it has.
James Williams: IT infrastructure manager at Minth North America
James Williams is the IT infrastructure manager at Minth North America and a trusted presence when the stakes are high. His career has followed an unconventional route through technology, manufacturing, and tower work, but every stop reflects the same instinct: understand how things work, take on difficult problems, and keep moving until the job is done.
James got his start with an IBM PC XT that had 5 MB of storage and 64 KB of RAM. It was not exactly overprovisioned.
Like many future IT professionals, he couldn’t stop taking computers apart to find out how they worked. Unlike many future IT professionals, his career path eventually included running an ice factory and climbing 600-foot radio towers.
James left college because it wasn’t teaching him anything he didn’t already know. Then life got considerably less conventional.
He ran the ice factory. He climbed those towers with nothing between him and the ground but a safety harness and what could generously be described as a relaxed relationship with gravity. Somewhere along the way, he also became the IT infrastructure manager at Minth North America.
Today, he’s the first person his coworkers want beside them when something truly matters.
James Williams wasn’t supposed to have a conventional career. Fortunately, conventional careers rarely produce stories this good.
Eric Crawford: Systems administrator at Riverwood
Eric Crawford has spent 20 years in healthcare IT and now serves as a systems administrator at Riverwood. He supports critical systems in an environment where downtime affects clinical work, not just inboxes. Colleagues rely on his technical range, steady demeanor, and willingness to stay with a problem until staff can get back to caring for patients.
In healthcare IT, the stakes are not abstract. When a system goes down, the impact can extend far beyond an unanswered email or a calendar that refuses to sync.
Eric has spent two decades working in that pressure cooker, and according to his coworkers, he never seems to feel the heat.
They joke that if you somehow managed to set Eric on fire, he would put out the flames … then apologize to you for the inconvenience. The scenario is exaggerated. The calm is not.
As a systems administrator, Eric wears roughly 25 different hats. During one network migration, he worked 54 straight hours to move an orthopedic clinic and more than 2,000 PCs over a single weekend. By Monday morning, clinicians could walk in and get back to work.
That kind of effort requires more than technical knowledge. It takes planning, persistence, and a clear understanding of who depends on the systems behind the screen.
Eric is the kind of person you want on your team long before you realize you need him.
Todd Moyer: Systems administrator at Riverwood
Todd Moyer is a systems administrator at Riverwood, where he keeps servers and hospital systems operating while improving the work behind the scenes. With nearly three decades in IT, he is known for patient support, thoughtful documentation, practical automation, and an unmistakable signal that a serious problem is being handled: The headphones go on.
Some people panic when everything goes wrong. Todd reaches for his headphones.
That’s how his coworkers know it’s time to give him some room and let him work. Once the headphones go on, Todd enters bunker mode. He doesn’t come back up until the problem is solved.
His fascination with computers began in 1981, when a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A appeared under the Christmas tree. That computer sparked a career that has lasted nearly three decades and somehow turned “Have you tried rebooting it?” into a legitimate professional strategy.
But Todd’s coworkers will tell you that technical skill isn’t the only thing that makes him special. It’s his patience.
Once, he spent 30 minutes helping a nurse log in for the first time after she heard the word “mouse” and jumped out of her chair. Todd stayed with her, walked her through the process, and helped her get comfortable with something completely unfamiliar.
He automates tedious tasks, documents critical details, and solves problems without making a production out of it.
And if you ask Todd, that’s exactly how he’d prefer it.
What defines the 2026 Sysadmin Hall of Fame class?
The 2026 class is defined by technical depth, steady leadership, curiosity, and service. Each inductee has built a career around solving difficult problems and helping others succeed, whether that means managing thousands of endpoints, supporting public safety systems, protecting clinical operations, or patiently guiding one person through a first login.
Across these six stories, the same qualities appear again and again: They take ownership. They keep learning. They stay calm when the rest of the room is reconsidering every life choice that led to the current outage.
They also understand that great IT work is about people.
It’s about giving educators one less obstacle between them and their students. It’s about keeping clinicians connected to the tools they need. It’s about building systems that continue working when failure isn’t an option. And sometimes, apparently, it’s about watering a plant.
These inductees don’t chase the spotlight. They focus on the work, support the people around them, and quietly make their organizations stronger.
To Andrew, Zebulun, Brady, James, Eric, and Todd: Congratulations, and welcome to the PDQ Sysadmin Hall of Fame.
The systems are running better because you’re here. So are the teams.
