Ruffin Blackard is the Training Coordinator and Trainer at the Circuit Technology Training Center.  Ruffin received his Bachelors in Engineering Technology from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.  He was born and raised just east of Raleigh, NC on a North Carolina Tobacco farm.

Ruffin spent the first 16 years of his career helping two small original equipment manufacturers support their products as their national service manager.  Responsible for customer support technical training of field service installation technicians and writing support and installation manuals for both of these companies.  He spent a few years as a systems engineer responsible for integrating barcode reading and tracking equipment into industrial manufacturing assembly lines.

Ruffin assisted a local staffing company develop a solder training program to train workers so they could be very effective in their duties where the staffing agency placed them, companies like Nothern Telecom, Alcatel and IBM..  From here he accepted the position of Inside Sales Representative for Circuit Technology and became the training coordinator as the solder training industry began to boom.  It was a few short years before he accepted the position of trainer and quickly received his Instructor certification in JSTD-001, IPC 610, and IPC 7711/7721.  His first professional  solder training came from Pace, Inc. in the mid 90's