What PowerShell taught TJ Turner about IT
Aired August 17, 2026 | 37 min
Andrew Pla sits down with TJ Turner at Microsoft’s TechMentor conference @ Microsoft HQ in Redmond, Washington, for a conversation about PowerShell, career growth, and the parts of working in IT that don’t show up in the documentation. TJ traces his path from infrastructure through K-12, finance, and retail to his current role as a cloud evangelist at TD SYNNEX, along with his early days using PowerShell v2 and v3, competing in the Scripting Games, and helping start the Philadelphia PowerShell User Group. They also dig into real-world automation wins, including a PowerShell workflow that helped validate thousands of systems before a holiday weekend, plus burnout, community, asking for help, and what years of broken demos and IT mistakes can teach you about staying prepared and learning to adapt.
Meet our guest
TJ Turner is a cloud evangelist at TD SYNNEX, one of Microsoft’s largest distributors in the CSP and partner channel. His background is in infrastructure, with experience spanning K-12, financial services, retail, and other enterprise environments. TJ got started with PowerShell during the v2 and v3 era, competed in the Scripting Games, and helped found the Philadelphia PowerShell User Group. Today, his work includes Azure, Microsoft 365, security, GitHub, DevOps, and helping partners grow their businesses.
Meet our host
Andrew Pla
Andrew Pla, a seasoned IT professional with over 10 years of experience, has spent the last 5 years mastering PowerShell. An ardent member of the PowerShell community and a Microsoft MVP, he loves sharing his knowledge and leveraging automation to solve complex problems. You can always find him connecting with others on the PDQ Discord and troubleshooting, with the firm belief that a problem shared is a problem halved.
