Arica Beckstead

Arica Beckstead has a comprehensive background in network engineering and customer success. Arica currently works as a Customer Success Engineer at Forward Networks, Inc. since February 2023. In their previous role at ARMA Global Corporation, A General Dynamics Company, they served as a Network Systems Automation Engineer and was responsible for automating processes for maintaining device compliance with DISA STIGs. Arica also worked as a Senior Network Engineer at the same company, managing multiple DoD networks and maintaining routers and switches. Prior to that, Arica worked as a Network Engineer at Prime Technical Services Inc. and as a 25N - Nodal network systems operator/maintainer in the US Army, where they gained experience in troubleshooting network infrastructure and setting up network access. Throughout their career, they have demonstrated proficiency in various programming languages, network analysis, and Agile methodologies.

Arica Beckstead pursued their education at Western Governors University from 2020 to 2023. During this time, they earned a degree in Network Operations and Security, specializing in Network and System Administration/Administrator.

In addition to their degree, Arica obtained various certifications. In December 2020, they earned the ITIL 4 Foundation certification from AXELOS Global Best Practice. In December 2019, they achieved the CompTIA A+ certification, followed by the CompTIA Network+ and CompTIA Security+ certifications both in January 2020. Arica also attained the CCNA certification from Cisco in October 2020.

Furthermore, they obtained the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification from Amazon Web Services (AWS) in November 2021, and the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate certification in August 2022. Lastly, in January 2023, Arica acquired the CompTIA Project+ certification from CompTIA.