Our Story
A team-training platform built for the people who run enterprise IT
CBT Nuggets started in 1999 when our founder, Dan Charbonneau, recorded the first IT training videos in a borrowed studio in Eugene, Oregon. He was a Microsoft trainer who had watched too many engineers cram for certification exams without ever touching the technology — and he wanted to build something better for the teams that ran enterprise IT.
Today, we're a team-training platform purpose-built for IT Directors. Every course is produced and delivered in-house by full-time subject-matter experts on staff. Hands-on virtual labs let engineers practice on real environments. N2K-aligned practice exams mirror the real certification blueprint. And Trainerbot — our IT-team Slack assistant — answers technical questions grounded exclusively in our expert content library.
We're independent and privately held. No private-equity churn, no curriculum-by-committee. The same trainers, instructional designers, and engineers who built the platform are still here, still shipping. That continuity is why customers like Charles IT, Vertikal6, and 23,000+ other organizations have stayed with us through cloud, DevOps, AI, and every certification refresh in between.
Our values
Passion, empathy, and accountability
The three tenets we hold ourselves, our vendors, and our partners to — codified in our Code of Conduct and reflected in how we run the platform.
Passion
Built by IT experts who care about the craft of teaching and the careers of the people who learn from us.
Empathy
Designed for the IT Director balancing a budget against compliance pressure, and the engineer studying for a certification at the end of a long day.
Accountability
Held to the standards in our Code of Conduct, our Privacy Policy, and our published security posture — by our team, our vendors, and our partners.
By the numbers
What 27 years of in-house training looks like
Sourced from internal systems and updated quarterly. Last reviewed against source-of-truth data within the past year.
23,000+
Organizations served
27+
Years training IT teams
2.6M
Training hours delivered
40+
Certification paths
Leadership
The team accountable for product, engineering, and customer trust
Single executive accountable for each function — including the information-security and procurement-review surfaces customers evaluate during due-diligence.
Dan Charbonneau
CEO & Founder
Founded CBT Nuggets in 1999 after years as a Microsoft trainer. Sets the long-term product direction toward team-readiness training — labs, certifications, and AI-grounded reference for working IT teams.
Shelly Galvin
Chief People Officer & Chief Revenue Officer
Leads people operations and revenue across the team-training business. Drives the corporate-social-responsibility program that pairs CBT Nuggets with self-sustaining-community partners.
Matt Bromley
Chief Learning Officer
Oversees curriculum, instructional design, and the in-house trainer roster. Owns the standard for course quality, certification alignment, and content provenance across the catalog.
Sean Sullivan
Chief Technology Officer
Leads platform engineering — virtual labs, the streaming infrastructure, and the AI grounding layer that powers Trainerbot. Owns reliability and security for every team customer.
Sam Calvert
Chief Information Officer
Owns information security and IT operations — including the controls that customer-trust reviewers and procurement teams evaluate during due-diligence.
Why teams choose us
The depth IT Directors look for
One expert per topic, virtual labs and N2K-aligned practice exams bundled into every team tier, compliance-aligned reporting, and Trainerbot answering questions in Slack from the same expert content library.
Corporate Social Responsibility
Community investment, headquartered in Eugene, Oregon
We pair CBT Nuggets with self-sustaining-community partners — programs that educate, encourage entrepreneurship, and stimulate local economies.
Ascend Home — ending homelessness in Lane County, Oregon
Since 2017 we've partnered with St. Vincent de Paul of Lane County to fund Ascend Home, a transitional-housing project completed in 2023 that gives families a stable footing while they secure permanent housing and employment.
Outside the Wire — IT careers for transitioning veterans
We provide free IT training to active-duty service members and veterans transitioning to civilian careers — over 9,000 users from every branch of the U.S. armed forces have used the program.
Workforce reskilling for displaced workers
We partner with HR teams and unemployment offices to provide free training to individuals affected by layoffs, helping technical workers move into IT operations, cloud, and security roles.
Reach the community-investment team