Tell us briefly about your professional background and your career prior to joining AireSpring.
I have 25 years of experience in the industry, having served most recently in various leadership capacities at Windstream, where I specialized in global accounts and strategic UCaaS sales, wholesale dark fiber, as well as SD-WAN. I also served as Director of Sales Engineering at Fusion (and at Birch Communications prior to its acquisition by Fusion). While in this role, I led the Sales Engineering team’s strategic direction and was instrumental in launching the company’s Sales Technology and Enablement organization to help grow its presence in the market.
I began my career as a Network Design Engineer/Crew Manager at NetCom International, contributing to nationwide implementation of structured cabling, wireless networks, and point-to-point wireless T1 circuits. I moved on from that position and spent 12 years at Cypress Communications, a provider specializing in white-glove customer service, in a sales engineering capacity, first in network and sales engineering roles and later as Director of Sales Engineering and Director of Implementation Services. While at Cypress Communications, I helped create one of the first hosted platforms—a NorTel-based platform that was a precursor to unified communications as a service (UCaaS).
I then joined Cbeyond as Director, Design Engineering, where I built and led a design engineering group for new installations and post-installation management. My key accomplishments at Cbeyond included successful launches of Cisco Meraki managed network products, Fortinet firewalls, and VeloCloud (VMware by Broadcom) SD-WAN solutions, as well as the implementation of a dozen executive business centers (EBCs) across the United States.
Tell us a bit about your role at AireSpring and how you support our partners.
My primary focus in this role is to build on the strong relationships that AireSpring has with our partners, to enable our solutions engineering organization to remain focused on our partners and continue to strengthen our processes to facilitate large enterprise and global solutions. In addition, I will be working with our Technology Solutions Distributors (TSDs) and partners, expanding existing relationships and building new ones.
I’m excited to be working alongside AireSpring Product Management and our suppliers like Cato, Fortinet, VMware/Broadcom, and Cisco to deliver cutting edge technology offerings such as SD-WAN and SASE globally. I’ve also been attending various events and meeting partners out in the field, getting involved in opportunities, and taking part in design work.
What do you like about working at AireSpring?
One of the major things I like about AireSpring is that we’re a customer-focused organization. Even after 23 years, the leadership at AireSpring still has that startup mentality where everyone pitches in to ensure the success of the company—it’s a teamwork-oriented environment. No one here has ever said to me, “that’s not my job.” It’s all hands-on-deck. I also appreciate working with such a talented team of SEs who have long tenure with AireSpring as well as extremely experienced, industry-respected leadership, like AireSpring SVP Solutions Engineering Mike Chase and the Lonsteins (Avi Lonstein, CEO; Daniel Lonstein, President and CRO, and David Lonstein, EVP Product Management). We have a wealth of experience at this company, which benefits our partners and their customers tremendously.
As a family owned and operated, debt-free company, AireSpring has the kind of stability that is rare in telecom. We’re also not afraid to expand our offerings as the market changes and provide crucial solutions like secure access service edge (SASE)—not being reluctant to change is an important quality to have in an ever-changing industry like ours. Plus, we offer an exceptional level of support with an escalation list up to the CEO as well as AIreCONTROL, our automated IT service management platform.
Tell us about your hobbies outside of work.
I have a deep musical background. I’m a drummer and a singer, and I’ve played in a lot of different bands—mostly gospel music. I play in churches and in arenas, and I’ve even performed at Graceland for their gospel music festival for two years in a row, and that was quite an experience.
I enjoy spending time with my family, including my grandkids. I have two kids and seven grandkids, so that takes up a lot of my time as well.
