Our Work
Jon started out as an elementary school teacher. After several years, he decided to go back to school to earn a Master's degree. After completing his degree, he worked in the IT department at the university and taught several computer science classes at Triton College and at Concordia University.
After realizing he would never get a full time teaching position, Jon moved on to the private sector where he worked as a PC support specialist, systems administrator, SQL Server administrator, and PC and mainframe programmer.
After a number of years, Jon took a Sr. Consultant position at Deloitte where he worked for 8 years until Deloitte decided to get out of the public sector business of doing Medicaid claims processing for schools. Deloitte closed their doors but that opened others.
Along with several other individuals, Jon started his own company which continued to provide Medicaid claims processing for school districts in Illinois in addition to providing a web-based special education management toolset for school districts that helps them to comply with all of the state regulations in regards to special education. Jon and his business partner have over 50 years of combined experience in that area.
The switch from a physical data center to the cloud eliminated the networking and some of the system administration tasks and allows the Hawthorn Assiciates personnel to work remotely which made it possible for Jon to "escape" Illinois and move to Tennessee where the weather is nicer, the taxes are lower, the politicians aren't crooked, and the people are extremely friendly.
After getting her Master's degree in adult education, Beth started out working in higher education administration. She soon switched to become an academic advisor to undergraduate students. After working in Missouri and several universities in the Chicago area, she was promoted to be the Director of Academic Advising.
Beth eventually returned to Concordia as the head of advising but later took on a position at Loyola University's Stritch School of Medicine as the head of the student learning and assistance center. Beth later was promoted to Assistant Dean of Student Affairs where she served until moving to Tennessee.