Every experienced CIO has disaster stories to tell. Being prepared for the unexpected is in the job description.
Tamecka McKay knows that all too well. Hers is a story of bad timing and good leadership.
McKay recently took on the CIO role at the Seminole Tribe of Florida. She previously was CIO for the City of Fort Lauderdale, having joined in 2021 and charged to modernize the city’s aging IT infrastructure. It was a huge challenge.
“More than half our network equipment was end-of-life, 70% of our storage and 40 to 50% of the servers,” she recalled. “Asking for a $10 million modernization project in one year? Not going to happen.”
So, she put together a three-year plan, prioritizing the needs: storage in year one, network in year two, compute in year three.
It didn’t take long for that plan to be tested. In December 2022, Microsoft pushed an update that seized the entire system, leaving the city government with no server access. To make matters worse, McKay was at a VMUG leadership event in Portugal when it happened.
That disaster reinforced the urgency to update the city’s IT infrastructure, but there was more reinforcement to come. Three months later, a 15-year-old switch that was past its designed end of life failed, taking down the system for the police and fire departments. Oh, and McKay was supposed to be off on her honeymoon.
The city manager asked her what she needed to get everything working again. She pulled out her plan and handed him the quote: $2 million to refresh all the equipment that was at or past its expected end of life.
Trial by Water
Then came the biggest disaster: an historic flood that left 8 feet of water in the basement of Fort Lauderdale City Hall in April 2023.
“We had 26 inches of rain in five hours,” she said. “HVAC system, elevator, electrical — all gone. Our data center was on the sixth floor, so technically it was untouched, but with no power or cooling, it didn’t really matter.”
McKay and her team acted fast. They relocated servers to the city’s Emergency Operations Center, rewired the entire network architecture, and used the moment to accelerate the modernization effort.
“We carried servers down six flights of stairs,” she said. “It should’ve taken months to recover, but we restored most services in about a week.”
Interestingly, they never turned all those servers back on.
“We had roughly 100 servers that went down and nobody ever missed them,” she said. “That just shows how neglected the environment was before. We pulled off in less than 30 months what should’ve taken three to five years to refresh the entire infrastructure fleet. We did it by maximizing every opportunity, including the disaster.”
Ultimately, the City Hall was torn down. Built in the 1960s, it was too outdated to be remodeled cost-effectively for a modern digital environment.
Challenges Ahead
Earlier this year, McKay got what she described as “an amazing offer and opportunity” to join the Seminole Tribe. It was a bittersweet decision to leave the team that had been through so much together, but she feels she left the city in good hands.
“Succession planning is so important,” she added. “I had a great assistant director who had been alongside me for the ride for the past three years. She shares my values, and I felt good about where I was leaving the team.”
At the tribe, she’s embracing new challenges and opportunities.
“There are a lot of great projects already in flight,” she said. “They just need some leadership, structure, and governance to get across the finish line.”
That governance piece is high on her list. She plans to work with an outside consultant to do a formal assessment and start building a strategic plan. But even without a report, she’s already identified the top three opportunities: project governance, standardization, and performance management.
VMUG and the Launch of a Career
Through it all, McKay has leaned on a community that’s been central to her career: VMUG, the VMware User Group. VMUG is an independent, customer-led organization active in 230 communities, with more than 150,000 members globally.
McKay first got involved with VMUG in 2010 when she was working for the Town of Davie, Fla.
“When we first got VMware at the Town of Davie, I was just learning admin skills,” McKay said. “We had ESX 3.5 back then. It was hard to wrap my head around virtual infrastructure at first, but once I got it, I was hooked. That’s when my career took off.”
She eventually moved into leadership roles, which meant less hands-on work, but she credits those early years with shaping her leadership style.
“My effectiveness as a leader comes from having walked the walk,” she said. “I watched the tech evolve. I lived it. That’s how I know how to drive transformation.”
She joined the VMUG Board of Directors in 2021. Today, she’s quick to explain to younger colleagues why they should get involved.
“There’s a saying: Your network is your net worth,” McKay said. “I’ve had more career opportunities, not because I’m particularly brilliant, but because I had access to good people. I could learn from their mistakes, lean on their expertise. That kind of camaraderie is rare. We get each other in the VMUG community — it’s like family.”
Even in moments of uncertainty, like when Broadcom was in the process of acquiring VMware in 2023, VMUG helped keep her grounded.
“There was a mourning period. It felt like saying goodbye to a family member,” she recalled.
But hearing Broadcom President and CEO Hock Tan speak at a VMUG Board meeting and again at regional VMUG events, and understanding his vision, has helped restore her confidence in the future of VMware technology.
“He’s authentic,” she said. “He showed us that this community matters to him.”
Looking Ahead
As she settles into her new role with the Seminole Tribe, McKay is energized by the opportunity to lead another transformation. She embraces the lessons learned in Fort Lauderdale: the importance of readiness, the power of partnerships, and the value of the VMUG community.
“You want your career to grow? You want to belong to something real? VMUG is it,” she said. “The people I’ve met through it are still my friends, still part of my life. And they’re still happy to help — every time.”