Dan Sinclair for Supervisor of Elections Biography

Dan Sinclair started in IT in 1982. When high school programming courses were not to par, he started spending his summers taking programming courses, learning to program robots, and learning computer aided design (CAD) and computer aided manufacturing (CAM).

In college, Dan’s major was computer engineering, both hardware and software. He continued on this subset of EE (electrical engineering) for three years, until switching to an accounting degree. Between engineering and accounting, he worked for a large electrical manufacturer handling sales and distribution. After years of work experience, he went back to school earning Microsoft certifications in networking (Systems Engineer), database design and implementation (Database Administrator), and programming (Solutions Developer). He also earned all of Cisco’s wireless certifications, and their coveted sales expert certification. Additionally, he became network security certified (CompTIA Security +). Dan worked as an IT Director, for programming and networking, and worked for a large database company who asked him to take over as head of software development. He later formed a network security company with CCIE’s (Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts) he met through the FBI’s Infragard, he was involved with.

At one point in 2001, Dan was asked to open a computer training company that had a four prong function of training, providing networking for local companies, providing programming for local companies, and creating internal software products for car dealerships. Dan was asked to switch from teaching database design, and performing networking for clients, to sales. When he realized most of the local IT people had never met each other, he created the IT Lunch group. Dan brought together the CIO’s, IT Directors, and staff for the government agencies, non-profit, and for profit companies in the five county area. He brought in national speakers and held equipment fairs, allowing local companies to have access to equipment they would normally not. The group became cohesive, and Dan maintains many of those relationships to this day. The idea for SWFRTP.org was gleaned from this group, by members of the IT Lunch Group. During that time, he also started the Young Professionals groups in Lee County, and Collier County, as well as helped a dozen other similar groups start around the state, country and continent. This was during the time HIPAA was rolling out, and he organized a HIPAA group, to pull together local hospitals and doctors offices, to work through the new HIPAA regulations together.

Dan has naturally gravitated to leadership roles since he was young. In high school, as captain of the football team, he helped take the team from a mediocre team in the years prior, to the champions. He started his own construction company at the age of 18. Dan’s family background comes from heavy industrial manufacturing. The family business started small, building shopping malls and arenas, and moving up to building paper mills, mines, and green energy powerplants, from Canada to Costa Rica, an over in Europe. In college, Dan was involved in every level of student government, sitting on the executive committee that ran a state wide system of colleges.

Since moving to Florida, Dan has typically mixed IT, real estate, and finance. To round out an experience, he owned a digitally focused advertising agency, back in the 90’s that also had a heavy focus on print media. This experience of dealing with print, helped down round out what he needed for the Supervisor of Elections job.

While Dan’s first interest in politics came from hearing stories of his great grandfather, who was a Member of Parliament in Canada (similar to a Congressman in the USA), for 29 years. During his public service to his local community, and the country, Dan McIvor was responsible for the project that made the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway, navigable for ships. Mr. Sinclair learned that MP McIvor was able to balance being a church minister and serve the people in government, which always impressed him.

Locally, Dan served on the board of the Red Cross for six years, has served on the Lee County Community Traffic Safety Team, the Lee County Business Disaster Preparedness Council, served the Ronald McDonald House, Jazz on the Green, and graduated from Leadership Lee County.

In addition to founding the Young Professionals, Dan took the presidency back over in 2012, and runs events now from as small as 20 to as large as 15,000 people. He typically creates, plans, promotes, and carries out the events. Last year he was asked to join the Horizon Council Committee on Young Professionals, and helped head up the subcommittee with two others.

Dan feels his strong project management skills, long term IT planning and project management skills, budgeting and general financial skills, and his experience running a companies, non-profits, and projects locally and elsewhere will be an asset to the Supervisor of Elections office. Dan has a short term, two year, and eight year plan for the office. He intends to leverage technology to make it quicker and easier to vote, dramatically increase fraud prevention, and save the county money. Mr. Sinclair’s primary goal is to provide better customer service to the registered voters of Lee County. He has proven outreach skills in the community that will allow him to increase voter turnout at the polls. Dan believes he is the only candidate who has the project management, long range planning, IT, negotiating, and public speaking skills to make the dramatic improvements to the Supervisor of Elections office that are so desperately needed. He has the ability and the vision to make the positive changes.