Leadership
Lisa Mitchell and Mark Michal founded Progressive in 1987 with the mission of providing the best customer service and technical expertise available. Under their leadership, Progressive has grown over the past 30 years to become one of the leading IT companies in the North Carolina area.
Lisa Mitchell, CEO and founder, is a graduate of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is passionate about helping her clients become proactive in managing their businesses and providing Strategic Planning to ensure their future successes. By serving primarily as a high-level Virtual CIO for her clients on multiple fronts, Lisa is able to help her clients not only make good decisions around Information Technology (IT), but also help them focus on the broader components of what makes a business succeed in general. Lisa manages the Sales & Marketing, Human Resources, and Finance Divisions for Progressive and leads the HIPAA, PCI, and Cybersecurity teams. Lisa also currently serves as the facilitator for HTG Peer Groups, a national Healthcare Special Interest Group for managed service partners, acting as speaker and presenter in pulling vendors and experts together to develop HIPAA practices for their clients. Lisa is involved with other International IT peer groups, her church, and numerous other local, non-profit organizations. Lisa and her team have been fortunate to have received national and local recognition including being rated as one of the “Top 500 Technological Companies in the Country”, one of the “Top 100 Technology Companies in the Triangle,” twice recognized as the Top 50 Fastest Growing Companies, Top “40 Under 40” Businesses”, and one of the “Top 25 Women in Business.” Lisa recently added best-selling author to her resume with Amazon’s Best Selling book, Under Attack!: How to Protect Your Business and Your Bank Account From Fast-Growing, Ultra-Motivated and Highly Dangerous CyberCrime Rings. Lisa manages the Sales & Marketing, HR, and Finance Divisions for Progressive. She is also actively involved in community service supporting organizations such as The N.C. Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Families for SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy), The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, The Salvation Army, and the local Smart Start Program.
Mark Michal, CTO and founder, attended The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill where he pursued a degree in Computer Science and worked for several different network integrators heading up their technical divisions including the start-up and management of local branch offices. As Chief Technology Officer of Progressive, Mark manages our technical team and also directs the Disaster Recovery, Office Relocation, and high-end Strategic Planning Divisions. Being a member of Heartland Technology Group with over 300 international IT companies that routinely review Industry Best Practices, Trends, Vendor Solutions, Vertical Markets, and Company Performance Metrics, Mark is also a specialist in developing and designing Disaster Recovery Strategies including functional offsite Disaster Recovery facilities. With over 30 years of experience working with enterprise-level, multi-site organizations and maintaining certifications including CCNA, CNE, Network +, SonicWALL CCSA, HIPAA, etc., Mark serves as a valuable resource for our clients with Strategic Planning and Network Design. He oversees the technical division for Progressive including heading up our Security, Office Relocation, and high-end Strategic Planning Divisions. Mark maintains certifications from many of the major manufacturers in the industry such as Microsoft, Novell, HP, and Cisco and is actively involved in community service supporting such organizations as The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, The Salvation Army, and The Boy Scouts of America. Mark is also a strong advocate for ensuring that countries and children outside of the United States have access to computers and he has been actively involved in sending computers to schools abroad.
Our Team Statistics
- Progressive’s average employee retention rate is over 9 years
- Our senior networking engineers have been with the Company for over 13 years
- Our engineers average over 12 years of experience
- Our office staff averages over 15 years of experience
- All engineers maintain at least one or more industry certifications such as Microsoft MCSE, MCP, Cisco CCNA, Novell Master CNE, Novell CNE, A+, etc.
Corporate Culture
At Progressive, our goal is to provide a company culture that values its staff and takes the opportunity to celebrate our achievements along the way. We believe that is important for team-building to provide activities outside of work to have fun together. Several of our recent team-building activities include the following:
- Corporate luncheons or “pot-luck” celebrations
- Employee birthday celebrations
- Bowling or golfing events
- Seasonal gatherings
- Employee Easter Egg Hunt
- End of the year holiday party
- Community Service Projects including families
- Billiard Night and Shuffleboard
- Poker Nights
- Pool Parties or Lake Outings including families