About Cloud Advisory Services
Cloud Advisory Services
A minority owned IT consulting company
We focus on helping Public Sector organizations design and execute Cloud strategies. Cloud strategies are unique to each organization – our ability to assess, analyze, advise and then implement solutions reflects over a century of experience between our founders. Cloud Advisory Services believes in a holistic approach application centric approach to Cloud/Data Center migrations – our expertise in security, data management/governance and full stack observability leads our practice.
We maintain industry certifications with numerous vendors and are authorized partners of Alation, AWS, Cisco, Microsoft, and Salesforce. We provide complete Lifecycle Services to our clients: helping them to manage their applications and data catalogues while managing their security and optimizing performance.
We offer a full suite of contract staffing and project management services helping our clients fill gaps in their resources and skills as they implement their migration projects.
Our Cloud Advisory Team
Eric McFadden
Founder & Executive officer
Eric is senior IT technologist with certifications in data networking, collaboration, security, data center design & architecture, application management and cloud migrations.
Eric McFadden was born in Durham, NC seven month after the Brown v Board of Education in 1954. Eric grew up in Rochester, NY in the late 50’ and early 60’s – a child of the civil rights movement in Upstate New York. He attended #49 School and Monroe High School. He was elected Class President his Freshman & Sophomore years , was elected Student Representative to the Rochester City School Board in 1969.
In 1970 as a high school student, Eric McFadden was recruited to attend St. George’s School in Rhode Island as part of the Episcopal boarding school’s racial integration initiative. As a student, Eric organized the black student boycott at St. George’s School in 1972 – the first boycott at a prestigious New England prep school. Eric went on to attend Harvard College (76’) where he studied American Political History and Economics.
At the age of 19, Eric was recruited by Mayor Kevin White to be Special Assistant to the Mayor for Community Development in 1974, as Boston began School Desegregation. He was responsible for dismantling the Model Cities program and helped create Boston’s first Community Development Block Grant Program. In 1976, Eric was appointed by President Gerald Ford to the National Advisory Committee for Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (NACJJDP) (Presidential Commission). In 1977, while serving on the NACJJDP, Mayor White asked Eric to return to Boston to establish the first Fair Housing program in the nation (Mayor’s Office of Fair Housing). Eric was instrumental in the integration of the Boston Housing Authority and in the creation of the first Community Disorders Unit within the Boston Police Department. Eric served the Mayor until 1979 participating in Federal Relations/Federal Compliance, Housing Desegregation and addressing Racial Violence and Police strategies for Community Disorders.
In 1979, Eric retired from public service and was hired by Xerox as one of the members of the first Ethernet (Xerox/DEC/Intel) products sales teams. Placed in New York City, Eric handled large accounts such as Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Cornell Medical, Rockefeller University, Merrill Lynch, and others. Eric continued his highly successful career within information technologies with ITT, Wang Laboratories, General Data Comm – progressing to National Sales Management and eventually Regional Vice President for Metro NYC managing a $75M business unit. In the 1990s, Eric transitioned from OEM network infrastructure to the initial Voice over IP (VOIP) markets becoming an expert in voice and collaboration technologies. As his career progressed, he was responsible for clients such as Fidelity Investments, CIGNA, KeyCorp, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Revlon, Raytheon and General Dynamics.
Eric is senior IT technologist with certifications in data networking, collaboration, security, data center design & architecture, application management and cloud migrations. He is sought after for complex data center projects such as MTA New Fare Payment System (OMNY), Airport terminals (JFK/LGA) and critical infrastructure (State/County).
Eric is the Founder of Lycaon Technologies (founded in 2013) – an IT services and consulting practice based in Harlem. Eric has provided strategic consulting services to Minority and Woman-owned businesses such as SMP (WBE), Noviant (MBE – Asian), Empire USA (WBE), Cognis IT (MBE – Black) and Flint Communications (MBE – Native American). Eric is considered a Subject Matter Expert in NYS/NYC MWBE business development & procurement policies and practices, as well as a passionate advocate for Minority and Women Business inclusion in the IT industry and active supporter of Black Economic Empowerment and Entrepreneurship in technology.
Beneath his corporate identity, Eric is a classic renaissance man: a trained musician (piano and trombone), an accomplished public speaker, social activist, and writer. Eric is active in his community, his church (Riverside Church), and is a grandfather to nine beautiful children and two step-grandchildren.
Outside of business and politics, Eric’s passion lies in the arts, music and creative culinary expression. He has a lifetime of experience as an intelligent Black man in America – with all the discrimination, hostilities (corporate, social, and law enforcement), micro-aggressions, and biases that America offers to Black and minority existence. Eric is passionate in his advocacy for social/business equity in public and private procurement.
Divya Pandya
Founding Consultant
She was highly regarded for her leadership skills, strategic thinking, and ability to drive results through effective team management and collaboration. Her clients include IBM, UMT360, Dow Jones,...
Divya Pandya was born in India and migrated to USA with her parents at the age of 8. They settled in NJ where Divya attended North Bergen High School. During her senior year, she won an Urban Engineering Planning competition at NJIT, showcasing her intelligence and potential at an early age.
Divya attended Rutgers University to study finance. During her time there, she was the President of the Indian Cultural Society and organized many cultural activities, including a performance at the Madison Square Garden with the Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan.
Right out of college she started her career at AT&T and for the next 15 years she held many different roles which included being part of CFO team that started AT&T WorldNet service. As a project manager at AT&T she managed the entire product realization and life cycle support for Managed Security Services and Security Event Threat Analysis portfolio. She was responsible for the root cause analysis and the development of implementation processes to support the service turn-up of large complex premises security deals. In this role, she worked collaboratively with sales, operations, and engineering teams to overcome obstacles and ensure timely delivery of services. Additionally, she managed and negotiated with vendor management for maintenance and license renewals. She was highly regarded for her leadership skills, strategic thinking, and ability to drive results through effective team management and collaboration. While there she earned Project Management certificate from Stevens Institute of Technology and a Mini MBA from Wharton.
After leaving AT&T in 2005 she founded her own company, CLS Management based in NJ, which specializes in Project Management and IT Staffing, her clients include IBM, UMT360, Dow Jones, The Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, FDA and NYC agencies. CLS Management is M/WBE and DBE certified. Under her leadership, CLS Management has grown to become a leading provider of technology services and solutions.
Divya currently lives in NJ with her husband and is a proud mother of two daughters. In her free time, she enjoys reading, travelling and is an accomplished chef, check out her Instagram: www.instagram.com/divyapandya/
Akin Gabriel Akintayo
Founding Consultant
Gabriel is it proven mentor, a highly effective leader in creating teams of network architects and engineers that collaborate effectively and meeting all customer deliverables...
Akin Gabriel Akintayo, was born in the city of Lagos Nigeria, he grew up in the city of Lagos in the 70s and 80s . He attended GCL high school, he attended the University of Ife where he studied mathematics, he was elected president of the mathematics association in 1985 and he graduated on top of his class in 1986.
Once He graduated and had to serve the country for a year, he served in northern Nigeria teaching mathematics to local students at a higher ed institution and returned to the city of Lagos to enroll in the master’s program in mathematics at the University of Lagos, upon completion he boarded the plane and migrate to the US in 1988.
In 1991 he was hired by the department of mathematics a Clark Atlanta university as an adjunct math instructor later hired by Spelman College to teach mathematics while teaching, he enrolled in a master’s program in computer science at Clark Atlanta University enduring the workload of an adjunct math teacher and a graduate student. He completed his master’s degree and was immediately hired by IBM as a programmer writing code in C++ installing forest NY Gabriel was quickly promoted to a senior associate within 18 months, He soon made a switch from software engineer to network engineer. He left IBM 1995 to join a brokerage house call Instinet Nomura well once again his performance quickly got him promoted to a network managerial position managing the global network operations of a Brokerage institution.
In 1998 Gabriel took and passed Cisco certified internetwork expert exam a two day exam in San Francisco and became CCIE #3763. He has since acquired two more CCIE specializations in Datacenter and Collaboration.
In 1998 he founded structured network institute a networking school in Jersey City where he trained hundreds of minority engineers entry level and advanced level and gave them a pathway to a networking career.
Soon after he began structure Network Solutions a networking solutions company this is and Cisco networking and multi-vendor network taking on contracts at Lucent, AT&T Merrill Lynch, Presidio, Fiserv Heath and Hospital Corporation New York, to name a few.
Gabriel is it proven mentor, a highly effective leader in creating teams of network architects and engineers that collaborate effectively and meeting all customer deliverables on the budget and on time.
Gabriel is a seasoned senior IT executive which certifications in data center networking, AWS cloud networking, Unified communications, security architecture and cybersecurity as well as project management. His expert level knowledge and experience in these areas is notable and makes him a high Value IT executive.
Outside of work and his professional life Gabriel is music lover A dancer of salsa bachata kizomba and afrobeat. He’s a public speaker and a social activist. Gabriel is active in his local community and his church, he is a father to a Wonderful son.
