The paper is the least interesting part.
Degrees and certifications are easy to list and easy to skim. What a resume can't hold is what each one trained, and where that training shows up in the work. This page is the translation layer, the reason this combination doesn't have a common comparison.
The Record.
B.S., Criminal Justice
Before anything digital, my training was in investigation: how evidence is collected, what makes it admissible, how a case is built from fragments, and how easily a bad assumption contaminates a good conclusion.
What it trained
Evidentiary standards, investigative process, and the discipline of separating what you can prove from what you suspect.
Where it shows up
Audits that distinguish findings from hunches. Recommendations that cite their evidence. Reports that hold up when challenged.
M.P.S., Applied Intelligence
Graduate training in the intelligence cycle: collection planning, source evaluation, structured analytic techniques, competing hypotheses, and writing assessments for decision-makers who bear the consequences of being wrong.
This is the degree that makes me read search data differently. A traffic anomaly is an intelligence problem: multiple plausible explanations, incomplete data, pressure to act. The analyst's job is to rank hypotheses against evidence before anyone spends money on the wrong one.
What it trained
Structured analysis, collection strategy, assessment writing, and briefing senior decision-makers with calibrated confidence, not false certainty.
Where it shows up
Diagnosing a traffic decline as AI-answer interception rather than ranking loss, with evidence tested against competing explanations. Executive presentations built like intelligence briefs.
CompTIA A+ · Network+ · Security+
The full CompTIA trifecta: hardware and operating systems, networking from cable to protocol stack, and security from threat models to controls. Together they certify something specific: I understand the machine the website runs on, the network it travels, and the ways both get attacked.
What it trained
Systems from the metal up: DNS, TLS, routing, server behavior, hardening, and how failures cascade across layers.
Where it shows up
Technical SEO that doesn't stop at the crawl report: redirect chains read at the protocol level, Core Web Vitals traced to infrastructure causes, migration risks flagged before they become incidents.
IT Certificate & Google IT Support
Intensive, hands-on IT training: the deliberate retooling year where the analytical background and the technical career converged. Troubleshooting methodology, support operations, and documenting systems so the next person can run them.
What it trained
Diagnostic discipline under time pressure, ticket-driven work, and translating technical findings for non-technical people.
Where it shows up
Jira-tracked defect pipelines, documentation-first governance, and the instinct to leave every system more legible than I found it.
This Page Describes Itself.
{
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Nick Poole",
"alumniOf": [
"Georgetown University",
"Pennsylvania Western University"
],
"hasCredential": [
"M.P.S., Applied Intelligence",
"B.S., Criminal Justice",
"CompTIA A+", "CompTIA Network+",
"CompTIA Security+",
"Google IT Support Certificate"
]
}
Every credential on this page is also declared in its structured data, machine-readable to every engine that asks. Claims worth making are worth marking up.
The Separate Category.
Plenty of SEOs can read a keyword report. Some can read the source code. Very few were trained to treat a market the way an analyst treats a collection problem, and almost none carry security certifications into a content strategy meeting. Each credential here is common on its own. The intersection is not. An analyst's rigor, a technician's depth, a builder's hands, and a strategist's seat at the table. One person, one through-line, from evidence to execution.