Video Team for 2014 Changes to the NEC DVD Package

Mike Holt is an author, businessman, educator, speaker, publisher and National Electrical Code expert. He has written hundreds of electrical training books and articles, founded three successful businesses, and has taught thousands of electrical Code seminars across the US and internationally. 

His company, Mike Holt Enterprises, has been serving the electrical industry for almost 50 years, with a commitment to creating and publishing books, videos, online training, and curriculum support for electrical trainers, students, organizations, and electrical professionals. His devotion to the trade, coupled with the lessons he learned at the University of Miami’s MBA program, have helped him build one of the largest electrical training and publishing companies in the United States.

His broad experience has given him a unique perspective on building a profitable business that is committed to its customers and to quality. From an early age, Mike understood the need for working on your business, not just in your business. As a businessman, he understands the need for continuous education in order to keep current and stay relevant. As an educator, he has a commitment to help instructors improve their skills in the classroom and enrich the learning environment for their students. His deep understanding of the trade, dynamic presentation style, and ability to connect with students are some of the reasons that he is one of the most sought-after speakers in the industry.  

Mike is committed to changing lives and helping people take their careers to the next level. He has always felt a responsibility to provide education beyond the scope of just passing an exam. He draws on his previous experience as an electrician, inspector, contractor and instructor, to guide him in developing powerful training solutions that electricians understand and enjoy. He is always mindful of how hard learning can be for students who are intimidated by school, by their feelings towards learning, or by the complexity of the NEC. He’s mastered the art of simplifying and clarifying complicated technical concepts and his extensive use of illustrations helps students apply the content and relate the material to their work in the field. His ability to take the intimidation out of learning is reflected in the successful careers of his students. 

Mike’s commitment to pushing boundaries and setting high standards extends into his personal life as well. He’s an eight-time Overall National Barefoot Waterski Champion. Mike has more than 20 gold medals, many national records, and has competed in three World Barefoot Tournaments. In 2015, at the tender age of 64, he started a new adventure—competitive mountain bike racing. Every day he continues to find ways to motivate himself, both mentally and physically. 

Mike and his wife, Linda, reside in New Mexico and Florida, and are the parents of seven children and seven grandchildren. As his life has changed over the years, a few things have remained constant: his commitment to God, his love for his family, and doing what he can to change the lives of others through his products and seminars. 

Mike Culbreath has devoted his career to the electrical industry and worked his way up from apprentice electrician to master electrician. He began by doing residential and light commercial construction, and later did service work and custom electrical installations. While working as a journeyman electrician, he suffered a serious on-the-job knee injury. As part of his rehabilitation, Mike completed courses at Mike Holt Enterprises, and then passed the exam to receive his Master Electrician’s license. ln 1986, with a keen interest in continuing education for electricians, he joined the staff to update material and began illustrating Mike Holt’s textbooks and magazine articles.

Mike started with simple hand-drawn diagrams and cut-and-paste graphics. When frustrated by the limitations of that style of illustrating, he took a company computer home to learn how to operate some basic computer graphic software. Realizing that computer graphics offered a lot of flexibility for creating illustrations, Mike took every computer graphics class and seminar he could to help develop his skills. He’s worked as an illustrator and editor with the company for over 30 years and, as Mike Holt has proudly acknowledged, has helped to transform his words and visions into lifelike graphics.

0riginally from south Florida, Mike now lives in northern lower Michigan where he enjoys hiking, kayaking, photography, gardening, and cooking; but his real passion is his horses. He also loves spending time with his children Dawn and Mac and his grandchildren Jonah, Kieley, and Scarlet

Michael Holt, Jr. is the son of Mike Holt, and has been exposed to the electrical trade his whole life. He is a Florida State Certified Electrical Contractor, and has owned his own electrical service and repair business in Central Florida since 2008. Michael’s company does wiring, trouble-shooting, and reconfiguring for low voltage systems as well as building premise wiring for both residential and commercial. It’s a business that prides itself on providing safe and qual¬ity professional services. In fact, customer service and loyalty are the cornerstones of his business model that helped him build his reputation and can be attributed for much of his success.

Michael has embarked on a journey through life to not only improve his personal life, but also to affect the lives of others by way of men¬torship to young professionals of the world. His hobbies include jet skiing, motocross racing, and stand-up comedy, both as a performer and a member of the audience. He is very much a people person and is very active in his community. Michael has a daughter, Haylee, whom he absolutely adores.

Brian House is Vice President of Digital and Technical Training at Mike Holt Enterprises, and a Certified Mike Holt Instructor. He is a permanent member of the video teams, on which he has served since the 2011 Code cycle. Brian has worked in the trade since the 1990s in residential, commercial and industrial settings. He opened a contracting firm in 2003 that designed energy-efficient lighting retrofits, explored “green” biomass generators, and partnered with
residential PV companies in addition to traditional electrical installation and service.

In 2007, Brian was personally selected by Mike for development and began teaching seminars for Mike Holt Enterprises after being named a “Top Gun Presenter” in Mike’s Train the Trainer boot camp. Brian travels around the country teaching electricians, instructors,military personnel, and engineers. His experience in the trenches as an electrical contractor, along with Mike Holt’s instructor training, gives him a teaching style that is practical, straightforward, and refreshing.

Today, as Vice President of Digital and Technical Training at Mike Holt Enterprises, Brian leads the apprenticeship and digital product teams. They create cutting-edge training tools, and partner with in-house and apprenticeship training programs nationwide to help them reach the next level. He is also part of the content team that helps Mike bring his products to market, assisting in the editing of the textbooks, coordinating the content and illustrations, and assuring
the technical accuracy and flow of the information.

Brian served as the chief editor for this new edition of Understanding Electrical Estimating and assembled the team for the video production, and content review of this textbook and its supporting resources. Brian is high energy, with a passion for doing business the right way. He expresses his commitment to the industry and his love for its people in his teaching, working on books, and developing instructional programs and software tools.

Brian and his wife Carissa have shared the joy of their four children and many foster children during 25 years of marriage. When not mentoring youth at work or church, he can be found racing mountain bikes or SCUBA diving with his kids. He’s passionate about helping others and regularly engages with the youth of his community to motivate them into exploring their future.

Ryan Jackson is a combination inspector in the Salt Lake City, Utah, area who began his career as a carpenter while in high school. He began doing electrical work when he was 18 and, at the age of 23, Ryan landed his first job as an electrical inspector and subsequently became certified in building, plumbing, and mechanical inspection (commercial and residential), as well as building and electrical plan review. Two years after becoming an inspector, he was approached by a friend in the area asking him to fill in at an electrical seminar for him. After his first class Ryan was hooked, and is now a highly sought after seminar instructor. He has taught in several states, and loves helping people increase their understanding of the Code.

In 2005, Ryan met Mike Holt in Salt Lake City, and they became friends immediately. He helped Mike with his Understanding the NEC, Volume 2 videos and began editing his books as well. He believes that there are only a small handful of opportunities that change a person’s life and career, and meeting Mike was one of them.

When Ryan isn’t working, he can often be found in his garage turning wood on his lathe, or in the kitchen where he enjoys wine making. Ryan married his high school sweetheart, Sharie, and they have two beautiful children together: Kaitlynn and Aaron.

Lee Jolley began in the trade over 30 years ago, working for several companies in many aspects of the field. He feels fortunate to have worked with some great guys that taught him NEC requirements as much as the skills to do the work. Special thanks to Ronn, Chad, Dennis and Eddie for keeping me straight and arguing Code with me.

Lee went to work for the Baltimore County, Maryland government in 1990 as an electrical inspector. With great respect for the position, he strived to learn as much as he could about all the codes that are pertinent to our industry. In 1997 Lee started teaching at the Harford County Electrical Contractors Association apprenticeship program. There he learned how much he loved teaching. Leading electricians to doing their jobs in the safest methods possible was very rewarding. Lee also began doing seminars for electrical contractors several years ago. His seminars covered many of topics including the NEC changes since 2002, Grounding vs. Bonding, PV Systems changed by the NFPA 1, and many more. By using Mike Holt material, building power point programs from scratch, and adding his own sense of humor, he’s become a well-respected instructor and code official in the area.

Lee is first and foremost a very proud dad and grandfather. He loves his children as much as a man can. His daughter Lauren and granddaughter Ava are the lights of his life. His son Elijah joined the Marines in 2012 and works on F-18s and has his dad’s upmost respect. He also loves his Lord and Savior with all his heart.

Mike Pillarella holds a Master’s Degree in Education, a BA in Industrial Arts, and an AA in Electric and Electronics Engineering Technology. He became a Certified Electrical Related & Shop Instructor in the Massachusetts School system. In 1988, Mike established Electrical Contractors, Inc. (EMI) which provides electrical maintenance and installation services in the New England South Shore area.

In 2007, Mike established the proprietary Pillarella School of Electrical Code & Theory. While serving as an electrical inspector, he became increasingly aware of the areas in which more education was needed and structured his curriculum accordingly. His proudest moment as an instructor was when his son, Tim, earned his Master’s license—the first attendee of the school to do so. Mike holds master licenses in MA, RI, NH, VT and ME, and is an approved CEU provider and OSHA Outreach Construction instructor in these states. He’s President of the Massachusetts Electrical Contractors Association, Bristol Chapter, and President and Education Chairman of the International Association of Electrical Inspectors, Roger Williams Chapter.

Mike served for several years as an instructor for the MA Firefighters’ Academy teaching Electrical Safety, Fire, and Arson Investigation. He served his community for 17 years as a firefighter, EMT, and finished as Fire Chief.

Mike is extremely proud of his wife, Valerie, and their three children, Amy, Michael and Tim.

Eric Stromberg has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and is a professional engineer. He started in the electrical industry when he was a teenager helping the neighborhood electrician. After high school, and a year of college, Eric worked for a couple of different audio companies, installing sound systems in a variety of locations from small buildings to baseball stadiums. After returning to college he worked as a journeyman wireman for an electrical contractor.

After graduating from the University of Houston, Eric took a job as an electronic technician and installed and serviced life safety systems in high-rise buildings. After seven years he went to work for Dow Chemical as a power distribution engineer. His work with audio systems had made him very sensitive to grounding issues and he took this experience with him into power distribution. Because of this expertise, Eric became one of Dow’s grounding subject matter experts. This is also how Eric met Mike Holt, as Mike was looking for grounding experts for his 2002 Grounding vs. Bonding video.

Eric taught the National Electrical Code for professional engineering exam preparation for over 20 years, and has held continuing education teacher certificates for the states of Texas and New Mexico. He was on the electrical licensing and advisory board for the State of Texas, as well as on their electrician licensing exam board. Eric now consults for a Department of Energy research laboratory in New Mexico, where he’s responsible for the electrical standards as well as assisting the laboratory’s AHJ.

Eric’s oldest daughter lives with her husband in Zurich, Switzerland, where she teaches for an international school. His son served in the Air Force, has a degree in Aviation logistics, and is a pilot and owner of an aerial photography business. His youngest daughter is a singer/songwriter in Los Angeles.