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Dr.
Michael Stephen Bird was born to Rev. John S. Bird and Ellen Bays Bird (now Bradley) in Clarksburg, WV on May 4, 1960. His family moved to Jacksonville, FL in the summer of
1964, then to Miami in 1966, and finally to Bradenton in 1972. His father was a minister for the United Methodist Church prior to his death in 1976 and his mother is a retired teacher. His only sibling, Debbie, was born three years before Michael
in 1957. She also became a teacher, so as you can see teaching was in his bloodline. He also has numerous nieces and nephews
in Florida and upstate New York. Michael went to the University of South Florida in Tampa and graduated in 1981
with a Bachelors Degree in Accounting. Michael is currently a college professor at Devry University and has a doctorate of
philosophy degree. His doctorate major was Organizational Management with an emphasis in Information Technology. He graduated
with honors from Bayshore high school in 1978 (number 20 in his class), cum laude from University of South Florida (BA), honors
from Nova Southeastern (MBA), and magna cum laude with a 4.0 average from Capella University (PhD). He completed both the
MBA and PhD while working full time. Michael’s hobbies include performing comedy, watching movies, and going
to activities with his wife. He is an active volunteer and currently is a member of the Sunrise Benevolent and Paternal Order of the Elks and Oceanside Emmaus. He attends church with his wife and they are practicing Christians. Twenty years ago, Michael married his beautiful wife, Ro Bird,
in May of 1990 and they raised three lovely children. Their son, Thomas, died in 2001. Two daughters remain, one lives in
Broward County and the other daughter lives in Chicago. The Birds are empty nesters and adopted two canine fur kids as puppies,
who are now senior citizens (in dog years). Prince will be 8 in June and Duke will be 8 in October. The Birds reside in Plantation,
Florida. Together, they look forward to a fun and exciting future.
Michael’s
career started at age 16, where he unloaded trucks and stocked shelves for Winn Dixie in Bradenton, Florida. At 18, he worked
as a teller and savings counselor at Manatee Federal. His first professional job at age 21 was a Financial Auditor in the
banking industry. From there, he went on to work as an Internal Fraud and Internal Control Specialist, Operational Efficiency
Specialist, Insurance Salesperson, and Information Systems Auditor. In 1988, he moved to Doral and started to work at Carnival
Cruise Lines where he was an IT Auditor, IT and Voice Systems Disaster Recovery Coordinator, Systems Security Manager, Application
Software Developer, IT Quality Control Analyst, Quality Assurance Supervisor, IT Software Project Manager, and IT Configuration
Management. There were times where Michael worked two positions at Carnival at the same time, where he developed the talent
of multi-tasking. Some key projects at Carnival included a comprehensive disaster recovery plan (1990), office services mailroom
system (1991), front end system security system for the mainframe (1992), automated mass compile system (1994), Y2K Project
– Mainframe, MAPPER Systems, and Vendor Management (1999), automated configuration management system for legacy application
(2002), and worked many other projects in various platforms (legacy and non-legacy applications). He retired early from Carnival
Cruise Lines and in 2005 he became a full time college professor at major university.
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