How a Fresh-Faced Network Analyst Is Already Living Out NDIT’s Sidekick Spirit
The shingles were still warm from the afternoon sun when Quentin Brien—then a high schooler—climbed back up the ladder, hammer looped through his belt and sawdust sprinkled across his jeans. Below him, his grandmother’s roof in Belcourt, ND, had given way to a gnarly leak.
But above him stretched a masterpiece: the wide-open sky of the Turtle Mountains, reaching in every direction. It was a beautiful place to work, and the perfect setting to do something well for someone else.
That instinct had emerged early in life for Brien.
In elementary school, he and a few classmates found joy in constructing Little Free Libraries throughout his hometown of Rolla, ND. By high school, shop class offered new opportunities, from designing backyard sheds to discovering the satisfaction of taking a pile of raw materials and turning it into something useful.
Not much has changed. Brien still likes working with his hands. He enjoys being outside. And most of all, he appreciates knowing that what he’s creating will make someone else’s life a little better.
“I like building things,” he says simply. “Especially for the people I love.”
Quentin Brien credits his parents and other family members with helping shape his strong work ethic and instinct to help others—values he carries with him from home into his work at NDIT.
Cut From the Same Cloth
Brien has a unique range of interests. He not only loves building things—he loves comics, too.
He’s a self-described Marvel fan, a tradition he shares with his dad and younger brother that dates back to the first Iron Man movie in 2008. It’s something he geeks out about.
“We’ve gone to every Marvel movie since. I haven’t missed one,” he says proudly.
And perhaps fittingly, Brien has always been drawn to the role of the sidekick: the person who may not always be front and center, but who is there to help get the job done.
It’s a fitting connection to NDIT, where Chief Information Officer Corey Mock often describes the agency as being a sidekick to other state agencies—the team working behind the scenes, if you will, making sure the heroes serving citizens have the technology, systems, and support they need to win the day.
Full disclosure: NDIT Unplugged doesn’t typically feature someone this early in their tenure. Brien started in August 2026. But while he may be new to NDIT, the qualities we look for in a sidekick were clearly there from the start.
He's worth the spotlight.
Joining a Stellar Team
Brien works alongside roughly a dozen network engineers and a handful of analysts like himself. It’s a strong team—one he feels lucky to be part of. They feel lucky to have him, too.
“Collaborating with these guys is awesome,” he says. “They’re helping me grow, and I always feel like I can rely on them.”
Brien’s first few weeks have been spent getting his feet wet—job shadowing, working smaller tickets, and becoming familiar with NDIT’s tools and environment. But he’s already had a glimpse of the real-life pressure the job can bring.
Like when his first major incident came through: A cable had come loose, causing disruption across the state. Brien wasn’t part of the group handling the immediate fix, but he was watching closely—a sidekick standing at the ready, just in case.
“I was definitely chomping at the bit for that one,” he says. “But it was clear the team here had it handled. They’re such pros, and you can tell they’re always pushing themselves toward even better customer service. It’s a great group.”
Brien knows that the next call could come from anywhere: an agency, a school district, a courthouse, or even the Capitol. All potentially in the same day. He’s ready when it does.
Building on Customer Service
Brien’s appreciation for strong customer service is what ultimately landed him at NDIT. He says it largely stems from his time working at Scheels, the North Dakota-born sporting goods retailer known for putting a high emphasis on customer service.
For a self-described introvert, it was an unlikely but valuable training ground.
“To get anywhere in life, you have to have those soft skills,” he says. “You’ve got to be able to present yourself and connect with customers when they need you most.”
Those skills followed him into IT.
Previously working at Trinity Health in Minot, Brien started at the help desk before moving into infrastructure and networking—a role where the stakes could be, quite literally, life or death.
One of his clearest memories is the day the hospital’s entire Wi-Fi network went down, taking critical patient equipment offline in the process, from EKGs to operating-room devices. The system was supposed to fail over to an off-site backup.
But it didn’t.
So Brien went back to the basics: checking cables, checking power, checking network links. Eventually, he traced the outage to a known software bug that was crashing the system and preventing the failover.
The solution was refreshingly simple: delete the corrupted configuration file, upload a clean one, and bring the network back to life.
It was a lesson he has carried with him: Sometimes the biggest problems are solved by patiently working through the small ones.
“Even if it’s a small issue, when you get it fixed and you can break it down into layman’s terms as to why it wasn’t working, that person is a lot happier,” he says. “At the government level, we’re here to serve the people and make sure everything’s working as smoothly as possible. If we’re not doing that, we’re not doing our jobs.”
One of Us
Brien knows the well-worn question that comes with a career in IT: With skills like his, why not chase corporate opportunities in bigger cities? He’s heard it plenty of times, but the answer has always been simple.
North Dakota is home.
For Brien, there’s something meaningful about applying his skills close to the people and places that have shaped him. At NDIT, he’s found a team built around collaboration and service—and a place where his technical skills can make a real difference for people across the state.
“This is where my family is—both my biological family and my NDIT family,” he says. “There’s nowhere else I want to be.”
Brien may be new around here, but one thing is clear.
He’s a trusty sidekick, a supportive colleague—someone who’s built to serve.
He’s one of us.