About
My name is Ahmad Mahdi… I work for Microsoft Corp. as a member of the ACE Team. This blog is generally not related to my work at Microsoft although I’m sure I will relate things I’ve learned over the years. I am currently in the process of writing something interesting and unique, I hope to share more about that on this blog in the coming months. A little more about me: I was born in Zurich, Switzerland and lived there until I was five. I attended kindergarten there at which point my whole family moved to Pakistan and lived there for about a year and then finally moved to Toronto, Canada. For most of my life I’ve lived in Toronto and grew up there. If you don’t know much about Toronto or have never had the opportunity to visit I would highly recommend it (especially between spring and fall 
). I attended Ryerson Polytechnic University earning an Honors Bachelors from the school of Information Technology Management with a specialization in Telecommunications. After completing university, I worked in both small and large organizations in Toronto, including the largest Canadian fiber network carrier and a telecom consulting company. I then went on to help start several technology startups, including an early web collaboration startup called @meeting.com. After many restless unpaid nights and promises of funding that didn’t materialize (yet a lot of great experiences I wouldn’t trade anything in the world for) I moved on to found a more “traditional” startup with my brother-in-law in the area of managed IT services and outsourcing. In 2003, I was given the opportunity to work for Microsoft’s ACE team and moved to Redmond, and haven’t looked back since. I manage an amazing team of security professionals which provide highly specialized security consulting services.