Video Team for 2017 Bonding and Grounding textbook & DVDs

Mike Bauerla is a master electrician and professional educator with over thirty years of experience in the electrical industry. He comes from a family with a heritage in the field and began as an apprentice electrician. He then worked his way up to journeyman, master, estimator, project manager, and is now a contractor. In 2010, he added education as a new era in his career by joining the staff at Prosser Career Education Center in New Albany, Indiana. He teaches first year electrical apprenticeship classes to high school juniors and seniors, along with motors, motor control, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), automation, and of course the NEC.

Mike also is an instructor at the local electrical apprenticeship schools where he teaches apprenticeship and electrical exam preparation classes, and is certified by the state of Kentucky to teach continuing education courses for electrical licenses, which he does monthly.
In addition, Mike is currently a student at Ivy Tech Community College, and is studying for a degree in Industrial Technology with a concentration in electrical. He’s presently anticipating a position in the spring at Ivy Tech as an Adjunct Instructor.

Mike and his wife Nancy are richly blessed with their daughter Madelyn 17, and have enjoyed 28 years of marriage. In his off time, Mike is a musician and plays guitar regularly in the praise and worship team at his church each week. If he’s not working on his passion, the pursuit of education, he’s in church.

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

Scott Harding began his electrical career as an electrician’s helper working part time in the family business. After graduating with an Electrical Engineering degree from Clemson University, he worked as an electrical engineer for RTKL Associates, a large design firm located in Baltimore, MD. 

After leaving RTKL, Scott went to work at F.B. Harding, Inc. an Electrical Contractor where he’s been for the last 34 years. He is a licensed Master Electrician in multiple jurisdictions and is the current President and CEO of F.B. Harding, Inc, making the family business a third generation company. Scott also serves on NEC Code-Making Panel Number 5 (Grounding and Bonding) and worked on the 2005, 2008, 2011, 2014, 2017 and 2020 cycles. He served as the panel chairman for the 2023 cycle.
Scott lives in Maryland and is married with two kids

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.

Samuel Rokowski is an outgoing, fun-loving, ambitious individual. His journey in the electrical field started began in 2003 as a JATC apprentice, and then he became a jJourneymean Wwireman. While Wworking at Walt Disney World, Sam has experienced a wide range of electrical installations including Motorsmotors, Mmotor Ccontrol Ccircuits, Ddistribution Ccenters, Transformerstransformers, Sservice work, Rremodeling, and Nnew Cconstruction. He now works as a professional electrical Pplans Eexaminer and Iinspector for the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the Municipality municipality for Walt Disney World, and on the he weekends teaches Electrical electrical Ccontractor exam preparation courses.
 
Samuel is licensed by the State of Florida as a Licensed Pplans Eexaminer and Iinspector and is certified by the International Code Council and the International Association of Electrical Inspectors as by the State of Florida, and also a Certified Nnational Pplans Eexaminer and Iinspector. by the International Code Council and the International Association of Electrical Inspectors. In addition, Sam He also is a Licensed licensed Eelectrical Ccontractor in Florida, Ohio, Tennessee, Alabama, and is currently working on obtaining licensingbeing licensed in several other Sstates. He i’s also in final stages of being licensed as a Florida Building Code Administrator.
 
Sam enjoys spending early mornings at the gym with his wife Rachelly, and the evenings relaxing with her and their dogs. Together they work with several ministries in their Parishparish, and keep God as the focal point of their relationship.

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.

Rod Van Wart has 50 years of electrical experience and a passion for teaching. He served in the U.S. Navy and was a Chief Electrician. His last tour of duty, at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, found him as a curriculum developer and an instructor, and during his time there, he taught over 600 students.

After leaving the service Rod became an electrical inspector and ultimately a Certified Building Official. During his tenure as an inspector, he served as the Chair for the development of the International Code Council’s Electrical Certification Exams for Electrical Inspectors having oversight of their 8,000 question bank. Rod’s career path led him to Des Moines, Iowa where he was the Deputy Building Official until he retired in 2010. During that time Governor Chet Culver appointed him to the new Electrical Examining Board. His job was to help in the formation of the state-wide electrical permitting and inspection programs. Through his leadership and direction the State of Iowa holds an A+ rating for its electrical programs.

After his retirement, Rod established the Omega Institute for Continuing Education which provides electrical safety and Code education classes for license renewal in Iowa, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Missouri. This experience led him to provide classes nationwide for NASA, the U.S. Mint, the FAA, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, Barilla, Caterpillar, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Taylor Commercial Equipment, and BP (British Petroleum) to name a few.

Rod recently sat as Vice Chair under Dennis Neitzel for the development of the IEEE Marine Electrical Safety standards; a document that reflects personal electrical safety for longshoremen and dock workers. He has delivered white papers to National Electrical Testing Association (NETA) on power quality and harmonics as well as battery maintenance and testing issues.

Rod and his wife Tammy, a licensed Journeyman electrician with a Level 1 Instrumentation certification, live in Boone, Iowa, and own a gentleman's farm on small acreage. They have a blended family of two sons and a daughter who is a zookeeper at the Dallas Zoo. They’ve been blessed with seven grandchildren ranging in age from 22 on down to a 10-month-old infant. They love to travel, especially if it can be done while riding their motorcycles.