Robert Schmidt is a certified public accountant and a certified internal auditor with more than 27 years experience in the finance and accounting profession. Prior to coming to Underline, Robert spent 22 years as a consultant guiding numerous clients from various industries on making their organizations run smoother and improving their policies, procedures, and processes. Robert married Florence in 1985 in Osengion Switzerland and had 2 girls who are now married and have children of their own.

Jeff Bankston leads Business Development for Underline Technologies. Jeff has 25 years of in-depth experience across a variety of telecommunications technologies, such as FTTH, Optical Transport, Routing, LTE/5G, and Cloud.  Jeff started his career at Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia in roles from software development to sales leadership, with accomplishments such as the deployment of the world’s first 5G Standalone Core on public cloud with DISH Wireless. Prior to joining Underline, Jeff led the Private Wireless business segment at Amazon Web Services, driving sales, business development and partnerships, culminating in the launch of new products such as AWS Private 5G.  Jeff draws on this wide base of business and technology acumen to drive successful outcomes for customers, partners, and stakeholders.

Jeff lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife Michelle and daughters Evelyn and Brooklyn.  He enjoys playing guitar and bass, wakesurfing, and woodworking.  He has Electrical Engineering and MBA degrees from the University of Texas at Dallas.

‍

Suzanne Heritage is Director of Community Partnerships & Policy at Underline, where she works hand in hand with communities to support their connectivity goals. Passionate about building—and amplifying—the conditions where communities can thrive, Suzanne has centered her career around cultivating partnerships that pair organizational growth with positive community impact.

Prior to joining Underline, Suzanne worked for findhelp, a social care technology start up, where she led business development and go-to-market strategy, generating and expanding partnerships with key industry stakeholders and state government markets. In this role she synthesized federal and state policy to inform business and product strategy, working closely with prospective clients to understand needs, identify and carve out opportunities, and foster and maintain strategic relationships centered on trust.

Suzanne attended The University of Texas at Austin, earning a Master of Science in Social Work.

Gus Prieto is a Technical Design Engineer at Underline, focused on bridging engineering and construction practices for efficient and successful infrastructure execution.

With more than 8 years of OSP telecom experience, Gus has taken on many roles, from drafting permits as a CAD technician, to transitioning into GIS designing routes and performing spatial queries/analysis as a Network Designer. He gained field experience as a Make-Ready Specialist and Production Manager, and in his last role before joining Underline, directed and leveraged 3rd party resources to meet production needs as an Associate PM. Throughout his many roles, Gus has developed a well-rounded understanding of the aspects that go into a network infrastructure build.

Gus attended Texas State University, earning a Bachelors of Science in Engineering Technology.

Cameron Scholze is a Network Designer at Underline. She has experience in OSP telecom design working on new markets for a large U.S. telecom company. With an excellent GIS education from the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater, she utilizes her background to improve the efficiency and efficacy of telecom design. Cameron grew up in an unincorporated rural town with limited access to resources. Seeing first-hand the detriment this has caused to her neighbors is what drives her interest in providing connectivity infrastructure to communities that need it most.

Bradley Hilton is a Senior Software Engineer at Underline and has more than eleven years of experience in software development. Prior to Underline, Bradley worked as an Interconnectivity Architect at Rocket.Chat with a focus on tools to enable businesses and communities to interconnect their various other communication tools. While at Rocket.Chat, he created the App Engine and the App Marketplace to distribute Rocket.Chat Apps. Bradley enjoys working with real estate and has built several solutions for helping manage it, including writing software to help manage owner finance loans. Bradley is passionate about family, faith, and spending time outdoors while hiking or mountain biking.

Kristen Gliniecki is a Cybersecurity Analyst at Underline. She graduated with honors from Baker College with a BS in Information Technology & Security, and a minor in Information Assurance. She has 12 years of experience in information technology with seven years specializing in cybersecurity in the defense industrial base. Her areas of expertise include vulnerability management, endpoint protection, security operations, incident response, security auditing, risk assessment, certification & accreditation, policy development, process optimization, compliance reporting, configuration management, and server administration.

Eric is the Head of Organizational Strategy at Underline, focused on execution strategy. He has varied experience building scalable operations and high-performing teams through hyper growth business cycles.

Eric started his career at Silicon Valley Bank working with early-stage tech companies and quickly transitioned to venture capital/private equity services, driving portfolio growth of more than 100% year-over-year for 6 years straight. From there, he moved to a CFO/COO role at Kapost, a marketing SaaS technology company, where he restructured the finance, operations, and HR functions to support a successful sale of the business to Upland Software (NASDAQ: UPLD) within 2 years. Since the sale in 2019, Eric has worked with various other early-to-mid stage businesses on alignment, scale, and tangible results (one of which grew revenue more than 14x during his 2 year tenure).

Eric has a BS in Business Administration with emphasis in finance, a certificate in entrepreneurial studies, and a minor in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Mia Komel is a Sr. Product Manager with more than 10 years of experience building products in startups as well as big companies. During her career she had the opportunity to work on B2B / B2C, marketplaces, and e-commerce products.

Her experience allows her to work tightly with engineering teams and engage various different types of stakeholders. Mia is obsessed with understanding user needs and pain points and looks at product simplicity and short cycles as a way to build products that users love.  She won a top award for innovation in Brazil prior to migrating to Silicon Valley.

Mia is experienced in agile methodologies and applying lean manufacturing strategies into product management to product / market fit.  She firmly believes that organizations that are able to understand and deliver products that balance user needs with long term technological viability tend to become leaders in their markets.

On any given weekend you will find her either playing with her modular synthesizers, listening to her growing vinyl collection or taking photos with her 4x5 wooden camera.

Ann Reck is the Senior Brand Designer at Underline. She has previously worked at many of the leading advertising agencies, and most recently helped grow the design department at a health and fitness startup. With more than 10 years of creative professional experience, she has a background in Design, Production, Art Direction, and Illustration. Ann uses these skills to create brand consistency through design and communications from start to finish.

Although born in Virginia, she has lived in Colorado, Boston, and now Philadelphia. Her passions consist of supporting Philly Sports, working out at her CrossFit gym, and collecting sneakers.

Gene Armstrong is a Senior Software Engineer at Underline and has more than ten years of experience in software development. Over his career, Gene has worked in many aspects of technology including networking, system administration, support, as well as back-end and front-end development. His experience in these areas has equipped him with the knowledge to build efficient and innovative software solutions focussed on positive user experiences.

Ryan Plum is the National Director of Technical Services at Underline. Ryan has more than 15 years of Fiber Splicing, Technical Field Services, Project Management, and Organizational Leadership Experience.

For more than a decade, Ryan worked for Ledcor in their Managed Technical Services Division as Field Services Supervisor, Project Manager, and most recently as Senior Business Services Manager. Ledcor is an Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractor in the Power, Mining, Oil, Gas, and Telecom sectors with more than 6500 employees and +$3B annual revenue. At Ledcor, Ryan led the PMO Office and Service Delivery for the U.S. and Canada, with monthly field volumes of more than 40,000 person hours per month across a variety of customer portfolios.

Professionally, Ryan is passionate about improvements and innovation; challenging the status quo is his default, while he seeks to better understand new ways of doing things.

Ryan has led teams and initiatives that have successfully changed business processes related to Resource Planning, SLA Reporting, Customer Onboarding, Training, Quality, and Operational Efficiencies.

Justin Holder is the Senior Outside Plant (OSP) Engineer at Underline. With more than 10 years of experience in the OSP industry, Justin specializes in the development of automated GIS processes along with hosting custom made web maps. He has worked on a wide range of fiber build outs internationally and domestically. His expertise involves implementing efficient processes to help get the product/deliverable out the door.

Christina Lynn is the Senior Product Designer at Underline. Her background as a technologist started as a technical writer for software and office infrastructure to support 11,000 retail offices, robotic process automation to handle technical support center reporting, and designing mobile platforms for users in a retail environment at 80,000 desks.

After moving into a role as a principal designer for an insurance distributor and healthcare services company, Christina implemented a new design library to advance the development of shared components for customer relationship management and clinical pharmacy tools. This enabled her team to introduce rapid prototyping into the intake and design process, which provided both business stakeholder and software engineers with essential interface references. Her experiences have given her the ability to creatively navigate technical limitations and articulate both complex and simple concepts into holistic and meaningful user experiences.

She strongly believes in dedicating talent toward initiatives that have a lasting and positive impact on communities.

As Underline's National Director of Construction, Tom has a 30-year career in the telecom industry. With experience in engineering, construction, and implementation services, Tom has overseen the construction of tens of thousands of plant miles associated with fiber-to-the-home projects deployed across all regions of North America.

Before joining Underline, Tom was Vice President of NX Utilities, a subsidiary of QualTek—a turnkey provider of infrastructure services to the telecommunications industries—where he built and directed teams of more than 500 people.

Before QualTek, Tom served as Vice President of Operations for Bay Networks, Inc, where he oversaw a call center and field operations that provided installation for more than 3000 buried fiber-optic service wires weekly.

Thomas Esposito is a Software Engineer at Underline focusing on API and Integration execution. He has 6 years of experience at companies ranging from startups to AT&T. Thomas has worked with a variety of technology environments in a full stack capacity, building both backend services and frontend components to consume them. His experiences have shaped his passions for system integration and information infrastructure.

Reid Drapp is the GIS Manager at Underline. Utilizing a Master’s of Science in GIS, along with his detail oriented approach to OSP network design, Reid specializes in geodatabase maintenance and the creation of automated QA/QC processes. Reid has more than a decade of experience working with geodata and was previously GIS Lead at Foresite Group, where he worked on the FTTH buildout of Huntsville Utilities and Verizon fiber deployments in cities including Seattle (WA), Cleveland (OH), Nashville (TN), and Knoxville (TN). Before Foresite Group, Reid was at Atlantic Engineering, working on Google Fiber in Austin (TX), and Actavo, building FTTX in the Caribbean. His expertise also includes a focus on value engineering and using GIS analysis to highlight design inefficiencies and equipment constraints to reduce costs and produce an accurate data driven billing of materials. With his versatile skill set and knowledge of both the geospatial and network engineering fields, Reid can efficiently guide a project from conception to completion, and be involved in both the technical aspects as well as the day-to-day production.

Nashwa Khalid is the Data Analyst at Underline. Passionate about data-driven decision making to maximize impact, she joined Underline after an extensive career in global health. Nashwa has successfully implemented evidence-based interventions to bridge health delivery gaps in Ghana, Pakistan, and the USA. Nashwa received her Master’s degree from The Fletcher School, Tufts University where her research focused on the nexus between foreign direct investment and entrepreneurship-led development in emerging economies.

Roy Coleman is a Senior Security Operations Engineer at Underline. He has more than 19 years of experience with modern information technology and tools across various industries and platforms. His background includes work with financial extranets, telecommunications service providers, the defense industrial base, and software development companies. As a career contractor, Roy has worked for companies including Raytheon and General Dynamics, in roles that include leading task orders for the Information Technology Directorate, and managing information assurance and certification efforts for federal agencies. He has been recognized for his leadership in cybersecurity on defense and national security related projects. Roy’s experience with Open Source has led him to specialize in integrating effective security solutions with operations on limited budgets.

Tiffany Kretler is the Senior Controller for Finance at Underline. She started her career at Deloitte focused on external audit for the private and public sector, then she was headhunted to join Toyota Financial Services to complete or lead international and domestic internal audits. At ARYZTA, a global food manufacturer, she was the subject matter expert for the Americas region in all things internal audit and internal controls; she synergized three companies’ policies into one standard operation procedure program for finance and operation functions and poise the region for long-term growth. When she joined the SunPower team, she led an outsourced accounting team to grow a commercial asset portfolio from 80 to 110+ assets. Tiffany has sharpened her experience developing and testing financial controls, operational controls, and internal policies and has been trained in auditing, preparing, and reporting financial statements, in both an internal and external role. Tiffany graduated with honors at Indiana University with a BS in Accounting, BS in Operations Management and a minor in Spanish. She is passionate about leading teams, initiatives, and projects in her professional and personal life.

Jason Thibodeau is the Senior DevOps Engineer at Underline. His background includes managing on-prem as well as cloud infrastructure for multiple large organizations including Tripadvisor, CVS/Health, and j2 Global. He brings a wealth of experience in infrastructure management, automation, and systems design to the group. Jason specializes in removing unneeded complexity and distilling systems to their minimum-necessary complexity, while maintaining or enhancing functionality. His deep knowledge and experience managing diverse systems gives him the type of intuition needed to build innovative, stable, and performant systems that integrate the latest technologies without compromising their integrity.

Christine Marlowe is the Community Engagement Manager at Underline. Passionate about connecting with the very people who live, work and socialize in specific communities, who make each so unique, Christine has had the pleasure of working closely with numerous constituencies while representing all levels of government– at the federal, state and local levels. Previously, Christine worked for the Democratic Leader, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer, as well as represented numerous NYC and NYS agencies for various infrastructure projects. She has experience developing and implementing brand messaging and strategic communication plans, in addition to dynamic public outreach strategies and community engagement events. Christine attended The University at Albany and earned her Master of Arts degree in Organizational Communication.

Jaime Espinosa is the Director of Industry Partnerships & Supply Chain Management at Underline. He has over 20 years of experience in Sales, Account Management, Project Management, Market Development, Consulting and Engineering. He has experience managing sales growth and experience with multi-channel distribution and account strategy domestically and internationally with multi-million dollar and long term revenue accounts. He started his career as a Project Manager with General Electric performing technical analysis, sales support, project viability, and supervising the refurbishment of power generation plants using PC-based supervision software SCADA, and PLC-based automation. From General Electric he went to Corning Optical Communications where he held different roles over 15 years: Field Engineer and Project Manager, Systems Engineer responsible for the Latin American markets, National Broadband Stimulus Account Manager responsible for a network of business associates and recipients of federal funding for broadband infrastructure projects, Manager for National Contractors, and Manager for Market and Business Development for Carrier Networks where he created the business strategy for Municipalities, Electric Membership Cooperatives and Rural Electric Cooperatives, and the next generation of FTTx projects in the Americas.

Harikrishna Rajagopalan is the Senior Network Engineer at Underline. After graduating with a Masters in Telecommunications, Hari started his career as a Voice and Telecommunications Engineer setting up Call Center Technology. Working as a Network Engineer at AT&T and GE, he gained competence in both Service provider and Data Center Networking.

He was the sole Network Engineer at Drew Marine managing more than 70 locations connected via MPLS technology. At Interactive Data, part of NYSE today, he helped design and maintain a world wide network which specialized in market data and ultra low latency networks.

At Dell Technologies, he was a member of a global team of Network experts which dealt with highly escalated and complicated issues of Enterprise and Data Center Network Technologies.

Throughout his career, he built and designed network infrastructure which was cutting edge as well as practical and is continuing the same at Underline.

Coty Beasley is the Head of Product and Design at Underline. His background combines Product Design, Product Management, and Computer Science to create software experiences that are usable, intuitive, and communicative.

A veteran of early-stage technology ventures, Coty has been a founding member of multiple startups, developing new technologies and industry-firsts. These experiences have exposed him to complex work in artificial intelligence, healthcare outcomes, medical devices, telecommunications, civic tech, fintech, robotics, and physiology.

After living in the Bay and braving the Austin heat for many years, he now lives in the Midwest with his wife, four cats, and a shollie. At any time, you can find him restoring vintage audiovisual equipment, growing vertical hydroponic gardens, or thumbing through an extensive vinyl collection.

Mark Kropilak serves as General Counsel for Underline. Mark is an attorney and business leader with vast experience in the areas of infrastructure investments, acquisitions, technology commercialization, and utility valuation. He has served as General Counsel and SVP of Business Development for large regulated utilities engaged in the water and wastewater profession. Mark spent over 20 years with Aqua America where he completed over 200 acquisitions and growth ventures, establishing the platform for investing over $2 Billion, growing the company from 250,000 customers to over 950,000 customers. Prior to Aqua, Mark was associated with Morgan Lewis and subsequently served as Of Counsel for Saul Ewing working on various regulatory matters. Mark has also served as CEO of a start-up water treatment company and has been a Board advisor to other technology companies engaged in water quality measurement and cloud-based applications for plant operators. Mark holds a law degree from Columbia University, an EMBA from Villanova University and undergraduate degrees in Economics and Accounting from Saint Vincent College.

Lance Addison leads Underline’s national and local fiber network Engineering, Construction, and Operations. He has more than 25 years of Wireline and Wireless industry experience in a variety of Operational, Financial, Construction, EHS, Logistics, and Employee Development support disciplines. Lance has been involved in building more than 30,000 route miles of fiber. Most recently, Lance was the Director of Telecom Operations for a Quanta Services business unit. Quanta is the nation’s largest publicly held (NYSE: PWR) Infrastructure Services Contractor with annual revenues exceeding $11B.

Over the past two decades, Lance has held senior management positions on both the Network Owner and Network Contractor segments of Wireline/Wireless industry including President/COO of Bear Communications, where he led a team of 1000 people building the business from $50M to $200M in revenue, and Vice President of UniTek Global Services, a preeminent Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) firm that focuses on large FTTP/x construction builds. Preceding network owner leadership roles include Charter Communications—the second largest cable provider and competitive local access providers Everest Connections (now Consolidated Communications) and McLeodUSA.

Kyle Glaeser is the Director of Emerging Networks at Underline. He started his career as a network design engineer working on projects for Google Fiber, AT&T, Verizon, and FTTH builds around the world. Using his background in GIS, Kyle created scripts and models to drive efficiencies into network designs, shaving millions of dollars off large builds. He began implementing GIS based innovations into the design, construction, and financing of large FTTH builds. After seeing a number of projects explode past their projected budgets, he created a program to use LiDAR collection data and autodesign tools to accurately analyze a market’s cost before construction. Through this work, Kyle took an interest in information infrastructure as the basis of smart city technologies, developing network architectures that are custom tailored to communities infrastructure needs. Upon learning about the emerging open access market and software defined networking, he became passionate about developing specific network use cases and architectures that would propel the open access model forward as the network of the future.

Josemar has more than ten years of experience building software and worked in every aspect of software development from ideas to architecture to Backend APIs and Frontend User Experiences. His expertise in all these areas gives him the perfect knowledge about what is required to build efficient, scalable, maintainable software platforms.

Previously to Underline, Josemar worked as Principal Software Engineer at Neighborly, working on financial services tools to create community demand for projects. In the past, Josemar helped build the first open-source crowdfunding platform for creative projects. Today, it is the biggest crowdfunding platform in South America.

Josemar is passionate about open source software; and believes that shared solutions are the foundation for efficiently building the next generation of software services while elevating the quality of the projects.

Jason White leads Engineering at Underline. For more than 30 years, Jason has provided thought leadership, guided cultural change, and applied his technological expertise to industries ranging from biotechnology and healthcare IT, to food processing, documentation management, digital wellness, and blockchain. Jason has repeatedly built innovative teams that pragmatically challenge the status quo, and has guided those teams to success. His previous major deployments have been in biotechnology and healthcare IT, in which he grew large teams of full-time employees, managed multi-million dollar budgets and helped close acquisitions and exit events by demonstrating technological excellence. Jason connects the dots between business vision, organizational structure, and technology strategy.

Bob Thompson is the Founder & CEO of Underline, a venture-backed company focused on deploying intelligent infrastructure for U.S. communities.

Prior to founding Underline, Bob served as SVP & Head of Corporate Finance Solutions for Guardian Life, where his mandate ranged from Treasury & Liquidity Risk Management, to Capital Markets Strategy and Balance Sheet Optimization, Corporate Development, M&A, and Strategic Investments. During his tenure with Guardian, Bob led a number of strategic initiatives, including serving as Chairman and President of Guardian Investor Services and Guardian Strategic Ventures.

Over the years, Bob has led multiple efforts including acting as Head of Capital Markets for a boutique insurance bank and Group Head of the Special Transactions Group at CIBC World Markets, working with the UBS Global Structured Products Group, and executing various first-of-their-kind derivative/concentrated risk transactions. In 2009, Bob and his wife founded One Life Missions, operating in the U.S. and internationally; as a result, Bob has worked in various missions and relief capacities in the U.S., Haiti, and Guatemala.

Bob attended Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, earning a Bachelors in Science of Foreign Service.

Eva Arevuo leads marketing and communications for Underline. Eva is an experienced communications strategist, with a passion for social impact ventures, civic tech, and urban innovation.

Before joining Underline, Eva led marketing and communications for Neighborly, managed a team of six as the Innovation Team Director at Small Girls PR, working on clients like GE, and ran corporate and executive communications at Change.org. Eva has also consulted on brand, policy, communications, and product marketing for a number of startups, investment firms, and advocacy groups. She has deep experience with brand positioning, strategic partnerships, executive thought leadership, content strategy and creation, and coordinated grassroots marketing campaigns.

Taking central communications roles, Eva has developed core branding and big ideas—from the power of business to scale social impact, to the role of city leaders to deliver opportunity to residents, and the impact of open access fiber networks to transform communities across the U.S. Eva was born and raised in London, and has a BA from the University of Oxford and Princeton University.

Robert Schmidt is a certified public accountant and a certified internal auditor with more than 27 years experience in the finance and accounting profession. Prior to coming to Underline, Robert spent 22 years as a consultant guiding numerous clients from various industries on making their organizations run smoother and improving their policies, procedures, and processes. Robert married Florence in 1985 in Osengion Switzerland and had 2 girls who are now married and have children of their own.

Jeff Bankston leads Business Development for Underline Technologies. Jeff has 25 years of in-depth experience across a variety of telecommunications technologies, such as FTTH, Optical Transport, Routing, LTE/5G, and Cloud.  Jeff started his career at Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia in roles from software development to sales leadership, with accomplishments such as the deployment of the world’s first 5G Standalone Core on public cloud with DISH Wireless. Prior to joining Underline, Jeff led the Private Wireless business segment at Amazon Web Services, driving sales, business development and partnerships, culminating in the launch of new products such as AWS Private 5G.  Jeff draws on this wide base of business and technology acumen to drive successful outcomes for customers, partners, and stakeholders.

Jeff lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife Michelle and daughters Evelyn and Brooklyn.  He enjoys playing guitar and bass, wakesurfing, and woodworking.  He has Electrical Engineering and MBA degrees from the University of Texas at Dallas.

‍

Suzanne Heritage is Director of Community Partnerships & Policy at Underline, where she works hand in hand with communities to support their connectivity goals. Passionate about building—and amplifying—the conditions where communities can thrive, Suzanne has centered her career around cultivating partnerships that pair organizational growth with positive community impact.

Prior to joining Underline, Suzanne worked for findhelp, a social care technology start up, where she led business development and go-to-market strategy, generating and expanding partnerships with key industry stakeholders and state government markets. In this role she synthesized federal and state policy to inform business and product strategy, working closely with prospective clients to understand needs, identify and carve out opportunities, and foster and maintain strategic relationships centered on trust.

Suzanne attended The University of Texas at Austin, earning a Master of Science in Social Work.

Gus Prieto is a Technical Design Engineer at Underline, focused on bridging engineering and construction practices for efficient and successful infrastructure execution.

With more than 8 years of OSP telecom experience, Gus has taken on many roles, from drafting permits as a CAD technician, to transitioning into GIS designing routes and performing spatial queries/analysis as a Network Designer. He gained field experience as a Make-Ready Specialist and Production Manager, and in his last role before joining Underline, directed and leveraged 3rd party resources to meet production needs as an Associate PM. Throughout his many roles, Gus has developed a well-rounded understanding of the aspects that go into a network infrastructure build.

Gus attended Texas State University, earning a Bachelors of Science in Engineering Technology.

Cameron Scholze is a Network Designer at Underline. She has experience in OSP telecom design working on new markets for a large U.S. telecom company. With an excellent GIS education from the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater, she utilizes her background to improve the efficiency and efficacy of telecom design. Cameron grew up in an unincorporated rural town with limited access to resources. Seeing first-hand the detriment this has caused to her neighbors is what drives her interest in providing connectivity infrastructure to communities that need it most.

Bradley Hilton is a Senior Software Engineer at Underline and has more than eleven years of experience in software development. Prior to Underline, Bradley worked as an Interconnectivity Architect at Rocket.Chat with a focus on tools to enable businesses and communities to interconnect their various other communication tools. While at Rocket.Chat, he created the App Engine and the App Marketplace to distribute Rocket.Chat Apps. Bradley enjoys working with real estate and has built several solutions for helping manage it, including writing software to help manage owner finance loans. Bradley is passionate about family, faith, and spending time outdoors while hiking or mountain biking.

Kristen Gliniecki is a Cybersecurity Analyst at Underline. She graduated with honors from Baker College with a BS in Information Technology & Security, and a minor in Information Assurance. She has 12 years of experience in information technology with seven years specializing in cybersecurity in the defense industrial base. Her areas of expertise include vulnerability management, endpoint protection, security operations, incident response, security auditing, risk assessment, certification & accreditation, policy development, process optimization, compliance reporting, configuration management, and server administration.

Eric is the Head of Organizational Strategy at Underline, focused on execution strategy. He has varied experience building scalable operations and high-performing teams through hyper growth business cycles.

Eric started his career at Silicon Valley Bank working with early-stage tech companies and quickly transitioned to venture capital/private equity services, driving portfolio growth of more than 100% year-over-year for 6 years straight. From there, he moved to a CFO/COO role at Kapost, a marketing SaaS technology company, where he restructured the finance, operations, and HR functions to support a successful sale of the business to Upland Software (NASDAQ: UPLD) within 2 years. Since the sale in 2019, Eric has worked with various other early-to-mid stage businesses on alignment, scale, and tangible results (one of which grew revenue more than 14x during his 2 year tenure).

Eric has a BS in Business Administration with emphasis in finance, a certificate in entrepreneurial studies, and a minor in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Mia Komel is a Sr. Product Manager with more than 10 years of experience building products in startups as well as big companies. During her career she had the opportunity to work on B2B / B2C, marketplaces, and e-commerce products.

Her experience allows her to work tightly with engineering teams and engage various different types of stakeholders. Mia is obsessed with understanding user needs and pain points and looks at product simplicity and short cycles as a way to build products that users love.  She won a top award for innovation in Brazil prior to migrating to Silicon Valley.

Mia is experienced in agile methodologies and applying lean manufacturing strategies into product management to product / market fit.  She firmly believes that organizations that are able to understand and deliver products that balance user needs with long term technological viability tend to become leaders in their markets.

On any given weekend you will find her either playing with her modular synthesizers, listening to her growing vinyl collection or taking photos with her 4x5 wooden camera.

Ann Reck is the Senior Brand Designer at Underline. She has previously worked at many of the leading advertising agencies, and most recently helped grow the design department at a health and fitness startup. With more than 10 years of creative professional experience, she has a background in Design, Production, Art Direction, and Illustration. Ann uses these skills to create brand consistency through design and communications from start to finish.

Although born in Virginia, she has lived in Colorado, Boston, and now Philadelphia. Her passions consist of supporting Philly Sports, working out at her CrossFit gym, and collecting sneakers.

Gene Armstrong is a Senior Software Engineer at Underline and has more than ten years of experience in software development. Over his career, Gene has worked in many aspects of technology including networking, system administration, support, as well as back-end and front-end development. His experience in these areas has equipped him with the knowledge to build efficient and innovative software solutions focussed on positive user experiences.

Ryan Plum is the National Director of Technical Services at Underline. Ryan has more than 15 years of Fiber Splicing, Technical Field Services, Project Management, and Organizational Leadership Experience.

For more than a decade, Ryan worked for Ledcor in their Managed Technical Services Division as Field Services Supervisor, Project Manager, and most recently as Senior Business Services Manager. Ledcor is an Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractor in the Power, Mining, Oil, Gas, and Telecom sectors with more than 6500 employees and +$3B annual revenue. At Ledcor, Ryan led the PMO Office and Service Delivery for the U.S. and Canada, with monthly field volumes of more than 40,000 person hours per month across a variety of customer portfolios.

Professionally, Ryan is passionate about improvements and innovation; challenging the status quo is his default, while he seeks to better understand new ways of doing things.

Ryan has led teams and initiatives that have successfully changed business processes related to Resource Planning, SLA Reporting, Customer Onboarding, Training, Quality, and Operational Efficiencies.

Justin Holder is the Senior Outside Plant (OSP) Engineer at Underline. With more than 10 years of experience in the OSP industry, Justin specializes in the development of automated GIS processes along with hosting custom made web maps. He has worked on a wide range of fiber build outs internationally and domestically. His expertise involves implementing efficient processes to help get the product/deliverable out the door.

Christina Lynn is the Senior Product Designer at Underline. Her background as a technologist started as a technical writer for software and office infrastructure to support 11,000 retail offices, robotic process automation to handle technical support center reporting, and designing mobile platforms for users in a retail environment at 80,000 desks.

After moving into a role as a principal designer for an insurance distributor and healthcare services company, Christina implemented a new design library to advance the development of shared components for customer relationship management and clinical pharmacy tools. This enabled her team to introduce rapid prototyping into the intake and design process, which provided both business stakeholder and software engineers with essential interface references. Her experiences have given her the ability to creatively navigate technical limitations and articulate both complex and simple concepts into holistic and meaningful user experiences.

She strongly believes in dedicating talent toward initiatives that have a lasting and positive impact on communities.

As Underline's National Director of Construction, Tom has a 30-year career in the telecom industry. With experience in engineering, construction, and implementation services, Tom has overseen the construction of tens of thousands of plant miles associated with fiber-to-the-home projects deployed across all regions of North America.

Before joining Underline, Tom was Vice President of NX Utilities, a subsidiary of QualTek—a turnkey provider of infrastructure services to the telecommunications industries—where he built and directed teams of more than 500 people.

Before QualTek, Tom served as Vice President of Operations for Bay Networks, Inc, where he oversaw a call center and field operations that provided installation for more than 3000 buried fiber-optic service wires weekly.

Thomas Esposito is a Software Engineer at Underline focusing on API and Integration execution. He has 6 years of experience at companies ranging from startups to AT&T. Thomas has worked with a variety of technology environments in a full stack capacity, building both backend services and frontend components to consume them. His experiences have shaped his passions for system integration and information infrastructure.

Reid Drapp is the GIS Manager at Underline. Utilizing a Master’s of Science in GIS, along with his detail oriented approach to OSP network design, Reid specializes in geodatabase maintenance and the creation of automated QA/QC processes. Reid has more than a decade of experience working with geodata and was previously GIS Lead at Foresite Group, where he worked on the FTTH buildout of Huntsville Utilities and Verizon fiber deployments in cities including Seattle (WA), Cleveland (OH), Nashville (TN), and Knoxville (TN). Before Foresite Group, Reid was at Atlantic Engineering, working on Google Fiber in Austin (TX), and Actavo, building FTTX in the Caribbean. His expertise also includes a focus on value engineering and using GIS analysis to highlight design inefficiencies and equipment constraints to reduce costs and produce an accurate data driven billing of materials. With his versatile skill set and knowledge of both the geospatial and network engineering fields, Reid can efficiently guide a project from conception to completion, and be involved in both the technical aspects as well as the day-to-day production.

Nashwa Khalid is the Data Analyst at Underline. Passionate about data-driven decision making to maximize impact, she joined Underline after an extensive career in global health. Nashwa has successfully implemented evidence-based interventions to bridge health delivery gaps in Ghana, Pakistan, and the USA. Nashwa received her Master’s degree from The Fletcher School, Tufts University where her research focused on the nexus between foreign direct investment and entrepreneurship-led development in emerging economies.

Roy Coleman is a Senior Security Operations Engineer at Underline. He has more than 19 years of experience with modern information technology and tools across various industries and platforms. His background includes work with financial extranets, telecommunications service providers, the defense industrial base, and software development companies. As a career contractor, Roy has worked for companies including Raytheon and General Dynamics, in roles that include leading task orders for the Information Technology Directorate, and managing information assurance and certification efforts for federal agencies. He has been recognized for his leadership in cybersecurity on defense and national security related projects. Roy’s experience with Open Source has led him to specialize in integrating effective security solutions with operations on limited budgets.

Tiffany Kretler is the Senior Controller for Finance at Underline. She started her career at Deloitte focused on external audit for the private and public sector, then she was headhunted to join Toyota Financial Services to complete or lead international and domestic internal audits. At ARYZTA, a global food manufacturer, she was the subject matter expert for the Americas region in all things internal audit and internal controls; she synergized three companies’ policies into one standard operation procedure program for finance and operation functions and poise the region for long-term growth. When she joined the SunPower team, she led an outsourced accounting team to grow a commercial asset portfolio from 80 to 110+ assets. Tiffany has sharpened her experience developing and testing financial controls, operational controls, and internal policies and has been trained in auditing, preparing, and reporting financial statements, in both an internal and external role. Tiffany graduated with honors at Indiana University with a BS in Accounting, BS in Operations Management and a minor in Spanish. She is passionate about leading teams, initiatives, and projects in her professional and personal life.

Jason Thibodeau is the Senior DevOps Engineer at Underline. His background includes managing on-prem as well as cloud infrastructure for multiple large organizations including Tripadvisor, CVS/Health, and j2 Global. He brings a wealth of experience in infrastructure management, automation, and systems design to the group. Jason specializes in removing unneeded complexity and distilling systems to their minimum-necessary complexity, while maintaining or enhancing functionality. His deep knowledge and experience managing diverse systems gives him the type of intuition needed to build innovative, stable, and performant systems that integrate the latest technologies without compromising their integrity.

Christine Marlowe is the Community Engagement Manager at Underline. Passionate about connecting with the very people who live, work and socialize in specific communities, who make each so unique, Christine has had the pleasure of working closely with numerous constituencies while representing all levels of government– at the federal, state and local levels. Previously, Christine worked for the Democratic Leader, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer, as well as represented numerous NYC and NYS agencies for various infrastructure projects. She has experience developing and implementing brand messaging and strategic communication plans, in addition to dynamic public outreach strategies and community engagement events. Christine attended The University at Albany and earned her Master of Arts degree in Organizational Communication.

Jaime Espinosa is the Director of Industry Partnerships & Supply Chain Management at Underline. He has over 20 years of experience in Sales, Account Management, Project Management, Market Development, Consulting and Engineering. He has experience managing sales growth and experience with multi-channel distribution and account strategy domestically and internationally with multi-million dollar and long term revenue accounts. He started his career as a Project Manager with General Electric performing technical analysis, sales support, project viability, and supervising the refurbishment of power generation plants using PC-based supervision software SCADA, and PLC-based automation. From General Electric he went to Corning Optical Communications where he held different roles over 15 years: Field Engineer and Project Manager, Systems Engineer responsible for the Latin American markets, National Broadband Stimulus Account Manager responsible for a network of business associates and recipients of federal funding for broadband infrastructure projects, Manager for National Contractors, and Manager for Market and Business Development for Carrier Networks where he created the business strategy for Municipalities, Electric Membership Cooperatives and Rural Electric Cooperatives, and the next generation of FTTx projects in the Americas.

Harikrishna Rajagopalan is the Senior Network Engineer at Underline. After graduating with a Masters in Telecommunications, Hari started his career as a Voice and Telecommunications Engineer setting up Call Center Technology. Working as a Network Engineer at AT&T and GE, he gained competence in both Service provider and Data Center Networking.

He was the sole Network Engineer at Drew Marine managing more than 70 locations connected via MPLS technology. At Interactive Data, part of NYSE today, he helped design and maintain a world wide network which specialized in market data and ultra low latency networks.

At Dell Technologies, he was a member of a global team of Network experts which dealt with highly escalated and complicated issues of Enterprise and Data Center Network Technologies.

Throughout his career, he built and designed network infrastructure which was cutting edge as well as practical and is continuing the same at Underline.

Coty Beasley is the Head of Product and Design at Underline. His background combines Product Design, Product Management, and Computer Science to create software experiences that are usable, intuitive, and communicative.

A veteran of early-stage technology ventures, Coty has been a founding member of multiple startups, developing new technologies and industry-firsts. These experiences have exposed him to complex work in artificial intelligence, healthcare outcomes, medical devices, telecommunications, civic tech, fintech, robotics, and physiology.

After living in the Bay and braving the Austin heat for many years, he now lives in the Midwest with his wife, four cats, and a shollie. At any time, you can find him restoring vintage audiovisual equipment, growing vertical hydroponic gardens, or thumbing through an extensive vinyl collection.

Mark Kropilak serves as General Counsel for Underline. Mark is an attorney and business leader with vast experience in the areas of infrastructure investments, acquisitions, technology commercialization, and utility valuation. He has served as General Counsel and SVP of Business Development for large regulated utilities engaged in the water and wastewater profession. Mark spent over 20 years with Aqua America where he completed over 200 acquisitions and growth ventures, establishing the platform for investing over $2 Billion, growing the company from 250,000 customers to over 950,000 customers. Prior to Aqua, Mark was associated with Morgan Lewis and subsequently served as Of Counsel for Saul Ewing working on various regulatory matters. Mark has also served as CEO of a start-up water treatment company and has been a Board advisor to other technology companies engaged in water quality measurement and cloud-based applications for plant operators. Mark holds a law degree from Columbia University, an EMBA from Villanova University and undergraduate degrees in Economics and Accounting from Saint Vincent College.

Lance Addison leads Underline’s national and local fiber network Engineering, Construction, and Operations. He has more than 25 years of Wireline and Wireless industry experience in a variety of Operational, Financial, Construction, EHS, Logistics, and Employee Development support disciplines. Lance has been involved in building more than 30,000 route miles of fiber. Most recently, Lance was the Director of Telecom Operations for a Quanta Services business unit. Quanta is the nation’s largest publicly held (NYSE: PWR) Infrastructure Services Contractor with annual revenues exceeding $11B.

Over the past two decades, Lance has held senior management positions on both the Network Owner and Network Contractor segments of Wireline/Wireless industry including President/COO of Bear Communications, where he led a team of 1000 people building the business from $50M to $200M in revenue, and Vice President of UniTek Global Services, a preeminent Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) firm that focuses on large FTTP/x construction builds. Preceding network owner leadership roles include Charter Communications—the second largest cable provider and competitive local access providers Everest Connections (now Consolidated Communications) and McLeodUSA.

Kyle Glaeser is the Director of Emerging Networks at Underline. He started his career as a network design engineer working on projects for Google Fiber, AT&T, Verizon, and FTTH builds around the world. Using his background in GIS, Kyle created scripts and models to drive efficiencies into network designs, shaving millions of dollars off large builds. He began implementing GIS based innovations into the design, construction, and financing of large FTTH builds. After seeing a number of projects explode past their projected budgets, he created a program to use LiDAR collection data and autodesign tools to accurately analyze a market’s cost before construction. Through this work, Kyle took an interest in information infrastructure as the basis of smart city technologies, developing network architectures that are custom tailored to communities infrastructure needs. Upon learning about the emerging open access market and software defined networking, he became passionate about developing specific network use cases and architectures that would propel the open access model forward as the network of the future.

Josemar has more than ten years of experience building software and worked in every aspect of software development from ideas to architecture to Backend APIs and Frontend User Experiences. His expertise in all these areas gives him the perfect knowledge about what is required to build efficient, scalable, maintainable software platforms.

Previously to Underline, Josemar worked as Principal Software Engineer at Neighborly, working on financial services tools to create community demand for projects. In the past, Josemar helped build the first open-source crowdfunding platform for creative projects. Today, it is the biggest crowdfunding platform in South America.

Josemar is passionate about open source software; and believes that shared solutions are the foundation for efficiently building the next generation of software services while elevating the quality of the projects.

Jason White leads Engineering at Underline. For more than 30 years, Jason has provided thought leadership, guided cultural change, and applied his technological expertise to industries ranging from biotechnology and healthcare IT, to food processing, documentation management, digital wellness, and blockchain. Jason has repeatedly built innovative teams that pragmatically challenge the status quo, and has guided those teams to success. His previous major deployments have been in biotechnology and healthcare IT, in which he grew large teams of full-time employees, managed multi-million dollar budgets and helped close acquisitions and exit events by demonstrating technological excellence. Jason connects the dots between business vision, organizational structure, and technology strategy.

Bob Thompson is the Founder & CEO of Underline, a venture-backed company focused on deploying intelligent infrastructure for U.S. communities.

Prior to founding Underline, Bob served as SVP & Head of Corporate Finance Solutions for Guardian Life, where his mandate ranged from Treasury & Liquidity Risk Management, to Capital Markets Strategy and Balance Sheet Optimization, Corporate Development, M&A, and Strategic Investments. During his tenure with Guardian, Bob led a number of strategic initiatives, including serving as Chairman and President of Guardian Investor Services and Guardian Strategic Ventures.

Over the years, Bob has led multiple efforts including acting as Head of Capital Markets for a boutique insurance bank and Group Head of the Special Transactions Group at CIBC World Markets, working with the UBS Global Structured Products Group, and executing various first-of-their-kind derivative/concentrated risk transactions. In 2009, Bob and his wife founded One Life Missions, operating in the U.S. and internationally; as a result, Bob has worked in various missions and relief capacities in the U.S., Haiti, and Guatemala.

Bob attended Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, earning a Bachelors in Science of Foreign Service.

Eva Arevuo leads marketing and communications for Underline. Eva is an experienced communications strategist, with a passion for social impact ventures, civic tech, and urban innovation.

Before joining Underline, Eva led marketing and communications for Neighborly, managed a team of six as the Innovation Team Director at Small Girls PR, working on clients like GE, and ran corporate and executive communications at Change.org. Eva has also consulted on brand, policy, communications, and product marketing for a number of startups, investment firms, and advocacy groups. She has deep experience with brand positioning, strategic partnerships, executive thought leadership, content strategy and creation, and coordinated grassroots marketing campaigns.

Taking central communications roles, Eva has developed core branding and big ideas—from the power of business to scale social impact, to the role of city leaders to deliver opportunity to residents, and the impact of open access fiber networks to transform communities across the U.S. Eva was born and raised in London, and has a BA from the University of Oxford and Princeton University.

Robert Schmidt is a certified public accountant and a certified internal auditor with more than 27 years experience in the finance and accounting profession. Prior to coming to Underline, Robert spent 22 years as a consultant guiding numerous clients from various industries on making their organizations run smoother and improving their policies, procedures, and processes. Robert married Florence in 1985 in Osengion Switzerland and had 2 girls who are now married and have children of their own.

Jeff Bankston leads Business Development for Underline Technologies. Jeff has 25 years of in-depth experience across a variety of telecommunications technologies, such as FTTH, Optical Transport, Routing, LTE/5G, and Cloud.  Jeff started his career at Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia in roles from software development to sales leadership, with accomplishments such as the deployment of the world’s first 5G Standalone Core on public cloud with DISH Wireless. Prior to joining Underline, Jeff led the Private Wireless business segment at Amazon Web Services, driving sales, business development and partnerships, culminating in the launch of new products such as AWS Private 5G.  Jeff draws on this wide base of business and technology acumen to drive successful outcomes for customers, partners, and stakeholders.

Jeff lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife Michelle and daughters Evelyn and Brooklyn.  He enjoys playing guitar and bass, wakesurfing, and woodworking.  He has Electrical Engineering and MBA degrees from the University of Texas at Dallas.

‍

Suzanne Heritage is Director of Community Partnerships & Policy at Underline, where she works hand in hand with communities to support their connectivity goals. Passionate about building—and amplifying—the conditions where communities can thrive, Suzanne has centered her career around cultivating partnerships that pair organizational growth with positive community impact.

Prior to joining Underline, Suzanne worked for findhelp, a social care technology start up, where she led business development and go-to-market strategy, generating and expanding partnerships with key industry stakeholders and state government markets. In this role she synthesized federal and state policy to inform business and product strategy, working closely with prospective clients to understand needs, identify and carve out opportunities, and foster and maintain strategic relationships centered on trust.

Suzanne attended The University of Texas at Austin, earning a Master of Science in Social Work.

Gus Prieto is a Technical Design Engineer at Underline, focused on bridging engineering and construction practices for efficient and successful infrastructure execution.

With more than 8 years of OSP telecom experience, Gus has taken on many roles, from drafting permits as a CAD technician, to transitioning into GIS designing routes and performing spatial queries/analysis as a Network Designer. He gained field experience as a Make-Ready Specialist and Production Manager, and in his last role before joining Underline, directed and leveraged 3rd party resources to meet production needs as an Associate PM. Throughout his many roles, Gus has developed a well-rounded understanding of the aspects that go into a network infrastructure build.

Gus attended Texas State University, earning a Bachelors of Science in Engineering Technology.

Cameron Scholze is a Network Designer at Underline. She has experience in OSP telecom design working on new markets for a large U.S. telecom company. With an excellent GIS education from the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater, she utilizes her background to improve the efficiency and efficacy of telecom design. Cameron grew up in an unincorporated rural town with limited access to resources. Seeing first-hand the detriment this has caused to her neighbors is what drives her interest in providing connectivity infrastructure to communities that need it most.

Bradley Hilton is a Senior Software Engineer at Underline and has more than eleven years of experience in software development. Prior to Underline, Bradley worked as an Interconnectivity Architect at Rocket.Chat with a focus on tools to enable businesses and communities to interconnect their various other communication tools. While at Rocket.Chat, he created the App Engine and the App Marketplace to distribute Rocket.Chat Apps. Bradley enjoys working with real estate and has built several solutions for helping manage it, including writing software to help manage owner finance loans. Bradley is passionate about family, faith, and spending time outdoors while hiking or mountain biking.

Kristen Gliniecki is a Cybersecurity Analyst at Underline. She graduated with honors from Baker College with a BS in Information Technology & Security, and a minor in Information Assurance. She has 12 years of experience in information technology with seven years specializing in cybersecurity in the defense industrial base. Her areas of expertise include vulnerability management, endpoint protection, security operations, incident response, security auditing, risk assessment, certification & accreditation, policy development, process optimization, compliance reporting, configuration management, and server administration.

Eric is the Head of Organizational Strategy at Underline, focused on execution strategy. He has varied experience building scalable operations and high-performing teams through hyper growth business cycles.

Eric started his career at Silicon Valley Bank working with early-stage tech companies and quickly transitioned to venture capital/private equity services, driving portfolio growth of more than 100% year-over-year for 6 years straight. From there, he moved to a CFO/COO role at Kapost, a marketing SaaS technology company, where he restructured the finance, operations, and HR functions to support a successful sale of the business to Upland Software (NASDAQ: UPLD) within 2 years. Since the sale in 2019, Eric has worked with various other early-to-mid stage businesses on alignment, scale, and tangible results (one of which grew revenue more than 14x during his 2 year tenure).

Eric has a BS in Business Administration with emphasis in finance, a certificate in entrepreneurial studies, and a minor in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Mia Komel is a Sr. Product Manager with more than 10 years of experience building products in startups as well as big companies. During her career she had the opportunity to work on B2B / B2C, marketplaces, and e-commerce products.

Her experience allows her to work tightly with engineering teams and engage various different types of stakeholders. Mia is obsessed with understanding user needs and pain points and looks at product simplicity and short cycles as a way to build products that users love.  She won a top award for innovation in Brazil prior to migrating to Silicon Valley.

Mia is experienced in agile methodologies and applying lean manufacturing strategies into product management to product / market fit.  She firmly believes that organizations that are able to understand and deliver products that balance user needs with long term technological viability tend to become leaders in their markets.

On any given weekend you will find her either playing with her modular synthesizers, listening to her growing vinyl collection or taking photos with her 4x5 wooden camera.

Ann Reck is the Senior Brand Designer at Underline. She has previously worked at many of the leading advertising agencies, and most recently helped grow the design department at a health and fitness startup. With more than 10 years of creative professional experience, she has a background in Design, Production, Art Direction, and Illustration. Ann uses these skills to create brand consistency through design and communications from start to finish.

Although born in Virginia, she has lived in Colorado, Boston, and now Philadelphia. Her passions consist of supporting Philly Sports, working out at her CrossFit gym, and collecting sneakers.

Gene Armstrong is a Senior Software Engineer at Underline and has more than ten years of experience in software development. Over his career, Gene has worked in many aspects of technology including networking, system administration, support, as well as back-end and front-end development. His experience in these areas has equipped him with the knowledge to build efficient and innovative software solutions focussed on positive user experiences.

Ryan Plum is the National Director of Technical Services at Underline. Ryan has more than 15 years of Fiber Splicing, Technical Field Services, Project Management, and Organizational Leadership Experience.

For more than a decade, Ryan worked for Ledcor in their Managed Technical Services Division as Field Services Supervisor, Project Manager, and most recently as Senior Business Services Manager. Ledcor is an Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractor in the Power, Mining, Oil, Gas, and Telecom sectors with more than 6500 employees and +$3B annual revenue. At Ledcor, Ryan led the PMO Office and Service Delivery for the U.S. and Canada, with monthly field volumes of more than 40,000 person hours per month across a variety of customer portfolios.

Professionally, Ryan is passionate about improvements and innovation; challenging the status quo is his default, while he seeks to better understand new ways of doing things.

Ryan has led teams and initiatives that have successfully changed business processes related to Resource Planning, SLA Reporting, Customer Onboarding, Training, Quality, and Operational Efficiencies.

Justin Holder is the Senior Outside Plant (OSP) Engineer at Underline. With more than 10 years of experience in the OSP industry, Justin specializes in the development of automated GIS processes along with hosting custom made web maps. He has worked on a wide range of fiber build outs internationally and domestically. His expertise involves implementing efficient processes to help get the product/deliverable out the door.

Christina Lynn is the Senior Product Designer at Underline. Her background as a technologist started as a technical writer for software and office infrastructure to support 11,000 retail offices, robotic process automation to handle technical support center reporting, and designing mobile platforms for users in a retail environment at 80,000 desks.

After moving into a role as a principal designer for an insurance distributor and healthcare services company, Christina implemented a new design library to advance the development of shared components for customer relationship management and clinical pharmacy tools. This enabled her team to introduce rapid prototyping into the intake and design process, which provided both business stakeholder and software engineers with essential interface references. Her experiences have given her the ability to creatively navigate technical limitations and articulate both complex and simple concepts into holistic and meaningful user experiences.

She strongly believes in dedicating talent toward initiatives that have a lasting and positive impact on communities.

As Underline's National Director of Construction, Tom has a 30-year career in the telecom industry. With experience in engineering, construction, and implementation services, Tom has overseen the construction of tens of thousands of plant miles associated with fiber-to-the-home projects deployed across all regions of North America.

Before joining Underline, Tom was Vice President of NX Utilities, a subsidiary of QualTek—a turnkey provider of infrastructure services to the telecommunications industries—where he built and directed teams of more than 500 people.

Before QualTek, Tom served as Vice President of Operations for Bay Networks, Inc, where he oversaw a call center and field operations that provided installation for more than 3000 buried fiber-optic service wires weekly.

Thomas Esposito is a Software Engineer at Underline focusing on API and Integration execution. He has 6 years of experience at companies ranging from startups to AT&T. Thomas has worked with a variety of technology environments in a full stack capacity, building both backend services and frontend components to consume them. His experiences have shaped his passions for system integration and information infrastructure.

Reid Drapp is the GIS Manager at Underline. Utilizing a Master’s of Science in GIS, along with his detail oriented approach to OSP network design, Reid specializes in geodatabase maintenance and the creation of automated QA/QC processes. Reid has more than a decade of experience working with geodata and was previously GIS Lead at Foresite Group, where he worked on the FTTH buildout of Huntsville Utilities and Verizon fiber deployments in cities including Seattle (WA), Cleveland (OH), Nashville (TN), and Knoxville (TN). Before Foresite Group, Reid was at Atlantic Engineering, working on Google Fiber in Austin (TX), and Actavo, building FTTX in the Caribbean. His expertise also includes a focus on value engineering and using GIS analysis to highlight design inefficiencies and equipment constraints to reduce costs and produce an accurate data driven billing of materials. With his versatile skill set and knowledge of both the geospatial and network engineering fields, Reid can efficiently guide a project from conception to completion, and be involved in both the technical aspects as well as the day-to-day production.

Nashwa Khalid is the Data Analyst at Underline. Passionate about data-driven decision making to maximize impact, she joined Underline after an extensive career in global health. Nashwa has successfully implemented evidence-based interventions to bridge health delivery gaps in Ghana, Pakistan, and the USA. Nashwa received her Master’s degree from The Fletcher School, Tufts University where her research focused on the nexus between foreign direct investment and entrepreneurship-led development in emerging economies.

Roy Coleman is a Senior Security Operations Engineer at Underline. He has more than 19 years of experience with modern information technology and tools across various industries and platforms. His background includes work with financial extranets, telecommunications service providers, the defense industrial base, and software development companies. As a career contractor, Roy has worked for companies including Raytheon and General Dynamics, in roles that include leading task orders for the Information Technology Directorate, and managing information assurance and certification efforts for federal agencies. He has been recognized for his leadership in cybersecurity on defense and national security related projects. Roy’s experience with Open Source has led him to specialize in integrating effective security solutions with operations on limited budgets.

Tiffany Kretler is the Senior Controller for Finance at Underline. She started her career at Deloitte focused on external audit for the private and public sector, then she was headhunted to join Toyota Financial Services to complete or lead international and domestic internal audits. At ARYZTA, a global food manufacturer, she was the subject matter expert for the Americas region in all things internal audit and internal controls; she synergized three companies’ policies into one standard operation procedure program for finance and operation functions and poise the region for long-term growth. When she joined the SunPower team, she led an outsourced accounting team to grow a commercial asset portfolio from 80 to 110+ assets. Tiffany has sharpened her experience developing and testing financial controls, operational controls, and internal policies and has been trained in auditing, preparing, and reporting financial statements, in both an internal and external role. Tiffany graduated with honors at Indiana University with a BS in Accounting, BS in Operations Management and a minor in Spanish. She is passionate about leading teams, initiatives, and projects in her professional and personal life.

Jason Thibodeau is the Senior DevOps Engineer at Underline. His background includes managing on-prem as well as cloud infrastructure for multiple large organizations including Tripadvisor, CVS/Health, and j2 Global. He brings a wealth of experience in infrastructure management, automation, and systems design to the group. Jason specializes in removing unneeded complexity and distilling systems to their minimum-necessary complexity, while maintaining or enhancing functionality. His deep knowledge and experience managing diverse systems gives him the type of intuition needed to build innovative, stable, and performant systems that integrate the latest technologies without compromising their integrity.

Christine Marlowe is the Community Engagement Manager at Underline. Passionate about connecting with the very people who live, work and socialize in specific communities, who make each so unique, Christine has had the pleasure of working closely with numerous constituencies while representing all levels of government– at the federal, state and local levels. Previously, Christine worked for the Democratic Leader, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer, as well as represented numerous NYC and NYS agencies for various infrastructure projects. She has experience developing and implementing brand messaging and strategic communication plans, in addition to dynamic public outreach strategies and community engagement events. Christine attended The University at Albany and earned her Master of Arts degree in Organizational Communication.

Jaime Espinosa is the Director of Industry Partnerships & Supply Chain Management at Underline. He has over 20 years of experience in Sales, Account Management, Project Management, Market Development, Consulting and Engineering. He has experience managing sales growth and experience with multi-channel distribution and account strategy domestically and internationally with multi-million dollar and long term revenue accounts. He started his career as a Project Manager with General Electric performing technical analysis, sales support, project viability, and supervising the refurbishment of power generation plants using PC-based supervision software SCADA, and PLC-based automation. From General Electric he went to Corning Optical Communications where he held different roles over 15 years: Field Engineer and Project Manager, Systems Engineer responsible for the Latin American markets, National Broadband Stimulus Account Manager responsible for a network of business associates and recipients of federal funding for broadband infrastructure projects, Manager for National Contractors, and Manager for Market and Business Development for Carrier Networks where he created the business strategy for Municipalities, Electric Membership Cooperatives and Rural Electric Cooperatives, and the next generation of FTTx projects in the Americas.

Harikrishna Rajagopalan is the Senior Network Engineer at Underline. After graduating with a Masters in Telecommunications, Hari started his career as a Voice and Telecommunications Engineer setting up Call Center Technology. Working as a Network Engineer at AT&T and GE, he gained competence in both Service provider and Data Center Networking.

He was the sole Network Engineer at Drew Marine managing more than 70 locations connected via MPLS technology. At Interactive Data, part of NYSE today, he helped design and maintain a world wide network which specialized in market data and ultra low latency networks.

At Dell Technologies, he was a member of a global team of Network experts which dealt with highly escalated and complicated issues of Enterprise and Data Center Network Technologies.

Throughout his career, he built and designed network infrastructure which was cutting edge as well as practical and is continuing the same at Underline.

Coty Beasley is the Head of Product and Design at Underline. His background combines Product Design, Product Management, and Computer Science to create software experiences that are usable, intuitive, and communicative.

A veteran of early-stage technology ventures, Coty has been a founding member of multiple startups, developing new technologies and industry-firsts. These experiences have exposed him to complex work in artificial intelligence, healthcare outcomes, medical devices, telecommunications, civic tech, fintech, robotics, and physiology.

After living in the Bay and braving the Austin heat for many years, he now lives in the Midwest with his wife, four cats, and a shollie. At any time, you can find him restoring vintage audiovisual equipment, growing vertical hydroponic gardens, or thumbing through an extensive vinyl collection.

Mark Kropilak serves as General Counsel for Underline. Mark is an attorney and business leader with vast experience in the areas of infrastructure investments, acquisitions, technology commercialization, and utility valuation. He has served as General Counsel and SVP of Business Development for large regulated utilities engaged in the water and wastewater profession. Mark spent over 20 years with Aqua America where he completed over 200 acquisitions and growth ventures, establishing the platform for investing over $2 Billion, growing the company from 250,000 customers to over 950,000 customers. Prior to Aqua, Mark was associated with Morgan Lewis and subsequently served as Of Counsel for Saul Ewing working on various regulatory matters. Mark has also served as CEO of a start-up water treatment company and has been a Board advisor to other technology companies engaged in water quality measurement and cloud-based applications for plant operators. Mark holds a law degree from Columbia University, an EMBA from Villanova University and undergraduate degrees in Economics and Accounting from Saint Vincent College.

Lance Addison leads Underline’s national and local fiber network Engineering, Construction, and Operations. He has more than 25 years of Wireline and Wireless industry experience in a variety of Operational, Financial, Construction, EHS, Logistics, and Employee Development support disciplines. Lance has been involved in building more than 30,000 route miles of fiber. Most recently, Lance was the Director of Telecom Operations for a Quanta Services business unit. Quanta is the nation’s largest publicly held (NYSE: PWR) Infrastructure Services Contractor with annual revenues exceeding $11B.

Over the past two decades, Lance has held senior management positions on both the Network Owner and Network Contractor segments of Wireline/Wireless industry including President/COO of Bear Communications, where he led a team of 1000 people building the business from $50M to $200M in revenue, and Vice President of UniTek Global Services, a preeminent Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) firm that focuses on large FTTP/x construction builds. Preceding network owner leadership roles include Charter Communications—the second largest cable provider and competitive local access providers Everest Connections (now Consolidated Communications) and McLeodUSA.

Kyle Glaeser is the Director of Emerging Networks at Underline. He started his career as a network design engineer working on projects for Google Fiber, AT&T, Verizon, and FTTH builds around the world. Using his background in GIS, Kyle created scripts and models to drive efficiencies into network designs, shaving millions of dollars off large builds. He began implementing GIS based innovations into the design, construction, and financing of large FTTH builds. After seeing a number of projects explode past their projected budgets, he created a program to use LiDAR collection data and autodesign tools to accurately analyze a market’s cost before construction. Through this work, Kyle took an interest in information infrastructure as the basis of smart city technologies, developing network architectures that are custom tailored to communities infrastructure needs. Upon learning about the emerging open access market and software defined networking, he became passionate about developing specific network use cases and architectures that would propel the open access model forward as the network of the future.

Josemar has more than ten years of experience building software and worked in every aspect of software development from ideas to architecture to Backend APIs and Frontend User Experiences. His expertise in all these areas gives him the perfect knowledge about what is required to build efficient, scalable, maintainable software platforms.

Previously to Underline, Josemar worked as Principal Software Engineer at Neighborly, working on financial services tools to create community demand for projects. In the past, Josemar helped build the first open-source crowdfunding platform for creative projects. Today, it is the biggest crowdfunding platform in South America.

Josemar is passionate about open source software; and believes that shared solutions are the foundation for efficiently building the next generation of software services while elevating the quality of the projects.

Jason White leads Engineering at Underline. For more than 30 years, Jason has provided thought leadership, guided cultural change, and applied his technological expertise to industries ranging from biotechnology and healthcare IT, to food processing, documentation management, digital wellness, and blockchain. Jason has repeatedly built innovative teams that pragmatically challenge the status quo, and has guided those teams to success. His previous major deployments have been in biotechnology and healthcare IT, in which he grew large teams of full-time employees, managed multi-million dollar budgets and helped close acquisitions and exit events by demonstrating technological excellence. Jason connects the dots between business vision, organizational structure, and technology strategy.

Bob Thompson is the Founder & CEO of Underline, a venture-backed company focused on deploying intelligent infrastructure for U.S. communities.

Prior to founding Underline, Bob served as SVP & Head of Corporate Finance Solutions for Guardian Life, where his mandate ranged from Treasury & Liquidity Risk Management, to Capital Markets Strategy and Balance Sheet Optimization, Corporate Development, M&A, and Strategic Investments. During his tenure with Guardian, Bob led a number of strategic initiatives, including serving as Chairman and President of Guardian Investor Services and Guardian Strategic Ventures.

Over the years, Bob has led multiple efforts including acting as Head of Capital Markets for a boutique insurance bank and Group Head of the Special Transactions Group at CIBC World Markets, working with the UBS Global Structured Products Group, and executing various first-of-their-kind derivative/concentrated risk transactions. In 2009, Bob and his wife founded One Life Missions, operating in the U.S. and internationally; as a result, Bob has worked in various missions and relief capacities in the U.S., Haiti, and Guatemala.

Bob attended Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, earning a Bachelors in Science of Foreign Service.

Eva Arevuo leads marketing and communications for Underline. Eva is an experienced communications strategist, with a passion for social impact ventures, civic tech, and urban innovation.

Before joining Underline, Eva led marketing and communications for Neighborly, managed a team of six as the Innovation Team Director at Small Girls PR, working on clients like GE, and ran corporate and executive communications at Change.org. Eva has also consulted on brand, policy, communications, and product marketing for a number of startups, investment firms, and advocacy groups. She has deep experience with brand positioning, strategic partnerships, executive thought leadership, content strategy and creation, and coordinated grassroots marketing campaigns.

Taking central communications roles, Eva has developed core branding and big ideas—from the power of business to scale social impact, to the role of city leaders to deliver opportunity to residents, and the impact of open access fiber networks to transform communities across the U.S. Eva was born and raised in London, and has a BA from the University of Oxford and Princeton University.

Robert Schmidt is a certified public accountant and a certified internal auditor with more than 27 years experience in the finance and accounting profession. Prior to coming to Underline, Robert spent 22 years as a consultant guiding numerous clients from various industries on making their organizations run smoother and improving their policies, procedures, and processes. Robert married Florence in 1985 in Osengion Switzerland and had 2 girls who are now married and have children of their own.

Jeff Bankston leads Business Development for Underline Technologies. Jeff has 25 years of in-depth experience across a variety of telecommunications technologies, such as FTTH, Optical Transport, Routing, LTE/5G, and Cloud.  Jeff started his career at Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia in roles from software development to sales leadership, with accomplishments such as the deployment of the world’s first 5G Standalone Core on public cloud with DISH Wireless. Prior to joining Underline, Jeff led the Private Wireless business segment at Amazon Web Services, driving sales, business development and partnerships, culminating in the launch of new products such as AWS Private 5G.  Jeff draws on this wide base of business and technology acumen to drive successful outcomes for customers, partners, and stakeholders.

Jeff lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife Michelle and daughters Evelyn and Brooklyn.  He enjoys playing guitar and bass, wakesurfing, and woodworking.  He has Electrical Engineering and MBA degrees from the University of Texas at Dallas.

‍

Suzanne Heritage is Director of Community Partnerships & Policy at Underline, where she works hand in hand with communities to support their connectivity goals. Passionate about building—and amplifying—the conditions where communities can thrive, Suzanne has centered her career around cultivating partnerships that pair organizational growth with positive community impact.

Prior to joining Underline, Suzanne worked for findhelp, a social care technology start up, where she led business development and go-to-market strategy, generating and expanding partnerships with key industry stakeholders and state government markets. In this role she synthesized federal and state policy to inform business and product strategy, working closely with prospective clients to understand needs, identify and carve out opportunities, and foster and maintain strategic relationships centered on trust.

Suzanne attended The University of Texas at Austin, earning a Master of Science in Social Work.

Gus Prieto is a Technical Design Engineer at Underline, focused on bridging engineering and construction practices for efficient and successful infrastructure execution.

With more than 8 years of OSP telecom experience, Gus has taken on many roles, from drafting permits as a CAD technician, to transitioning into GIS designing routes and performing spatial queries/analysis as a Network Designer. He gained field experience as a Make-Ready Specialist and Production Manager, and in his last role before joining Underline, directed and leveraged 3rd party resources to meet production needs as an Associate PM. Throughout his many roles, Gus has developed a well-rounded understanding of the aspects that go into a network infrastructure build.

Gus attended Texas State University, earning a Bachelors of Science in Engineering Technology.

Cameron Scholze is a Network Designer at Underline. She has experience in OSP telecom design working on new markets for a large U.S. telecom company. With an excellent GIS education from the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater, she utilizes her background to improve the efficiency and efficacy of telecom design. Cameron grew up in an unincorporated rural town with limited access to resources. Seeing first-hand the detriment this has caused to her neighbors is what drives her interest in providing connectivity infrastructure to communities that need it most.

Bradley Hilton is a Senior Software Engineer at Underline and has more than eleven years of experience in software development. Prior to Underline, Bradley worked as an Interconnectivity Architect at Rocket.Chat with a focus on tools to enable businesses and communities to interconnect their various other communication tools. While at Rocket.Chat, he created the App Engine and the App Marketplace to distribute Rocket.Chat Apps. Bradley enjoys working with real estate and has built several solutions for helping manage it, including writing software to help manage owner finance loans. Bradley is passionate about family, faith, and spending time outdoors while hiking or mountain biking.

Kristen Gliniecki is a Cybersecurity Analyst at Underline. She graduated with honors from Baker College with a BS in Information Technology & Security, and a minor in Information Assurance. She has 12 years of experience in information technology with seven years specializing in cybersecurity in the defense industrial base. Her areas of expertise include vulnerability management, endpoint protection, security operations, incident response, security auditing, risk assessment, certification & accreditation, policy development, process optimization, compliance reporting, configuration management, and server administration.

Eric is the Head of Organizational Strategy at Underline, focused on execution strategy. He has varied experience building scalable operations and high-performing teams through hyper growth business cycles.

Eric started his career at Silicon Valley Bank working with early-stage tech companies and quickly transitioned to venture capital/private equity services, driving portfolio growth of more than 100% year-over-year for 6 years straight. From there, he moved to a CFO/COO role at Kapost, a marketing SaaS technology company, where he restructured the finance, operations, and HR functions to support a successful sale of the business to Upland Software (NASDAQ: UPLD) within 2 years. Since the sale in 2019, Eric has worked with various other early-to-mid stage businesses on alignment, scale, and tangible results (one of which grew revenue more than 14x during his 2 year tenure).

Eric has a BS in Business Administration with emphasis in finance, a certificate in entrepreneurial studies, and a minor in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Mia Komel is a Sr. Product Manager with more than 10 years of experience building products in startups as well as big companies. During her career she had the opportunity to work on B2B / B2C, marketplaces, and e-commerce products.

Her experience allows her to work tightly with engineering teams and engage various different types of stakeholders. Mia is obsessed with understanding user needs and pain points and looks at product simplicity and short cycles as a way to build products that users love.  She won a top award for innovation in Brazil prior to migrating to Silicon Valley.

Mia is experienced in agile methodologies and applying lean manufacturing strategies into product management to product / market fit.  She firmly believes that organizations that are able to understand and deliver products that balance user needs with long term technological viability tend to become leaders in their markets.

On any given weekend you will find her either playing with her modular synthesizers, listening to her growing vinyl collection or taking photos with her 4x5 wooden camera.

Ann Reck is the Senior Brand Designer at Underline. She has previously worked at many of the leading advertising agencies, and most recently helped grow the design department at a health and fitness startup. With more than 10 years of creative professional experience, she has a background in Design, Production, Art Direction, and Illustration. Ann uses these skills to create brand consistency through design and communications from start to finish.

Although born in Virginia, she has lived in Colorado, Boston, and now Philadelphia. Her passions consist of supporting Philly Sports, working out at her CrossFit gym, and collecting sneakers.

Gene Armstrong is a Senior Software Engineer at Underline and has more than ten years of experience in software development. Over his career, Gene has worked in many aspects of technology including networking, system administration, support, as well as back-end and front-end development. His experience in these areas has equipped him with the knowledge to build efficient and innovative software solutions focussed on positive user experiences.

Ryan Plum is the National Director of Technical Services at Underline. Ryan has more than 15 years of Fiber Splicing, Technical Field Services, Project Management, and Organizational Leadership Experience.

For more than a decade, Ryan worked for Ledcor in their Managed Technical Services Division as Field Services Supervisor, Project Manager, and most recently as Senior Business Services Manager. Ledcor is an Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractor in the Power, Mining, Oil, Gas, and Telecom sectors with more than 6500 employees and +$3B annual revenue. At Ledcor, Ryan led the PMO Office and Service Delivery for the U.S. and Canada, with monthly field volumes of more than 40,000 person hours per month across a variety of customer portfolios.

Professionally, Ryan is passionate about improvements and innovation; challenging the status quo is his default, while he seeks to better understand new ways of doing things.

Ryan has led teams and initiatives that have successfully changed business processes related to Resource Planning, SLA Reporting, Customer Onboarding, Training, Quality, and Operational Efficiencies.

Justin Holder is the Senior Outside Plant (OSP) Engineer at Underline. With more than 10 years of experience in the OSP industry, Justin specializes in the development of automated GIS processes along with hosting custom made web maps. He has worked on a wide range of fiber build outs internationally and domestically. His expertise involves implementing efficient processes to help get the product/deliverable out the door.

Christina Lynn is the Senior Product Designer at Underline. Her background as a technologist started as a technical writer for software and office infrastructure to support 11,000 retail offices, robotic process automation to handle technical support center reporting, and designing mobile platforms for users in a retail environment at 80,000 desks.

After moving into a role as a principal designer for an insurance distributor and healthcare services company, Christina implemented a new design library to advance the development of shared components for customer relationship management and clinical pharmacy tools. This enabled her team to introduce rapid prototyping into the intake and design process, which provided both business stakeholder and software engineers with essential interface references. Her experiences have given her the ability to creatively navigate technical limitations and articulate both complex and simple concepts into holistic and meaningful user experiences.

She strongly believes in dedicating talent toward initiatives that have a lasting and positive impact on communities.

As Underline's National Director of Construction, Tom has a 30-year career in the telecom industry. With experience in engineering, construction, and implementation services, Tom has overseen the construction of tens of thousands of plant miles associated with fiber-to-the-home projects deployed across all regions of North America.

Before joining Underline, Tom was Vice President of NX Utilities, a subsidiary of QualTek—a turnkey provider of infrastructure services to the telecommunications industries—where he built and directed teams of more than 500 people.

Before QualTek, Tom served as Vice President of Operations for Bay Networks, Inc, where he oversaw a call center and field operations that provided installation for more than 3000 buried fiber-optic service wires weekly.

Thomas Esposito is a Software Engineer at Underline focusing on API and Integration execution. He has 6 years of experience at companies ranging from startups to AT&T. Thomas has worked with a variety of technology environments in a full stack capacity, building both backend services and frontend components to consume them. His experiences have shaped his passions for system integration and information infrastructure.

Reid Drapp is the GIS Manager at Underline. Utilizing a Master’s of Science in GIS, along with his detail oriented approach to OSP network design, Reid specializes in geodatabase maintenance and the creation of automated QA/QC processes. Reid has more than a decade of experience working with geodata and was previously GIS Lead at Foresite Group, where he worked on the FTTH buildout of Huntsville Utilities and Verizon fiber deployments in cities including Seattle (WA), Cleveland (OH), Nashville (TN), and Knoxville (TN). Before Foresite Group, Reid was at Atlantic Engineering, working on Google Fiber in Austin (TX), and Actavo, building FTTX in the Caribbean. His expertise also includes a focus on value engineering and using GIS analysis to highlight design inefficiencies and equipment constraints to reduce costs and produce an accurate data driven billing of materials. With his versatile skill set and knowledge of both the geospatial and network engineering fields, Reid can efficiently guide a project from conception to completion, and be involved in both the technical aspects as well as the day-to-day production.

Nashwa Khalid is the Data Analyst at Underline. Passionate about data-driven decision making to maximize impact, she joined Underline after an extensive career in global health. Nashwa has successfully implemented evidence-based interventions to bridge health delivery gaps in Ghana, Pakistan, and the USA. Nashwa received her Master’s degree from The Fletcher School, Tufts University where her research focused on the nexus between foreign direct investment and entrepreneurship-led development in emerging economies.

Roy Coleman is a Senior Security Operations Engineer at Underline. He has more than 19 years of experience with modern information technology and tools across various industries and platforms. His background includes work with financial extranets, telecommunications service providers, the defense industrial base, and software development companies. As a career contractor, Roy has worked for companies including Raytheon and General Dynamics, in roles that include leading task orders for the Information Technology Directorate, and managing information assurance and certification efforts for federal agencies. He has been recognized for his leadership in cybersecurity on defense and national security related projects. Roy’s experience with Open Source has led him to specialize in integrating effective security solutions with operations on limited budgets.

Tiffany Kretler is the Senior Controller for Finance at Underline. She started her career at Deloitte focused on external audit for the private and public sector, then she was headhunted to join Toyota Financial Services to complete or lead international and domestic internal audits. At ARYZTA, a global food manufacturer, she was the subject matter expert for the Americas region in all things internal audit and internal controls; she synergized three companies’ policies into one standard operation procedure program for finance and operation functions and poise the region for long-term growth. When she joined the SunPower team, she led an outsourced accounting team to grow a commercial asset portfolio from 80 to 110+ assets. Tiffany has sharpened her experience developing and testing financial controls, operational controls, and internal policies and has been trained in auditing, preparing, and reporting financial statements, in both an internal and external role. Tiffany graduated with honors at Indiana University with a BS in Accounting, BS in Operations Management and a minor in Spanish. She is passionate about leading teams, initiatives, and projects in her professional and personal life.

Jason Thibodeau is the Senior DevOps Engineer at Underline. His background includes managing on-prem as well as cloud infrastructure for multiple large organizations including Tripadvisor, CVS/Health, and j2 Global. He brings a wealth of experience in infrastructure management, automation, and systems design to the group. Jason specializes in removing unneeded complexity and distilling systems to their minimum-necessary complexity, while maintaining or enhancing functionality. His deep knowledge and experience managing diverse systems gives him the type of intuition needed to build innovative, stable, and performant systems that integrate the latest technologies without compromising their integrity.

Christine Marlowe is the Community Engagement Manager at Underline. Passionate about connecting with the very people who live, work and socialize in specific communities, who make each so unique, Christine has had the pleasure of working closely with numerous constituencies while representing all levels of government– at the federal, state and local levels. Previously, Christine worked for the Democratic Leader, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer, as well as represented numerous NYC and NYS agencies for various infrastructure projects. She has experience developing and implementing brand messaging and strategic communication plans, in addition to dynamic public outreach strategies and community engagement events. Christine attended The University at Albany and earned her Master of Arts degree in Organizational Communication.

Jaime Espinosa is the Director of Industry Partnerships & Supply Chain Management at Underline. He has over 20 years of experience in Sales, Account Management, Project Management, Market Development, Consulting and Engineering. He has experience managing sales growth and experience with multi-channel distribution and account strategy domestically and internationally with multi-million dollar and long term revenue accounts. He started his career as a Project Manager with General Electric performing technical analysis, sales support, project viability, and supervising the refurbishment of power generation plants using PC-based supervision software SCADA, and PLC-based automation. From General Electric he went to Corning Optical Communications where he held different roles over 15 years: Field Engineer and Project Manager, Systems Engineer responsible for the Latin American markets, National Broadband Stimulus Account Manager responsible for a network of business associates and recipients of federal funding for broadband infrastructure projects, Manager for National Contractors, and Manager for Market and Business Development for Carrier Networks where he created the business strategy for Municipalities, Electric Membership Cooperatives and Rural Electric Cooperatives, and the next generation of FTTx projects in the Americas.

Harikrishna Rajagopalan is the Senior Network Engineer at Underline. After graduating with a Masters in Telecommunications, Hari started his career as a Voice and Telecommunications Engineer setting up Call Center Technology. Working as a Network Engineer at AT&T and GE, he gained competence in both Service provider and Data Center Networking.

He was the sole Network Engineer at Drew Marine managing more than 70 locations connected via MPLS technology. At Interactive Data, part of NYSE today, he helped design and maintain a world wide network which specialized in market data and ultra low latency networks.

At Dell Technologies, he was a member of a global team of Network experts which dealt with highly escalated and complicated issues of Enterprise and Data Center Network Technologies.

Throughout his career, he built and designed network infrastructure which was cutting edge as well as practical and is continuing the same at Underline.

Coty Beasley is the Head of Product and Design at Underline. His background combines Product Design, Product Management, and Computer Science to create software experiences that are usable, intuitive, and communicative.

A veteran of early-stage technology ventures, Coty has been a founding member of multiple startups, developing new technologies and industry-firsts. These experiences have exposed him to complex work in artificial intelligence, healthcare outcomes, medical devices, telecommunications, civic tech, fintech, robotics, and physiology.

After living in the Bay and braving the Austin heat for many years, he now lives in the Midwest with his wife, four cats, and a shollie. At any time, you can find him restoring vintage audiovisual equipment, growing vertical hydroponic gardens, or thumbing through an extensive vinyl collection.

Mark Kropilak serves as General Counsel for Underline. Mark is an attorney and business leader with vast experience in the areas of infrastructure investments, acquisitions, technology commercialization, and utility valuation. He has served as General Counsel and SVP of Business Development for large regulated utilities engaged in the water and wastewater profession. Mark spent over 20 years with Aqua America where he completed over 200 acquisitions and growth ventures, establishing the platform for investing over $2 Billion, growing the company from 250,000 customers to over 950,000 customers. Prior to Aqua, Mark was associated with Morgan Lewis and subsequently served as Of Counsel for Saul Ewing working on various regulatory matters. Mark has also served as CEO of a start-up water treatment company and has been a Board advisor to other technology companies engaged in water quality measurement and cloud-based applications for plant operators. Mark holds a law degree from Columbia University, an EMBA from Villanova University and undergraduate degrees in Economics and Accounting from Saint Vincent College.

Lance Addison leads Underline’s national and local fiber network Engineering, Construction, and Operations. He has more than 25 years of Wireline and Wireless industry experience in a variety of Operational, Financial, Construction, EHS, Logistics, and Employee Development support disciplines. Lance has been involved in building more than 30,000 route miles of fiber. Most recently, Lance was the Director of Telecom Operations for a Quanta Services business unit. Quanta is the nation’s largest publicly held (NYSE: PWR) Infrastructure Services Contractor with annual revenues exceeding $11B.

Over the past two decades, Lance has held senior management positions on both the Network Owner and Network Contractor segments of Wireline/Wireless industry including President/COO of Bear Communications, where he led a team of 1000 people building the business from $50M to $200M in revenue, and Vice President of UniTek Global Services, a preeminent Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) firm that focuses on large FTTP/x construction builds. Preceding network owner leadership roles include Charter Communications—the second largest cable provider and competitive local access providers Everest Connections (now Consolidated Communications) and McLeodUSA.

Kyle Glaeser is the Director of Emerging Networks at Underline. He started his career as a network design engineer working on projects for Google Fiber, AT&T, Verizon, and FTTH builds around the world. Using his background in GIS, Kyle created scripts and models to drive efficiencies into network designs, shaving millions of dollars off large builds. He began implementing GIS based innovations into the design, construction, and financing of large FTTH builds. After seeing a number of projects explode past their projected budgets, he created a program to use LiDAR collection data and autodesign tools to accurately analyze a market’s cost before construction. Through this work, Kyle took an interest in information infrastructure as the basis of smart city technologies, developing network architectures that are custom tailored to communities infrastructure needs. Upon learning about the emerging open access market and software defined networking, he became passionate about developing specific network use cases and architectures that would propel the open access model forward as the network of the future.

Josemar has more than ten years of experience building software and worked in every aspect of software development from ideas to architecture to Backend APIs and Frontend User Experiences. His expertise in all these areas gives him the perfect knowledge about what is required to build efficient, scalable, maintainable software platforms.

Previously to Underline, Josemar worked as Principal Software Engineer at Neighborly, working on financial services tools to create community demand for projects. In the past, Josemar helped build the first open-source crowdfunding platform for creative projects. Today, it is the biggest crowdfunding platform in South America.

Josemar is passionate about open source software; and believes that shared solutions are the foundation for efficiently building the next generation of software services while elevating the quality of the projects.

Jason White leads Engineering at Underline. For more than 30 years, Jason has provided thought leadership, guided cultural change, and applied his technological expertise to industries ranging from biotechnology and healthcare IT, to food processing, documentation management, digital wellness, and blockchain. Jason has repeatedly built innovative teams that pragmatically challenge the status quo, and has guided those teams to success. His previous major deployments have been in biotechnology and healthcare IT, in which he grew large teams of full-time employees, managed multi-million dollar budgets and helped close acquisitions and exit events by demonstrating technological excellence. Jason connects the dots between business vision, organizational structure, and technology strategy.

Bob Thompson is the Founder & CEO of Underline, a venture-backed company focused on deploying intelligent infrastructure for U.S. communities.

Prior to founding Underline, Bob served as SVP & Head of Corporate Finance Solutions for Guardian Life, where his mandate ranged from Treasury & Liquidity Risk Management, to Capital Markets Strategy and Balance Sheet Optimization, Corporate Development, M&A, and Strategic Investments. During his tenure with Guardian, Bob led a number of strategic initiatives, including serving as Chairman and President of Guardian Investor Services and Guardian Strategic Ventures.

Over the years, Bob has led multiple efforts including acting as Head of Capital Markets for a boutique insurance bank and Group Head of the Special Transactions Group at CIBC World Markets, working with the UBS Global Structured Products Group, and executing various first-of-their-kind derivative/concentrated risk transactions. In 2009, Bob and his wife founded One Life Missions, operating in the U.S. and internationally; as a result, Bob has worked in various missions and relief capacities in the U.S., Haiti, and Guatemala.

Bob attended Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, earning a Bachelors in Science of Foreign Service.

Eva Arevuo leads marketing and communications for Underline. Eva is an experienced communications strategist, with a passion for social impact ventures, civic tech, and urban innovation.

Before joining Underline, Eva led marketing and communications for Neighborly, managed a team of six as the Innovation Team Director at Small Girls PR, working on clients like GE, and ran corporate and executive communications at Change.org. Eva has also consulted on brand, policy, communications, and product marketing for a number of startups, investment firms, and advocacy groups. She has deep experience with brand positioning, strategic partnerships, executive thought leadership, content strategy and creation, and coordinated grassroots marketing campaigns.

Taking central communications roles, Eva has developed core branding and big ideas—from the power of business to scale social impact, to the role of city leaders to deliver opportunity to residents, and the impact of open access fiber networks to transform communities across the U.S. Eva was born and raised in London, and has a BA from the University of Oxford and Princeton University.

Robert Schmidt is a certified public accountant and a certified internal auditor with more than 27 years experience in the finance and accounting profession. Prior to coming to Underline, Robert spent 22 years as a consultant guiding numerous clients from various industries on making their organizations run smoother and improving their policies, procedures, and processes. Robert married Florence in 1985 in Osengion Switzerland and had 2 girls who are now married and have children of their own.

Jeff Bankston leads Business Development for Underline Technologies. Jeff has 25 years of in-depth experience across a variety of telecommunications technologies, such as FTTH, Optical Transport, Routing, LTE/5G, and Cloud.  Jeff started his career at Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia in roles from software development to sales leadership, with accomplishments such as the deployment of the world’s first 5G Standalone Core on public cloud with DISH Wireless. Prior to joining Underline, Jeff led the Private Wireless business segment at Amazon Web Services, driving sales, business development and partnerships, culminating in the launch of new products such as AWS Private 5G.  Jeff draws on this wide base of business and technology acumen to drive successful outcomes for customers, partners, and stakeholders.

Jeff lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife Michelle and daughters Evelyn and Brooklyn.  He enjoys playing guitar and bass, wakesurfing, and woodworking.  He has Electrical Engineering and MBA degrees from the University of Texas at Dallas.

‍

Suzanne Heritage is Director of Community Partnerships & Policy at Underline, where she works hand in hand with communities to support their connectivity goals. Passionate about building—and amplifying—the conditions where communities can thrive, Suzanne has centered her career around cultivating partnerships that pair organizational growth with positive community impact.

Prior to joining Underline, Suzanne worked for findhelp, a social care technology start up, where she led business development and go-to-market strategy, generating and expanding partnerships with key industry stakeholders and state government markets. In this role she synthesized federal and state policy to inform business and product strategy, working closely with prospective clients to understand needs, identify and carve out opportunities, and foster and maintain strategic relationships centered on trust.

Suzanne attended The University of Texas at Austin, earning a Master of Science in Social Work.

Gus Prieto is a Technical Design Engineer at Underline, focused on bridging engineering and construction practices for efficient and successful infrastructure execution.

With more than 8 years of OSP telecom experience, Gus has taken on many roles, from drafting permits as a CAD technician, to transitioning into GIS designing routes and performing spatial queries/analysis as a Network Designer. He gained field experience as a Make-Ready Specialist and Production Manager, and in his last role before joining Underline, directed and leveraged 3rd party resources to meet production needs as an Associate PM. Throughout his many roles, Gus has developed a well-rounded understanding of the aspects that go into a network infrastructure build.

Gus attended Texas State University, earning a Bachelors of Science in Engineering Technology.

Cameron Scholze is a Network Designer at Underline. She has experience in OSP telecom design working on new markets for a large U.S. telecom company. With an excellent GIS education from the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater, she utilizes her background to improve the efficiency and efficacy of telecom design. Cameron grew up in an unincorporated rural town with limited access to resources. Seeing first-hand the detriment this has caused to her neighbors is what drives her interest in providing connectivity infrastructure to communities that need it most.

Bradley Hilton is a Senior Software Engineer at Underline and has more than eleven years of experience in software development. Prior to Underline, Bradley worked as an Interconnectivity Architect at Rocket.Chat with a focus on tools to enable businesses and communities to interconnect their various other communication tools. While at Rocket.Chat, he created the App Engine and the App Marketplace to distribute Rocket.Chat Apps. Bradley enjoys working with real estate and has built several solutions for helping manage it, including writing software to help manage owner finance loans. Bradley is passionate about family, faith, and spending time outdoors while hiking or mountain biking.

Kristen Gliniecki is a Cybersecurity Analyst at Underline. She graduated with honors from Baker College with a BS in Information Technology & Security, and a minor in Information Assurance. She has 12 years of experience in information technology with seven years specializing in cybersecurity in the defense industrial base. Her areas of expertise include vulnerability management, endpoint protection, security operations, incident response, security auditing, risk assessment, certification & accreditation, policy development, process optimization, compliance reporting, configuration management, and server administration.

Eric is the Head of Organizational Strategy at Underline, focused on execution strategy. He has varied experience building scalable operations and high-performing teams through hyper growth business cycles.

Eric started his career at Silicon Valley Bank working with early-stage tech companies and quickly transitioned to venture capital/private equity services, driving portfolio growth of more than 100% year-over-year for 6 years straight. From there, he moved to a CFO/COO role at Kapost, a marketing SaaS technology company, where he restructured the finance, operations, and HR functions to support a successful sale of the business to Upland Software (NASDAQ: UPLD) within 2 years. Since the sale in 2019, Eric has worked with various other early-to-mid stage businesses on alignment, scale, and tangible results (one of which grew revenue more than 14x during his 2 year tenure).

Eric has a BS in Business Administration with emphasis in finance, a certificate in entrepreneurial studies, and a minor in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Mia Komel is a Sr. Product Manager with more than 10 years of experience building products in startups as well as big companies. During her career she had the opportunity to work on B2B / B2C, marketplaces, and e-commerce products.

Her experience allows her to work tightly with engineering teams and engage various different types of stakeholders. Mia is obsessed with understanding user needs and pain points and looks at product simplicity and short cycles as a way to build products that users love.  She won a top award for innovation in Brazil prior to migrating to Silicon Valley.

Mia is experienced in agile methodologies and applying lean manufacturing strategies into product management to product / market fit.  She firmly believes that organizations that are able to understand and deliver products that balance user needs with long term technological viability tend to become leaders in their markets.

On any given weekend you will find her either playing with her modular synthesizers, listening to her growing vinyl collection or taking photos with her 4x5 wooden camera.

Ann Reck is the Senior Brand Designer at Underline. She has previously worked at many of the leading advertising agencies, and most recently helped grow the design department at a health and fitness startup. With more than 10 years of creative professional experience, she has a background in Design, Production, Art Direction, and Illustration. Ann uses these skills to create brand consistency through design and communications from start to finish.

Although born in Virginia, she has lived in Colorado, Boston, and now Philadelphia. Her passions consist of supporting Philly Sports, working out at her CrossFit gym, and collecting sneakers.

Gene Armstrong is a Senior Software Engineer at Underline and has more than ten years of experience in software development. Over his career, Gene has worked in many aspects of technology including networking, system administration, support, as well as back-end and front-end development. His experience in these areas has equipped him with the knowledge to build efficient and innovative software solutions focussed on positive user experiences.

Ryan Plum is the National Director of Technical Services at Underline. Ryan has more than 15 years of Fiber Splicing, Technical Field Services, Project Management, and Organizational Leadership Experience.

For more than a decade, Ryan worked for Ledcor in their Managed Technical Services Division as Field Services Supervisor, Project Manager, and most recently as Senior Business Services Manager. Ledcor is an Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractor in the Power, Mining, Oil, Gas, and Telecom sectors with more than 6500 employees and +$3B annual revenue. At Ledcor, Ryan led the PMO Office and Service Delivery for the U.S. and Canada, with monthly field volumes of more than 40,000 person hours per month across a variety of customer portfolios.

Professionally, Ryan is passionate about improvements and innovation; challenging the status quo is his default, while he seeks to better understand new ways of doing things.

Ryan has led teams and initiatives that have successfully changed business processes related to Resource Planning, SLA Reporting, Customer Onboarding, Training, Quality, and Operational Efficiencies.

Justin Holder is the Senior Outside Plant (OSP) Engineer at Underline. With more than 10 years of experience in the OSP industry, Justin specializes in the development of automated GIS processes along with hosting custom made web maps. He has worked on a wide range of fiber build outs internationally and domestically. His expertise involves implementing efficient processes to help get the product/deliverable out the door.

Christina Lynn is the Senior Product Designer at Underline. Her background as a technologist started as a technical writer for software and office infrastructure to support 11,000 retail offices, robotic process automation to handle technical support center reporting, and designing mobile platforms for users in a retail environment at 80,000 desks.

After moving into a role as a principal designer for an insurance distributor and healthcare services company, Christina implemented a new design library to advance the development of shared components for customer relationship management and clinical pharmacy tools. This enabled her team to introduce rapid prototyping into the intake and design process, which provided both business stakeholder and software engineers with essential interface references. Her experiences have given her the ability to creatively navigate technical limitations and articulate both complex and simple concepts into holistic and meaningful user experiences.

She strongly believes in dedicating talent toward initiatives that have a lasting and positive impact on communities.

As Underline's National Director of Construction, Tom has a 30-year career in the telecom industry. With experience in engineering, construction, and implementation services, Tom has overseen the construction of tens of thousands of plant miles associated with fiber-to-the-home projects deployed across all regions of North America.

Before joining Underline, Tom was Vice President of NX Utilities, a subsidiary of QualTek—a turnkey provider of infrastructure services to the telecommunications industries—where he built and directed teams of more than 500 people.

Before QualTek, Tom served as Vice President of Operations for Bay Networks, Inc, where he oversaw a call center and field operations that provided installation for more than 3000 buried fiber-optic service wires weekly.

Thomas Esposito is a Software Engineer at Underline focusing on API and Integration execution. He has 6 years of experience at companies ranging from startups to AT&T. Thomas has worked with a variety of technology environments in a full stack capacity, building both backend services and frontend components to consume them. His experiences have shaped his passions for system integration and information infrastructure.

Reid Drapp is the GIS Manager at Underline. Utilizing a Master’s of Science in GIS, along with his detail oriented approach to OSP network design, Reid specializes in geodatabase maintenance and the creation of automated QA/QC processes. Reid has more than a decade of experience working with geodata and was previously GIS Lead at Foresite Group, where he worked on the FTTH buildout of Huntsville Utilities and Verizon fiber deployments in cities including Seattle (WA), Cleveland (OH), Nashville (TN), and Knoxville (TN). Before Foresite Group, Reid was at Atlantic Engineering, working on Google Fiber in Austin (TX), and Actavo, building FTTX in the Caribbean. His expertise also includes a focus on value engineering and using GIS analysis to highlight design inefficiencies and equipment constraints to reduce costs and produce an accurate data driven billing of materials. With his versatile skill set and knowledge of both the geospatial and network engineering fields, Reid can efficiently guide a project from conception to completion, and be involved in both the technical aspects as well as the day-to-day production.

Nashwa Khalid is the Data Analyst at Underline. Passionate about data-driven decision making to maximize impact, she joined Underline after an extensive career in global health. Nashwa has successfully implemented evidence-based interventions to bridge health delivery gaps in Ghana, Pakistan, and the USA. Nashwa received her Master’s degree from The Fletcher School, Tufts University where her research focused on the nexus between foreign direct investment and entrepreneurship-led development in emerging economies.

Roy Coleman is a Senior Security Operations Engineer at Underline. He has more than 19 years of experience with modern information technology and tools across various industries and platforms. His background includes work with financial extranets, telecommunications service providers, the defense industrial base, and software development companies. As a career contractor, Roy has worked for companies including Raytheon and General Dynamics, in roles that include leading task orders for the Information Technology Directorate, and managing information assurance and certification efforts for federal agencies. He has been recognized for his leadership in cybersecurity on defense and national security related projects. Roy’s experience with Open Source has led him to specialize in integrating effective security solutions with operations on limited budgets.

Tiffany Kretler is the Senior Controller for Finance at Underline. She started her career at Deloitte focused on external audit for the private and public sector, then she was headhunted to join Toyota Financial Services to complete or lead international and domestic internal audits. At ARYZTA, a global food manufacturer, she was the subject matter expert for the Americas region in all things internal audit and internal controls; she synergized three companies’ policies into one standard operation procedure program for finance and operation functions and poise the region for long-term growth. When she joined the SunPower team, she led an outsourced accounting team to grow a commercial asset portfolio from 80 to 110+ assets. Tiffany has sharpened her experience developing and testing financial controls, operational controls, and internal policies and has been trained in auditing, preparing, and reporting financial statements, in both an internal and external role. Tiffany graduated with honors at Indiana University with a BS in Accounting, BS in Operations Management and a minor in Spanish. She is passionate about leading teams, initiatives, and projects in her professional and personal life.

Jason Thibodeau is the Senior DevOps Engineer at Underline. His background includes managing on-prem as well as cloud infrastructure for multiple large organizations including Tripadvisor, CVS/Health, and j2 Global. He brings a wealth of experience in infrastructure management, automation, and systems design to the group. Jason specializes in removing unneeded complexity and distilling systems to their minimum-necessary complexity, while maintaining or enhancing functionality. His deep knowledge and experience managing diverse systems gives him the type of intuition needed to build innovative, stable, and performant systems that integrate the latest technologies without compromising their integrity.

Christine Marlowe is the Community Engagement Manager at Underline. Passionate about connecting with the very people who live, work and socialize in specific communities, who make each so unique, Christine has had the pleasure of working closely with numerous constituencies while representing all levels of government– at the federal, state and local levels. Previously, Christine worked for the Democratic Leader, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer, as well as represented numerous NYC and NYS agencies for various infrastructure projects. She has experience developing and implementing brand messaging and strategic communication plans, in addition to dynamic public outreach strategies and community engagement events. Christine attended The University at Albany and earned her Master of Arts degree in Organizational Communication.

Jaime Espinosa is the Director of Industry Partnerships & Supply Chain Management at Underline. He has over 20 years of experience in Sales, Account Management, Project Management, Market Development, Consulting and Engineering. He has experience managing sales growth and experience with multi-channel distribution and account strategy domestically and internationally with multi-million dollar and long term revenue accounts. He started his career as a Project Manager with General Electric performing technical analysis, sales support, project viability, and supervising the refurbishment of power generation plants using PC-based supervision software SCADA, and PLC-based automation. From General Electric he went to Corning Optical Communications where he held different roles over 15 years: Field Engineer and Project Manager, Systems Engineer responsible for the Latin American markets, National Broadband Stimulus Account Manager responsible for a network of business associates and recipients of federal funding for broadband infrastructure projects, Manager for National Contractors, and Manager for Market and Business Development for Carrier Networks where he created the business strategy for Municipalities, Electric Membership Cooperatives and Rural Electric Cooperatives, and the next generation of FTTx projects in the Americas.

Harikrishna Rajagopalan is the Senior Network Engineer at Underline. After graduating with a Masters in Telecommunications, Hari started his career as a Voice and Telecommunications Engineer setting up Call Center Technology. Working as a Network Engineer at AT&T and GE, he gained competence in both Service provider and Data Center Networking.

He was the sole Network Engineer at Drew Marine managing more than 70 locations connected via MPLS technology. At Interactive Data, part of NYSE today, he helped design and maintain a world wide network which specialized in market data and ultra low latency networks.

At Dell Technologies, he was a member of a global team of Network experts which dealt with highly escalated and complicated issues of Enterprise and Data Center Network Technologies.

Throughout his career, he built and designed network infrastructure which was cutting edge as well as practical and is continuing the same at Underline.

Coty Beasley is the Head of Product and Design at Underline. His background combines Product Design, Product Management, and Computer Science to create software experiences that are usable, intuitive, and communicative.

A veteran of early-stage technology ventures, Coty has been a founding member of multiple startups, developing new technologies and industry-firsts. These experiences have exposed him to complex work in artificial intelligence, healthcare outcomes, medical devices, telecommunications, civic tech, fintech, robotics, and physiology.

After living in the Bay and braving the Austin heat for many years, he now lives in the Midwest with his wife, four cats, and a shollie. At any time, you can find him restoring vintage audiovisual equipment, growing vertical hydroponic gardens, or thumbing through an extensive vinyl collection.

Mark Kropilak serves as General Counsel for Underline. Mark is an attorney and business leader with vast experience in the areas of infrastructure investments, acquisitions, technology commercialization, and utility valuation. He has served as General Counsel and SVP of Business Development for large regulated utilities engaged in the water and wastewater profession. Mark spent over 20 years with Aqua America where he completed over 200 acquisitions and growth ventures, establishing the platform for investing over $2 Billion, growing the company from 250,000 customers to over 950,000 customers. Prior to Aqua, Mark was associated with Morgan Lewis and subsequently served as Of Counsel for Saul Ewing working on various regulatory matters. Mark has also served as CEO of a start-up water treatment company and has been a Board advisor to other technology companies engaged in water quality measurement and cloud-based applications for plant operators. Mark holds a law degree from Columbia University, an EMBA from Villanova University and undergraduate degrees in Economics and Accounting from Saint Vincent College.

Lance Addison leads Underline’s national and local fiber network Engineering, Construction, and Operations. He has more than 25 years of Wireline and Wireless industry experience in a variety of Operational, Financial, Construction, EHS, Logistics, and Employee Development support disciplines. Lance has been involved in building more than 30,000 route miles of fiber. Most recently, Lance was the Director of Telecom Operations for a Quanta Services business unit. Quanta is the nation’s largest publicly held (NYSE: PWR) Infrastructure Services Contractor with annual revenues exceeding $11B.

Over the past two decades, Lance has held senior management positions on both the Network Owner and Network Contractor segments of Wireline/Wireless industry including President/COO of Bear Communications, where he led a team of 1000 people building the business from $50M to $200M in revenue, and Vice President of UniTek Global Services, a preeminent Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) firm that focuses on large FTTP/x construction builds. Preceding network owner leadership roles include Charter Communications—the second largest cable provider and competitive local access providers Everest Connections (now Consolidated Communications) and McLeodUSA.

Kyle Glaeser is the Director of Emerging Networks at Underline. He started his career as a network design engineer working on projects for Google Fiber, AT&T, Verizon, and FTTH builds around the world. Using his background in GIS, Kyle created scripts and models to drive efficiencies into network designs, shaving millions of dollars off large builds. He began implementing GIS based innovations into the design, construction, and financing of large FTTH builds. After seeing a number of projects explode past their projected budgets, he created a program to use LiDAR collection data and autodesign tools to accurately analyze a market’s cost before construction. Through this work, Kyle took an interest in information infrastructure as the basis of smart city technologies, developing network architectures that are custom tailored to communities infrastructure needs. Upon learning about the emerging open access market and software defined networking, he became passionate about developing specific network use cases and architectures that would propel the open access model forward as the network of the future.

Josemar has more than ten years of experience building software and worked in every aspect of software development from ideas to architecture to Backend APIs and Frontend User Experiences. His expertise in all these areas gives him the perfect knowledge about what is required to build efficient, scalable, maintainable software platforms.

Previously to Underline, Josemar worked as Principal Software Engineer at Neighborly, working on financial services tools to create community demand for projects. In the past, Josemar helped build the first open-source crowdfunding platform for creative projects. Today, it is the biggest crowdfunding platform in South America.

Josemar is passionate about open source software; and believes that shared solutions are the foundation for efficiently building the next generation of software services while elevating the quality of the projects.

Jason White leads Engineering at Underline. For more than 30 years, Jason has provided thought leadership, guided cultural change, and applied his technological expertise to industries ranging from biotechnology and healthcare IT, to food processing, documentation management, digital wellness, and blockchain. Jason has repeatedly built innovative teams that pragmatically challenge the status quo, and has guided those teams to success. His previous major deployments have been in biotechnology and healthcare IT, in which he grew large teams of full-time employees, managed multi-million dollar budgets and helped close acquisitions and exit events by demonstrating technological excellence. Jason connects the dots between business vision, organizational structure, and technology strategy.

Bob Thompson is the Founder & CEO of Underline, a venture-backed company focused on deploying intelligent infrastructure for U.S. communities.

Prior to founding Underline, Bob served as SVP & Head of Corporate Finance Solutions for Guardian Life, where his mandate ranged from Treasury & Liquidity Risk Management, to Capital Markets Strategy and Balance Sheet Optimization, Corporate Development, M&A, and Strategic Investments. During his tenure with Guardian, Bob led a number of strategic initiatives, including serving as Chairman and President of Guardian Investor Services and Guardian Strategic Ventures.

Over the years, Bob has led multiple efforts including acting as Head of Capital Markets for a boutique insurance bank and Group Head of the Special Transactions Group at CIBC World Markets, working with the UBS Global Structured Products Group, and executing various first-of-their-kind derivative/concentrated risk transactions. In 2009, Bob and his wife founded One Life Missions, operating in the U.S. and internationally; as a result, Bob has worked in various missions and relief capacities in the U.S., Haiti, and Guatemala.

Bob attended Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, earning a Bachelors in Science of Foreign Service.

Eva Arevuo leads marketing and communications for Underline. Eva is an experienced communications strategist, with a passion for social impact ventures, civic tech, and urban innovation.

Before joining Underline, Eva led marketing and communications for Neighborly, managed a team of six as the Innovation Team Director at Small Girls PR, working on clients like GE, and ran corporate and executive communications at Change.org. Eva has also consulted on brand, policy, communications, and product marketing for a number of startups, investment firms, and advocacy groups. She has deep experience with brand positioning, strategic partnerships, executive thought leadership, content strategy and creation, and coordinated grassroots marketing campaigns.

Taking central communications roles, Eva has developed core branding and big ideas—from the power of business to scale social impact, to the role of city leaders to deliver opportunity to residents, and the impact of open access fiber networks to transform communities across the U.S. Eva was born and raised in London, and has a BA from the University of Oxford and Princeton University.

Robert Schmidt is a certified public accountant and a certified internal auditor with more than 27 years experience in the finance and accounting profession. Prior to coming to Underline, Robert spent 22 years as a consultant guiding numerous clients from various industries on making their organizations run smoother and improving their policies, procedures, and processes. Robert married Florence in 1985 in Osengion Switzerland and had 2 girls who are now married and have children of their own.

Jeff Bankston leads Business Development for Underline Technologies. Jeff has 25 years of in-depth experience across a variety of telecommunications technologies, such as FTTH, Optical Transport, Routing, LTE/5G, and Cloud.  Jeff started his career at Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia in roles from software development to sales leadership, with accomplishments such as the deployment of the world’s first 5G Standalone Core on public cloud with DISH Wireless. Prior to joining Underline, Jeff led the Private Wireless business segment at Amazon Web Services, driving sales, business development and partnerships, culminating in the launch of new products such as AWS Private 5G.  Jeff draws on this wide base of business and technology acumen to drive successful outcomes for customers, partners, and stakeholders.

Jeff lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife Michelle and daughters Evelyn and Brooklyn.  He enjoys playing guitar and bass, wakesurfing, and woodworking.  He has Electrical Engineering and MBA degrees from the University of Texas at Dallas.

‍

Suzanne Heritage is Director of Community Partnerships & Policy at Underline, where she works hand in hand with communities to support their connectivity goals. Passionate about building—and amplifying—the conditions where communities can thrive, Suzanne has centered her career around cultivating partnerships that pair organizational growth with positive community impact.

Prior to joining Underline, Suzanne worked for findhelp, a social care technology start up, where she led business development and go-to-market strategy, generating and expanding partnerships with key industry stakeholders and state government markets. In this role she synthesized federal and state policy to inform business and product strategy, working closely with prospective clients to understand needs, identify and carve out opportunities, and foster and maintain strategic relationships centered on trust.

Suzanne attended The University of Texas at Austin, earning a Master of Science in Social Work.

Gus Prieto is a Technical Design Engineer at Underline, focused on bridging engineering and construction practices for efficient and successful infrastructure execution.

With more than 8 years of OSP telecom experience, Gus has taken on many roles, from drafting permits as a CAD technician, to transitioning into GIS designing routes and performing spatial queries/analysis as a Network Designer. He gained field experience as a Make-Ready Specialist and Production Manager, and in his last role before joining Underline, directed and leveraged 3rd party resources to meet production needs as an Associate PM. Throughout his many roles, Gus has developed a well-rounded understanding of the aspects that go into a network infrastructure build.

Gus attended Texas State University, earning a Bachelors of Science in Engineering Technology.

Cameron Scholze is a Network Designer at Underline. She has experience in OSP telecom design working on new markets for a large U.S. telecom company. With an excellent GIS education from the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater, she utilizes her background to improve the efficiency and efficacy of telecom design. Cameron grew up in an unincorporated rural town with limited access to resources. Seeing first-hand the detriment this has caused to her neighbors is what drives her interest in providing connectivity infrastructure to communities that need it most.

Bradley Hilton is a Senior Software Engineer at Underline and has more than eleven years of experience in software development. Prior to Underline, Bradley worked as an Interconnectivity Architect at Rocket.Chat with a focus on tools to enable businesses and communities to interconnect their various other communication tools. While at Rocket.Chat, he created the App Engine and the App Marketplace to distribute Rocket.Chat Apps. Bradley enjoys working with real estate and has built several solutions for helping manage it, including writing software to help manage owner finance loans. Bradley is passionate about family, faith, and spending time outdoors while hiking or mountain biking.

Kristen Gliniecki is a Cybersecurity Analyst at Underline. She graduated with honors from Baker College with a BS in Information Technology & Security, and a minor in Information Assurance. She has 12 years of experience in information technology with seven years specializing in cybersecurity in the defense industrial base. Her areas of expertise include vulnerability management, endpoint protection, security operations, incident response, security auditing, risk assessment, certification & accreditation, policy development, process optimization, compliance reporting, configuration management, and server administration.

Eric is the Head of Organizational Strategy at Underline, focused on execution strategy. He has varied experience building scalable operations and high-performing teams through hyper growth business cycles.

Eric started his career at Silicon Valley Bank working with early-stage tech companies and quickly transitioned to venture capital/private equity services, driving portfolio growth of more than 100% year-over-year for 6 years straight. From there, he moved to a CFO/COO role at Kapost, a marketing SaaS technology company, where he restructured the finance, operations, and HR functions to support a successful sale of the business to Upland Software (NASDAQ: UPLD) within 2 years. Since the sale in 2019, Eric has worked with various other early-to-mid stage businesses on alignment, scale, and tangible results (one of which grew revenue more than 14x during his 2 year tenure).

Eric has a BS in Business Administration with emphasis in finance, a certificate in entrepreneurial studies, and a minor in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Mia Komel is a Sr. Product Manager with more than 10 years of experience building products in startups as well as big companies. During her career she had the opportunity to work on B2B / B2C, marketplaces, and e-commerce products.

Her experience allows her to work tightly with engineering teams and engage various different types of stakeholders. Mia is obsessed with understanding user needs and pain points and looks at product simplicity and short cycles as a way to build products that users love.  She won a top award for innovation in Brazil prior to migrating to Silicon Valley.

Mia is experienced in agile methodologies and applying lean manufacturing strategies into product management to product / market fit.  She firmly believes that organizations that are able to understand and deliver products that balance user needs with long term technological viability tend to become leaders in their markets.

On any given weekend you will find her either playing with her modular synthesizers, listening to her growing vinyl collection or taking photos with her 4x5 wooden camera.

Ann Reck is the Senior Brand Designer at Underline. She has previously worked at many of the leading advertising agencies, and most recently helped grow the design department at a health and fitness startup. With more than 10 years of creative professional experience, she has a background in Design, Production, Art Direction, and Illustration. Ann uses these skills to create brand consistency through design and communications from start to finish.

Although born in Virginia, she has lived in Colorado, Boston, and now Philadelphia. Her passions consist of supporting Philly Sports, working out at her CrossFit gym, and collecting sneakers.

Gene Armstrong is a Senior Software Engineer at Underline and has more than ten years of experience in software development. Over his career, Gene has worked in many aspects of technology including networking, system administration, support, as well as back-end and front-end development. His experience in these areas has equipped him with the knowledge to build efficient and innovative software solutions focussed on positive user experiences.

Ryan Plum is the National Director of Technical Services at Underline. Ryan has more than 15 years of Fiber Splicing, Technical Field Services, Project Management, and Organizational Leadership Experience.

For more than a decade, Ryan worked for Ledcor in their Managed Technical Services Division as Field Services Supervisor, Project Manager, and most recently as Senior Business Services Manager. Ledcor is an Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractor in the Power, Mining, Oil, Gas, and Telecom sectors with more than 6500 employees and +$3B annual revenue. At Ledcor, Ryan led the PMO Office and Service Delivery for the U.S. and Canada, with monthly field volumes of more than 40,000 person hours per month across a variety of customer portfolios.

Professionally, Ryan is passionate about improvements and innovation; challenging the status quo is his default, while he seeks to better understand new ways of doing things.

Ryan has led teams and initiatives that have successfully changed business processes related to Resource Planning, SLA Reporting, Customer Onboarding, Training, Quality, and Operational Efficiencies.

Justin Holder is the Senior Outside Plant (OSP) Engineer at Underline. With more than 10 years of experience in the OSP industry, Justin specializes in the development of automated GIS processes along with hosting custom made web maps. He has worked on a wide range of fiber build outs internationally and domestically. His expertise involves implementing efficient processes to help get the product/deliverable out the door.

Christina Lynn is the Senior Product Designer at Underline. Her background as a technologist started as a technical writer for software and office infrastructure to support 11,000 retail offices, robotic process automation to handle technical support center reporting, and designing mobile platforms for users in a retail environment at 80,000 desks.

After moving into a role as a principal designer for an insurance distributor and healthcare services company, Christina implemented a new design library to advance the development of shared components for customer relationship management and clinical pharmacy tools. This enabled her team to introduce rapid prototyping into the intake and design process, which provided both business stakeholder and software engineers with essential interface references. Her experiences have given her the ability to creatively navigate technical limitations and articulate both complex and simple concepts into holistic and meaningful user experiences.

She strongly believes in dedicating talent toward initiatives that have a lasting and positive impact on communities.

As Underline's National Director of Construction, Tom has a 30-year career in the telecom industry. With experience in engineering, construction, and implementation services, Tom has overseen the construction of tens of thousands of plant miles associated with fiber-to-the-home projects deployed across all regions of North America.

Before joining Underline, Tom was Vice President of NX Utilities, a subsidiary of QualTek—a turnkey provider of infrastructure services to the telecommunications industries—where he built and directed teams of more than 500 people.

Before QualTek, Tom served as Vice President of Operations for Bay Networks, Inc, where he oversaw a call center and field operations that provided installation for more than 3000 buried fiber-optic service wires weekly.

Thomas Esposito is a Software Engineer at Underline focusing on API and Integration execution. He has 6 years of experience at companies ranging from startups to AT&T. Thomas has worked with a variety of technology environments in a full stack capacity, building both backend services and frontend components to consume them. His experiences have shaped his passions for system integration and information infrastructure.

Reid Drapp is the GIS Manager at Underline. Utilizing a Master’s of Science in GIS, along with his detail oriented approach to OSP network design, Reid specializes in geodatabase maintenance and the creation of automated QA/QC processes. Reid has more than a decade of experience working with geodata and was previously GIS Lead at Foresite Group, where he worked on the FTTH buildout of Huntsville Utilities and Verizon fiber deployments in cities including Seattle (WA), Cleveland (OH), Nashville (TN), and Knoxville (TN). Before Foresite Group, Reid was at Atlantic Engineering, working on Google Fiber in Austin (TX), and Actavo, building FTTX in the Caribbean. His expertise also includes a focus on value engineering and using GIS analysis to highlight design inefficiencies and equipment constraints to reduce costs and produce an accurate data driven billing of materials. With his versatile skill set and knowledge of both the geospatial and network engineering fields, Reid can efficiently guide a project from conception to completion, and be involved in both the technical aspects as well as the day-to-day production.

Nashwa Khalid is the Data Analyst at Underline. Passionate about data-driven decision making to maximize impact, she joined Underline after an extensive career in global health. Nashwa has successfully implemented evidence-based interventions to bridge health delivery gaps in Ghana, Pakistan, and the USA. Nashwa received her Master’s degree from The Fletcher School, Tufts University where her research focused on the nexus between foreign direct investment and entrepreneurship-led development in emerging economies.

Roy Coleman is a Senior Security Operations Engineer at Underline. He has more than 19 years of experience with modern information technology and tools across various industries and platforms. His background includes work with financial extranets, telecommunications service providers, the defense industrial base, and software development companies. As a career contractor, Roy has worked for companies including Raytheon and General Dynamics, in roles that include leading task orders for the Information Technology Directorate, and managing information assurance and certification efforts for federal agencies. He has been recognized for his leadership in cybersecurity on defense and national security related projects. Roy’s experience with Open Source has led him to specialize in integrating effective security solutions with operations on limited budgets.

Tiffany Kretler is the Senior Controller for Finance at Underline. She started her career at Deloitte focused on external audit for the private and public sector, then she was headhunted to join Toyota Financial Services to complete or lead international and domestic internal audits. At ARYZTA, a global food manufacturer, she was the subject matter expert for the Americas region in all things internal audit and internal controls; she synergized three companies’ policies into one standard operation procedure program for finance and operation functions and poise the region for long-term growth. When she joined the SunPower team, she led an outsourced accounting team to grow a commercial asset portfolio from 80 to 110+ assets. Tiffany has sharpened her experience developing and testing financial controls, operational controls, and internal policies and has been trained in auditing, preparing, and reporting financial statements, in both an internal and external role. Tiffany graduated with honors at Indiana University with a BS in Accounting, BS in Operations Management and a minor in Spanish. She is passionate about leading teams, initiatives, and projects in her professional and personal life.

Jason Thibodeau is the Senior DevOps Engineer at Underline. His background includes managing on-prem as well as cloud infrastructure for multiple large organizations including Tripadvisor, CVS/Health, and j2 Global. He brings a wealth of experience in infrastructure management, automation, and systems design to the group. Jason specializes in removing unneeded complexity and distilling systems to their minimum-necessary complexity, while maintaining or enhancing functionality. His deep knowledge and experience managing diverse systems gives him the type of intuition needed to build innovative, stable, and performant systems that integrate the latest technologies without compromising their integrity.

Christine Marlowe is the Community Engagement Manager at Underline. Passionate about connecting with the very people who live, work and socialize in specific communities, who make each so unique, Christine has had the pleasure of working closely with numerous constituencies while representing all levels of government– at the federal, state and local levels. Previously, Christine worked for the Democratic Leader, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer, as well as represented numerous NYC and NYS agencies for various infrastructure projects. She has experience developing and implementing brand messaging and strategic communication plans, in addition to dynamic public outreach strategies and community engagement events. Christine attended The University at Albany and earned her Master of Arts degree in Organizational Communication.

Jaime Espinosa is the Director of Industry Partnerships & Supply Chain Management at Underline. He has over 20 years of experience in Sales, Account Management, Project Management, Market Development, Consulting and Engineering. He has experience managing sales growth and experience with multi-channel distribution and account strategy domestically and internationally with multi-million dollar and long term revenue accounts. He started his career as a Project Manager with General Electric performing technical analysis, sales support, project viability, and supervising the refurbishment of power generation plants using PC-based supervision software SCADA, and PLC-based automation. From General Electric he went to Corning Optical Communications where he held different roles over 15 years: Field Engineer and Project Manager, Systems Engineer responsible for the Latin American markets, National Broadband Stimulus Account Manager responsible for a network of business associates and recipients of federal funding for broadband infrastructure projects, Manager for National Contractors, and Manager for Market and Business Development for Carrier Networks where he created the business strategy for Municipalities, Electric Membership Cooperatives and Rural Electric Cooperatives, and the next generation of FTTx projects in the Americas.

Harikrishna Rajagopalan is the Senior Network Engineer at Underline. After graduating with a Masters in Telecommunications, Hari started his career as a Voice and Telecommunications Engineer setting up Call Center Technology. Working as a Network Engineer at AT&T and GE, he gained competence in both Service provider and Data Center Networking.

He was the sole Network Engineer at Drew Marine managing more than 70 locations connected via MPLS technology. At Interactive Data, part of NYSE today, he helped design and maintain a world wide network which specialized in market data and ultra low latency networks.

At Dell Technologies, he was a member of a global team of Network experts which dealt with highly escalated and complicated issues of Enterprise and Data Center Network Technologies.

Throughout his career, he built and designed network infrastructure which was cutting edge as well as practical and is continuing the same at Underline.

Coty Beasley is the Head of Product and Design at Underline. His background combines Product Design, Product Management, and Computer Science to create software experiences that are usable, intuitive, and communicative.

A veteran of early-stage technology ventures, Coty has been a founding member of multiple startups, developing new technologies and industry-firsts. These experiences have exposed him to complex work in artificial intelligence, healthcare outcomes, medical devices, telecommunications, civic tech, fintech, robotics, and physiology.

After living in the Bay and braving the Austin heat for many years, he now lives in the Midwest with his wife, four cats, and a shollie. At any time, you can find him restoring vintage audiovisual equipment, growing vertical hydroponic gardens, or thumbing through an extensive vinyl collection.

Mark Kropilak serves as General Counsel for Underline. Mark is an attorney and business leader with vast experience in the areas of infrastructure investments, acquisitions, technology commercialization, and utility valuation. He has served as General Counsel and SVP of Business Development for large regulated utilities engaged in the water and wastewater profession. Mark spent over 20 years with Aqua America where he completed over 200 acquisitions and growth ventures, establishing the platform for investing over $2 Billion, growing the company from 250,000 customers to over 950,000 customers. Prior to Aqua, Mark was associated with Morgan Lewis and subsequently served as Of Counsel for Saul Ewing working on various regulatory matters. Mark has also served as CEO of a start-up water treatment company and has been a Board advisor to other technology companies engaged in water quality measurement and cloud-based applications for plant operators. Mark holds a law degree from Columbia University, an EMBA from Villanova University and undergraduate degrees in Economics and Accounting from Saint Vincent College.

Lance Addison leads Underline’s national and local fiber network Engineering, Construction, and Operations. He has more than 25 years of Wireline and Wireless industry experience in a variety of Operational, Financial, Construction, EHS, Logistics, and Employee Development support disciplines. Lance has been involved in building more than 30,000 route miles of fiber. Most recently, Lance was the Director of Telecom Operations for a Quanta Services business unit. Quanta is the nation’s largest publicly held (NYSE: PWR) Infrastructure Services Contractor with annual revenues exceeding $11B.

Over the past two decades, Lance has held senior management positions on both the Network Owner and Network Contractor segments of Wireline/Wireless industry including President/COO of Bear Communications, where he led a team of 1000 people building the business from $50M to $200M in revenue, and Vice President of UniTek Global Services, a preeminent Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) firm that focuses on large FTTP/x construction builds. Preceding network owner leadership roles include Charter Communications—the second largest cable provider and competitive local access providers Everest Connections (now Consolidated Communications) and McLeodUSA.

Kyle Glaeser is the Director of Emerging Networks at Underline. He started his career as a network design engineer working on projects for Google Fiber, AT&T, Verizon, and FTTH builds around the world. Using his background in GIS, Kyle created scripts and models to drive efficiencies into network designs, shaving millions of dollars off large builds. He began implementing GIS based innovations into the design, construction, and financing of large FTTH builds. After seeing a number of projects explode past their projected budgets, he created a program to use LiDAR collection data and autodesign tools to accurately analyze a market’s cost before construction. Through this work, Kyle took an interest in information infrastructure as the basis of smart city technologies, developing network architectures that are custom tailored to communities infrastructure needs. Upon learning about the emerging open access market and software defined networking, he became passionate about developing specific network use cases and architectures that would propel the open access model forward as the network of the future.

Josemar has more than ten years of experience building software and worked in every aspect of software development from ideas to architecture to Backend APIs and Frontend User Experiences. His expertise in all these areas gives him the perfect knowledge about what is required to build efficient, scalable, maintainable software platforms.

Previously to Underline, Josemar worked as Principal Software Engineer at Neighborly, working on financial services tools to create community demand for projects. In the past, Josemar helped build the first open-source crowdfunding platform for creative projects. Today, it is the biggest crowdfunding platform in South America.

Josemar is passionate about open source software; and believes that shared solutions are the foundation for efficiently building the next generation of software services while elevating the quality of the projects.

Jason White leads Engineering at Underline. For more than 30 years, Jason has provided thought leadership, guided cultural change, and applied his technological expertise to industries ranging from biotechnology and healthcare IT, to food processing, documentation management, digital wellness, and blockchain. Jason has repeatedly built innovative teams that pragmatically challenge the status quo, and has guided those teams to success. His previous major deployments have been in biotechnology and healthcare IT, in which he grew large teams of full-time employees, managed multi-million dollar budgets and helped close acquisitions and exit events by demonstrating technological excellence. Jason connects the dots between business vision, organizational structure, and technology strategy.

Bob Thompson is the Founder & CEO of Underline, a venture-backed company focused on deploying intelligent infrastructure for U.S. communities.

Prior to founding Underline, Bob served as SVP & Head of Corporate Finance Solutions for Guardian Life, where his mandate ranged from Treasury & Liquidity Risk Management, to Capital Markets Strategy and Balance Sheet Optimization, Corporate Development, M&A, and Strategic Investments. During his tenure with Guardian, Bob led a number of strategic initiatives, including serving as Chairman and President of Guardian Investor Services and Guardian Strategic Ventures.

Over the years, Bob has led multiple efforts including acting as Head of Capital Markets for a boutique insurance bank and Group Head of the Special Transactions Group at CIBC World Markets, working with the UBS Global Structured Products Group, and executing various first-of-their-kind derivative/concentrated risk transactions. In 2009, Bob and his wife founded One Life Missions, operating in the U.S. and internationally; as a result, Bob has worked in various missions and relief capacities in the U.S., Haiti, and Guatemala.

Bob attended Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, earning a Bachelors in Science of Foreign Service.

Eva Arevuo leads marketing and communications for Underline. Eva is an experienced communications strategist, with a passion for social impact ventures, civic tech, and urban innovation.

Before joining Underline, Eva led marketing and communications for Neighborly, managed a team of six as the Innovation Team Director at Small Girls PR, working on clients like GE, and ran corporate and executive communications at Change.org. Eva has also consulted on brand, policy, communications, and product marketing for a number of startups, investment firms, and advocacy groups. She has deep experience with brand positioning, strategic partnerships, executive thought leadership, content strategy and creation, and coordinated grassroots marketing campaigns.

Taking central communications roles, Eva has developed core branding and big ideas—from the power of business to scale social impact, to the role of city leaders to deliver opportunity to residents, and the impact of open access fiber networks to transform communities across the U.S. Eva was born and raised in London, and has a BA from the University of Oxford and Princeton University.

Robert Schmidt is a certified public accountant and a certified internal auditor with more than 27 years experience in the finance and accounting profession. Prior to coming to Underline, Robert spent 22 years as a consultant guiding numerous clients from various industries on making their organizations run smoother and improving their policies, procedures, and processes. Robert married Florence in 1985 in Osengion Switzerland and had 2 girls who are now married and have children of their own.

Jeff Bankston leads Business Development for Underline Technologies. Jeff has 25 years of in-depth experience across a variety of telecommunications technologies, such as FTTH, Optical Transport, Routing, LTE/5G, and Cloud.  Jeff started his career at Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia in roles from software development to sales leadership, with accomplishments such as the deployment of the world’s first 5G Standalone Core on public cloud with DISH Wireless. Prior to joining Underline, Jeff led the Private Wireless business segment at Amazon Web Services, driving sales, business development and partnerships, culminating in the launch of new products such as AWS Private 5G.  Jeff draws on this wide base of business and technology acumen to drive successful outcomes for customers, partners, and stakeholders.

Jeff lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife Michelle and daughters Evelyn and Brooklyn.  He enjoys playing guitar and bass, wakesurfing, and woodworking.  He has Electrical Engineering and MBA degrees from the University of Texas at Dallas.

‍

Suzanne Heritage is Director of Community Partnerships & Policy at Underline, where she works hand in hand with communities to support their connectivity goals. Passionate about building—and amplifying—the conditions where communities can thrive, Suzanne has centered her career around cultivating partnerships that pair organizational growth with positive community impact.

Prior to joining Underline, Suzanne worked for findhelp, a social care technology start up, where she led business development and go-to-market strategy, generating and expanding partnerships with key industry stakeholders and state government markets. In this role she synthesized federal and state policy to inform business and product strategy, working closely with prospective clients to understand needs, identify and carve out opportunities, and foster and maintain strategic relationships centered on trust.

Suzanne attended The University of Texas at Austin, earning a Master of Science in Social Work.

Gus Prieto is a Technical Design Engineer at Underline, focused on bridging engineering and construction practices for efficient and successful infrastructure execution.

With more than 8 years of OSP telecom experience, Gus has taken on many roles, from drafting permits as a CAD technician, to transitioning into GIS designing routes and performing spatial queries/analysis as a Network Designer. He gained field experience as a Make-Ready Specialist and Production Manager, and in his last role before joining Underline, directed and leveraged 3rd party resources to meet production needs as an Associate PM. Throughout his many roles, Gus has developed a well-rounded understanding of the aspects that go into a network infrastructure build.

Gus attended Texas State University, earning a Bachelors of Science in Engineering Technology.

Cameron Scholze is a Network Designer at Underline. She has experience in OSP telecom design working on new markets for a large U.S. telecom company. With an excellent GIS education from the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater, she utilizes her background to improve the efficiency and efficacy of telecom design. Cameron grew up in an unincorporated rural town with limited access to resources. Seeing first-hand the detriment this has caused to her neighbors is what drives her interest in providing connectivity infrastructure to communities that need it most.

Bradley Hilton is a Senior Software Engineer at Underline and has more than eleven years of experience in software development. Prior to Underline, Bradley worked as an Interconnectivity Architect at Rocket.Chat with a focus on tools to enable businesses and communities to interconnect their various other communication tools. While at Rocket.Chat, he created the App Engine and the App Marketplace to distribute Rocket.Chat Apps. Bradley enjoys working with real estate and has built several solutions for helping manage it, including writing software to help manage owner finance loans. Bradley is passionate about family, faith, and spending time outdoors while hiking or mountain biking.

Kristen Gliniecki is a Cybersecurity Analyst at Underline. She graduated with honors from Baker College with a BS in Information Technology & Security, and a minor in Information Assurance. She has 12 years of experience in information technology with seven years specializing in cybersecurity in the defense industrial base. Her areas of expertise include vulnerability management, endpoint protection, security operations, incident response, security auditing, risk assessment, certification & accreditation, policy development, process optimization, compliance reporting, configuration management, and server administration.

Eric is the Head of Organizational Strategy at Underline, focused on execution strategy. He has varied experience building scalable operations and high-performing teams through hyper growth business cycles.

Eric started his career at Silicon Valley Bank working with early-stage tech companies and quickly transitioned to venture capital/private equity services, driving portfolio growth of more than 100% year-over-year for 6 years straight. From there, he moved to a CFO/COO role at Kapost, a marketing SaaS technology company, where he restructured the finance, operations, and HR functions to support a successful sale of the business to Upland Software (NASDAQ: UPLD) within 2 years. Since the sale in 2019, Eric has worked with various other early-to-mid stage businesses on alignment, scale, and tangible results (one of which grew revenue more than 14x during his 2 year tenure).

Eric has a BS in Business Administration with emphasis in finance, a certificate in entrepreneurial studies, and a minor in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Mia Komel is a Sr. Product Manager with more than 10 years of experience building products in startups as well as big companies. During her career she had the opportunity to work on B2B / B2C, marketplaces, and e-commerce products.

Her experience allows her to work tightly with engineering teams and engage various different types of stakeholders. Mia is obsessed with understanding user needs and pain points and looks at product simplicity and short cycles as a way to build products that users love.  She won a top award for innovation in Brazil prior to migrating to Silicon Valley.

Mia is experienced in agile methodologies and applying lean manufacturing strategies into product management to product / market fit.  She firmly believes that organizations that are able to understand and deliver products that balance user needs with long term technological viability tend to become leaders in their markets.

On any given weekend you will find her either playing with her modular synthesizers, listening to her growing vinyl collection or taking photos with her 4x5 wooden camera.

Ann Reck is the Senior Brand Designer at Underline. She has previously worked at many of the leading advertising agencies, and most recently helped grow the design department at a health and fitness startup. With more than 10 years of creative professional experience, she has a background in Design, Production, Art Direction, and Illustration. Ann uses these skills to create brand consistency through design and communications from start to finish.

Although born in Virginia, she has lived in Colorado, Boston, and now Philadelphia. Her passions consist of supporting Philly Sports, working out at her CrossFit gym, and collecting sneakers.

Gene Armstrong is a Senior Software Engineer at Underline and has more than ten years of experience in software development. Over his career, Gene has worked in many aspects of technology including networking, system administration, support, as well as back-end and front-end development. His experience in these areas has equipped him with the knowledge to build efficient and innovative software solutions focussed on positive user experiences.

Ryan Plum is the National Director of Technical Services at Underline. Ryan has more than 15 years of Fiber Splicing, Technical Field Services, Project Management, and Organizational Leadership Experience.

For more than a decade, Ryan worked for Ledcor in their Managed Technical Services Division as Field Services Supervisor, Project Manager, and most recently as Senior Business Services Manager. Ledcor is an Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractor in the Power, Mining, Oil, Gas, and Telecom sectors with more than 6500 employees and +$3B annual revenue. At Ledcor, Ryan led the PMO Office and Service Delivery for the U.S. and Canada, with monthly field volumes of more than 40,000 person hours per month across a variety of customer portfolios.

Professionally, Ryan is passionate about improvements and innovation; challenging the status quo is his default, while he seeks to better understand new ways of doing things.

Ryan has led teams and initiatives that have successfully changed business processes related to Resource Planning, SLA Reporting, Customer Onboarding, Training, Quality, and Operational Efficiencies.

Justin Holder is the Senior Outside Plant (OSP) Engineer at Underline. With more than 10 years of experience in the OSP industry, Justin specializes in the development of automated GIS processes along with hosting custom made web maps. He has worked on a wide range of fiber build outs internationally and domestically. His expertise involves implementing efficient processes to help get the product/deliverable out the door.

Christina Lynn is the Senior Product Designer at Underline. Her background as a technologist started as a technical writer for software and office infrastructure to support 11,000 retail offices, robotic process automation to handle technical support center reporting, and designing mobile platforms for users in a retail environment at 80,000 desks.

After moving into a role as a principal designer for an insurance distributor and healthcare services company, Christina implemented a new design library to advance the development of shared components for customer relationship management and clinical pharmacy tools. This enabled her team to introduce rapid prototyping into the intake and design process, which provided both business stakeholder and software engineers with essential interface references. Her experiences have given her the ability to creatively navigate technical limitations and articulate both complex and simple concepts into holistic and meaningful user experiences.

She strongly believes in dedicating talent toward initiatives that have a lasting and positive impact on communities.

As Underline's National Director of Construction, Tom has a 30-year career in the telecom industry. With experience in engineering, construction, and implementation services, Tom has overseen the construction of tens of thousands of plant miles associated with fiber-to-the-home projects deployed across all regions of North America.

Before joining Underline, Tom was Vice President of NX Utilities, a subsidiary of QualTek—a turnkey provider of infrastructure services to the telecommunications industries—where he built and directed teams of more than 500 people.

Before QualTek, Tom served as Vice President of Operations for Bay Networks, Inc, where he oversaw a call center and field operations that provided installation for more than 3000 buried fiber-optic service wires weekly.

Thomas Esposito is a Software Engineer at Underline focusing on API and Integration execution. He has 6 years of experience at companies ranging from startups to AT&T. Thomas has worked with a variety of technology environments in a full stack capacity, building both backend services and frontend components to consume them. His experiences have shaped his passions for system integration and information infrastructure.

Reid Drapp is the GIS Manager at Underline. Utilizing a Master’s of Science in GIS, along with his detail oriented approach to OSP network design, Reid specializes in geodatabase maintenance and the creation of automated QA/QC processes. Reid has more than a decade of experience working with geodata and was previously GIS Lead at Foresite Group, where he worked on the FTTH buildout of Huntsville Utilities and Verizon fiber deployments in cities including Seattle (WA), Cleveland (OH), Nashville (TN), and Knoxville (TN). Before Foresite Group, Reid was at Atlantic Engineering, working on Google Fiber in Austin (TX), and Actavo, building FTTX in the Caribbean. His expertise also includes a focus on value engineering and using GIS analysis to highlight design inefficiencies and equipment constraints to reduce costs and produce an accurate data driven billing of materials. With his versatile skill set and knowledge of both the geospatial and network engineering fields, Reid can efficiently guide a project from conception to completion, and be involved in both the technical aspects as well as the day-to-day production.

Nashwa Khalid is the Data Analyst at Underline. Passionate about data-driven decision making to maximize impact, she joined Underline after an extensive career in global health. Nashwa has successfully implemented evidence-based interventions to bridge health delivery gaps in Ghana, Pakistan, and the USA. Nashwa received her Master’s degree from The Fletcher School, Tufts University where her research focused on the nexus between foreign direct investment and entrepreneurship-led development in emerging economies.

Roy Coleman is a Senior Security Operations Engineer at Underline. He has more than 19 years of experience with modern information technology and tools across various industries and platforms. His background includes work with financial extranets, telecommunications service providers, the defense industrial base, and software development companies. As a career contractor, Roy has worked for companies including Raytheon and General Dynamics, in roles that include leading task orders for the Information Technology Directorate, and managing information assurance and certification efforts for federal agencies. He has been recognized for his leadership in cybersecurity on defense and national security related projects. Roy’s experience with Open Source has led him to specialize in integrating effective security solutions with operations on limited budgets.

Tiffany Kretler is the Senior Controller for Finance at Underline. She started her career at Deloitte focused on external audit for the private and public sector, then she was headhunted to join Toyota Financial Services to complete or lead international and domestic internal audits. At ARYZTA, a global food manufacturer, she was the subject matter expert for the Americas region in all things internal audit and internal controls; she synergized three companies’ policies into one standard operation procedure program for finance and operation functions and poise the region for long-term growth. When she joined the SunPower team, she led an outsourced accounting team to grow a commercial asset portfolio from 80 to 110+ assets. Tiffany has sharpened her experience developing and testing financial controls, operational controls, and internal policies and has been trained in auditing, preparing, and reporting financial statements, in both an internal and external role. Tiffany graduated with honors at Indiana University with a BS in Accounting, BS in Operations Management and a minor in Spanish. She is passionate about leading teams, initiatives, and projects in her professional and personal life.

Jason Thibodeau is the Senior DevOps Engineer at Underline. His background includes managing on-prem as well as cloud infrastructure for multiple large organizations including Tripadvisor, CVS/Health, and j2 Global. He brings a wealth of experience in infrastructure management, automation, and systems design to the group. Jason specializes in removing unneeded complexity and distilling systems to their minimum-necessary complexity, while maintaining or enhancing functionality. His deep knowledge and experience managing diverse systems gives him the type of intuition needed to build innovative, stable, and performant systems that integrate the latest technologies without compromising their integrity.

Christine Marlowe is the Community Engagement Manager at Underline. Passionate about connecting with the very people who live, work and socialize in specific communities, who make each so unique, Christine has had the pleasure of working closely with numerous constituencies while representing all levels of government– at the federal, state and local levels. Previously, Christine worked for the Democratic Leader, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer, as well as represented numerous NYC and NYS agencies for various infrastructure projects. She has experience developing and implementing brand messaging and strategic communication plans, in addition to dynamic public outreach strategies and community engagement events. Christine attended The University at Albany and earned her Master of Arts degree in Organizational Communication.

Jaime Espinosa is the Director of Industry Partnerships & Supply Chain Management at Underline. He has over 20 years of experience in Sales, Account Management, Project Management, Market Development, Consulting and Engineering. He has experience managing sales growth and experience with multi-channel distribution and account strategy domestically and internationally with multi-million dollar and long term revenue accounts. He started his career as a Project Manager with General Electric performing technical analysis, sales support, project viability, and supervising the refurbishment of power generation plants using PC-based supervision software SCADA, and PLC-based automation. From General Electric he went to Corning Optical Communications where he held different roles over 15 years: Field Engineer and Project Manager, Systems Engineer responsible for the Latin American markets, National Broadband Stimulus Account Manager responsible for a network of business associates and recipients of federal funding for broadband infrastructure projects, Manager for National Contractors, and Manager for Market and Business Development for Carrier Networks where he created the business strategy for Municipalities, Electric Membership Cooperatives and Rural Electric Cooperatives, and the next generation of FTTx projects in the Americas.

Harikrishna Rajagopalan is the Senior Network Engineer at Underline. After graduating with a Masters in Telecommunications, Hari started his career as a Voice and Telecommunications Engineer setting up Call Center Technology. Working as a Network Engineer at AT&T and GE, he gained competence in both Service provider and Data Center Networking.

He was the sole Network Engineer at Drew Marine managing more than 70 locations connected via MPLS technology. At Interactive Data, part of NYSE today, he helped design and maintain a world wide network which specialized in market data and ultra low latency networks.

At Dell Technologies, he was a member of a global team of Network experts which dealt with highly escalated and complicated issues of Enterprise and Data Center Network Technologies.

Throughout his career, he built and designed network infrastructure which was cutting edge as well as practical and is continuing the same at Underline.

Coty Beasley is the Head of Product and Design at Underline. His background combines Product Design, Product Management, and Computer Science to create software experiences that are usable, intuitive, and communicative.

A veteran of early-stage technology ventures, Coty has been a founding member of multiple startups, developing new technologies and industry-firsts. These experiences have exposed him to complex work in artificial intelligence, healthcare outcomes, medical devices, telecommunications, civic tech, fintech, robotics, and physiology.

After living in the Bay and braving the Austin heat for many years, he now lives in the Midwest with his wife, four cats, and a shollie. At any time, you can find him restoring vintage audiovisual equipment, growing vertical hydroponic gardens, or thumbing through an extensive vinyl collection.

Mark Kropilak serves as General Counsel for Underline. Mark is an attorney and business leader with vast experience in the areas of infrastructure investments, acquisitions, technology commercialization, and utility valuation. He has served as General Counsel and SVP of Business Development for large regulated utilities engaged in the water and wastewater profession. Mark spent over 20 years with Aqua America where he completed over 200 acquisitions and growth ventures, establishing the platform for investing over $2 Billion, growing the company from 250,000 customers to over 950,000 customers. Prior to Aqua, Mark was associated with Morgan Lewis and subsequently served as Of Counsel for Saul Ewing working on various regulatory matters. Mark has also served as CEO of a start-up water treatment company and has been a Board advisor to other technology companies engaged in water quality measurement and cloud-based applications for plant operators. Mark holds a law degree from Columbia University, an EMBA from Villanova University and undergraduate degrees in Economics and Accounting from Saint Vincent College.

Lance Addison leads Underline’s national and local fiber network Engineering, Construction, and Operations. He has more than 25 years of Wireline and Wireless industry experience in a variety of Operational, Financial, Construction, EHS, Logistics, and Employee Development support disciplines. Lance has been involved in building more than 30,000 route miles of fiber. Most recently, Lance was the Director of Telecom Operations for a Quanta Services business unit. Quanta is the nation’s largest publicly held (NYSE: PWR) Infrastructure Services Contractor with annual revenues exceeding $11B.

Over the past two decades, Lance has held senior management positions on both the Network Owner and Network Contractor segments of Wireline/Wireless industry including President/COO of Bear Communications, where he led a team of 1000 people building the business from $50M to $200M in revenue, and Vice President of UniTek Global Services, a preeminent Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) firm that focuses on large FTTP/x construction builds. Preceding network owner leadership roles include Charter Communications—the second largest cable provider and competitive local access providers Everest Connections (now Consolidated Communications) and McLeodUSA.

Kyle Glaeser is the Director of Emerging Networks at Underline. He started his career as a network design engineer working on projects for Google Fiber, AT&T, Verizon, and FTTH builds around the world. Using his background in GIS, Kyle created scripts and models to drive efficiencies into network designs, shaving millions of dollars off large builds. He began implementing GIS based innovations into the design, construction, and financing of large FTTH builds. After seeing a number of projects explode past their projected budgets, he created a program to use LiDAR collection data and autodesign tools to accurately analyze a market’s cost before construction. Through this work, Kyle took an interest in information infrastructure as the basis of smart city technologies, developing network architectures that are custom tailored to communities infrastructure needs. Upon learning about the emerging open access market and software defined networking, he became passionate about developing specific network use cases and architectures that would propel the open access model forward as the network of the future.

Josemar has more than ten years of experience building software and worked in every aspect of software development from ideas to architecture to Backend APIs and Frontend User Experiences. His expertise in all these areas gives him the perfect knowledge about what is required to build efficient, scalable, maintainable software platforms.

Previously to Underline, Josemar worked as Principal Software Engineer at Neighborly, working on financial services tools to create community demand for projects. In the past, Josemar helped build the first open-source crowdfunding platform for creative projects. Today, it is the biggest crowdfunding platform in South America.

Josemar is passionate about open source software; and believes that shared solutions are the foundation for efficiently building the next generation of software services while elevating the quality of the projects.

Jason White leads Engineering at Underline. For more than 30 years, Jason has provided thought leadership, guided cultural change, and applied his technological expertise to industries ranging from biotechnology and healthcare IT, to food processing, documentation management, digital wellness, and blockchain. Jason has repeatedly built innovative teams that pragmatically challenge the status quo, and has guided those teams to success. His previous major deployments have been in biotechnology and healthcare IT, in which he grew large teams of full-time employees, managed multi-million dollar budgets and helped close acquisitions and exit events by demonstrating technological excellence. Jason connects the dots between business vision, organizational structure, and technology strategy.

Bob Thompson is the Founder & CEO of Underline, a venture-backed company focused on deploying intelligent infrastructure for U.S. communities.

Prior to founding Underline, Bob served as SVP & Head of Corporate Finance Solutions for Guardian Life, where his mandate ranged from Treasury & Liquidity Risk Management, to Capital Markets Strategy and Balance Sheet Optimization, Corporate Development, M&A, and Strategic Investments. During his tenure with Guardian, Bob led a number of strategic initiatives, including serving as Chairman and President of Guardian Investor Services and Guardian Strategic Ventures.

Over the years, Bob has led multiple efforts including acting as Head of Capital Markets for a boutique insurance bank and Group Head of the Special Transactions Group at CIBC World Markets, working with the UBS Global Structured Products Group, and executing various first-of-their-kind derivative/concentrated risk transactions. In 2009, Bob and his wife founded One Life Missions, operating in the U.S. and internationally; as a result, Bob has worked in various missions and relief capacities in the U.S., Haiti, and Guatemala.

Bob attended Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, earning a Bachelors in Science of Foreign Service.

Eva Arevuo leads marketing and communications for Underline. Eva is an experienced communications strategist, with a passion for social impact ventures, civic tech, and urban innovation.

Before joining Underline, Eva led marketing and communications for Neighborly, managed a team of six as the Innovation Team Director at Small Girls PR, working on clients like GE, and ran corporate and executive communications at Change.org. Eva has also consulted on brand, policy, communications, and product marketing for a number of startups, investment firms, and advocacy groups. She has deep experience with brand positioning, strategic partnerships, executive thought leadership, content strategy and creation, and coordinated grassroots marketing campaigns.

Taking central communications roles, Eva has developed core branding and big ideas—from the power of business to scale social impact, to the role of city leaders to deliver opportunity to residents, and the impact of open access fiber networks to transform communities across the U.S. Eva was born and raised in London, and has a BA from the University of Oxford and Princeton University.

Robert Schmidt is a certified public accountant and a certified internal auditor with more than 27 years experience in the finance and accounting profession. Prior to coming to Underline, Robert spent 22 years as a consultant guiding numerous clients from various industries on making their organizations run smoother and improving their policies, procedures, and processes. Robert married Florence in 1985 in Osengion Switzerland and had 2 girls who are now married and have children of their own.

Jeff Bankston leads Business Development for Underline Technologies. Jeff has 25 years of in-depth experience across a variety of telecommunications technologies, such as FTTH, Optical Transport, Routing, LTE/5G, and Cloud.  Jeff started his career at Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia in roles from software development to sales leadership, with accomplishments such as the deployment of the world’s first 5G Standalone Core on public cloud with DISH Wireless. Prior to joining Underline, Jeff led the Private Wireless business segment at Amazon Web Services, driving sales, business development and partnerships, culminating in the launch of new products such as AWS Private 5G.  Jeff draws on this wide base of business and technology acumen to drive successful outcomes for customers, partners, and stakeholders.

Jeff lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife Michelle and daughters Evelyn and Brooklyn.  He enjoys playing guitar and bass, wakesurfing, and woodworking.  He has Electrical Engineering and MBA degrees from the University of Texas at Dallas.

‍

Suzanne Heritage is Director of Community Partnerships & Policy at Underline, where she works hand in hand with communities to support their connectivity goals. Passionate about building—and amplifying—the conditions where communities can thrive, Suzanne has centered her career around cultivating partnerships that pair organizational growth with positive community impact.

Prior to joining Underline, Suzanne worked for findhelp, a social care technology start up, where she led business development and go-to-market strategy, generating and expanding partnerships with key industry stakeholders and state government markets. In this role she synthesized federal and state policy to inform business and product strategy, working closely with prospective clients to understand needs, identify and carve out opportunities, and foster and maintain strategic relationships centered on trust.

Suzanne attended The University of Texas at Austin, earning a Master of Science in Social Work.

Gus Prieto is a Technical Design Engineer at Underline, focused on bridging engineering and construction practices for efficient and successful infrastructure execution.

With more than 8 years of OSP telecom experience, Gus has taken on many roles, from drafting permits as a CAD technician, to transitioning into GIS designing routes and performing spatial queries/analysis as a Network Designer. He gained field experience as a Make-Ready Specialist and Production Manager, and in his last role before joining Underline, directed and leveraged 3rd party resources to meet production needs as an Associate PM. Throughout his many roles, Gus has developed a well-rounded understanding of the aspects that go into a network infrastructure build.

Gus attended Texas State University, earning a Bachelors of Science in Engineering Technology.

Cameron Scholze is a Network Designer at Underline. She has experience in OSP telecom design working on new markets for a large U.S. telecom company. With an excellent GIS education from the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater, she utilizes her background to improve the efficiency and efficacy of telecom design. Cameron grew up in an unincorporated rural town with limited access to resources. Seeing first-hand the detriment this has caused to her neighbors is what drives her interest in providing connectivity infrastructure to communities that need it most.

Bradley Hilton is a Senior Software Engineer at Underline and has more than eleven years of experience in software development. Prior to Underline, Bradley worked as an Interconnectivity Architect at Rocket.Chat with a focus on tools to enable businesses and communities to interconnect their various other communication tools. While at Rocket.Chat, he created the App Engine and the App Marketplace to distribute Rocket.Chat Apps. Bradley enjoys working with real estate and has built several solutions for helping manage it, including writing software to help manage owner finance loans. Bradley is passionate about family, faith, and spending time outdoors while hiking or mountain biking.

Kristen Gliniecki is a Cybersecurity Analyst at Underline. She graduated with honors from Baker College with a BS in Information Technology & Security, and a minor in Information Assurance. She has 12 years of experience in information technology with seven years specializing in cybersecurity in the defense industrial base. Her areas of expertise include vulnerability management, endpoint protection, security operations, incident response, security auditing, risk assessment, certification & accreditation, policy development, process optimization, compliance reporting, configuration management, and server administration.

Eric is the Head of Organizational Strategy at Underline, focused on execution strategy. He has varied experience building scalable operations and high-performing teams through hyper growth business cycles.

Eric started his career at Silicon Valley Bank working with early-stage tech companies and quickly transitioned to venture capital/private equity services, driving portfolio growth of more than 100% year-over-year for 6 years straight. From there, he moved to a CFO/COO role at Kapost, a marketing SaaS technology company, where he restructured the finance, operations, and HR functions to support a successful sale of the business to Upland Software (NASDAQ: UPLD) within 2 years. Since the sale in 2019, Eric has worked with various other early-to-mid stage businesses on alignment, scale, and tangible results (one of which grew revenue more than 14x during his 2 year tenure).

Eric has a BS in Business Administration with emphasis in finance, a certificate in entrepreneurial studies, and a minor in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Mia Komel is a Sr. Product Manager with more than 10 years of experience building products in startups as well as big companies. During her career she had the opportunity to work on B2B / B2C, marketplaces, and e-commerce products.

Her experience allows her to work tightly with engineering teams and engage various different types of stakeholders. Mia is obsessed with understanding user needs and pain points and looks at product simplicity and short cycles as a way to build products that users love.  She won a top award for innovation in Brazil prior to migrating to Silicon Valley.

Mia is experienced in agile methodologies and applying lean manufacturing strategies into product management to product / market fit.  She firmly believes that organizations that are able to understand and deliver products that balance user needs with long term technological viability tend to become leaders in their markets.

On any given weekend you will find her either playing with her modular synthesizers, listening to her growing vinyl collection or taking photos with her 4x5 wooden camera.

Ann Reck is the Senior Brand Designer at Underline. She has previously worked at many of the leading advertising agencies, and most recently helped grow the design department at a health and fitness startup. With more than 10 years of creative professional experience, she has a background in Design, Production, Art Direction, and Illustration. Ann uses these skills to create brand consistency through design and communications from start to finish.

Although born in Virginia, she has lived in Colorado, Boston, and now Philadelphia. Her passions consist of supporting Philly Sports, working out at her CrossFit gym, and collecting sneakers.

Gene Armstrong is a Senior Software Engineer at Underline and has more than ten years of experience in software development. Over his career, Gene has worked in many aspects of technology including networking, system administration, support, as well as back-end and front-end development. His experience in these areas has equipped him with the knowledge to build efficient and innovative software solutions focussed on positive user experiences.

Ryan Plum is the National Director of Technical Services at Underline. Ryan has more than 15 years of Fiber Splicing, Technical Field Services, Project Management, and Organizational Leadership Experience.

For more than a decade, Ryan worked for Ledcor in their Managed Technical Services Division as Field Services Supervisor, Project Manager, and most recently as Senior Business Services Manager. Ledcor is an Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractor in the Power, Mining, Oil, Gas, and Telecom sectors with more than 6500 employees and +$3B annual revenue. At Ledcor, Ryan led the PMO Office and Service Delivery for the U.S. and Canada, with monthly field volumes of more than 40,000 person hours per month across a variety of customer portfolios.

Professionally, Ryan is passionate about improvements and innovation; challenging the status quo is his default, while he seeks to better understand new ways of doing things.

Ryan has led teams and initiatives that have successfully changed business processes related to Resource Planning, SLA Reporting, Customer Onboarding, Training, Quality, and Operational Efficiencies.

Justin Holder is the Senior Outside Plant (OSP) Engineer at Underline. With more than 10 years of experience in the OSP industry, Justin specializes in the development of automated GIS processes along with hosting custom made web maps. He has worked on a wide range of fiber build outs internationally and domestically. His expertise involves implementing efficient processes to help get the product/deliverable out the door.

Christina Lynn is the Senior Product Designer at Underline. Her background as a technologist started as a technical writer for software and office infrastructure to support 11,000 retail offices, robotic process automation to handle technical support center reporting, and designing mobile platforms for users in a retail environment at 80,000 desks.

After moving into a role as a principal designer for an insurance distributor and healthcare services company, Christina implemented a new design library to advance the development of shared components for customer relationship management and clinical pharmacy tools. This enabled her team to introduce rapid prototyping into the intake and design process, which provided both business stakeholder and software engineers with essential interface references. Her experiences have given her the ability to creatively navigate technical limitations and articulate both complex and simple concepts into holistic and meaningful user experiences.

She strongly believes in dedicating talent toward initiatives that have a lasting and positive impact on communities.

As Underline's National Director of Construction, Tom has a 30-year career in the telecom industry. With experience in engineering, construction, and implementation services, Tom has overseen the construction of tens of thousands of plant miles associated with fiber-to-the-home projects deployed across all regions of North America.

Before joining Underline, Tom was Vice President of NX Utilities, a subsidiary of QualTek—a turnkey provider of infrastructure services to the telecommunications industries—where he built and directed teams of more than 500 people.

Before QualTek, Tom served as Vice President of Operations for Bay Networks, Inc, where he oversaw a call center and field operations that provided installation for more than 3000 buried fiber-optic service wires weekly.

Thomas Esposito is a Software Engineer at Underline focusing on API and Integration execution. He has 6 years of experience at companies ranging from startups to AT&T. Thomas has worked with a variety of technology environments in a full stack capacity, building both backend services and frontend components to consume them. His experiences have shaped his passions for system integration and information infrastructure.

Reid Drapp is the GIS Manager at Underline. Utilizing a Master’s of Science in GIS, along with his detail oriented approach to OSP network design, Reid specializes in geodatabase maintenance and the creation of automated QA/QC processes. Reid has more than a decade of experience working with geodata and was previously GIS Lead at Foresite Group, where he worked on the FTTH buildout of Huntsville Utilities and Verizon fiber deployments in cities including Seattle (WA), Cleveland (OH), Nashville (TN), and Knoxville (TN). Before Foresite Group, Reid was at Atlantic Engineering, working on Google Fiber in Austin (TX), and Actavo, building FTTX in the Caribbean. His expertise also includes a focus on value engineering and using GIS analysis to highlight design inefficiencies and equipment constraints to reduce costs and produce an accurate data driven billing of materials. With his versatile skill set and knowledge of both the geospatial and network engineering fields, Reid can efficiently guide a project from conception to completion, and be involved in both the technical aspects as well as the day-to-day production.

Nashwa Khalid is the Data Analyst at Underline. Passionate about data-driven decision making to maximize impact, she joined Underline after an extensive career in global health. Nashwa has successfully implemented evidence-based interventions to bridge health delivery gaps in Ghana, Pakistan, and the USA. Nashwa received her Master’s degree from The Fletcher School, Tufts University where her research focused on the nexus between foreign direct investment and entrepreneurship-led development in emerging economies.

Roy Coleman is a Senior Security Operations Engineer at Underline. He has more than 19 years of experience with modern information technology and tools across various industries and platforms. His background includes work with financial extranets, telecommunications service providers, the defense industrial base, and software development companies. As a career contractor, Roy has worked for companies including Raytheon and General Dynamics, in roles that include leading task orders for the Information Technology Directorate, and managing information assurance and certification efforts for federal agencies. He has been recognized for his leadership in cybersecurity on defense and national security related projects. Roy’s experience with Open Source has led him to specialize in integrating effective security solutions with operations on limited budgets.

Tiffany Kretler is the Senior Controller for Finance at Underline. She started her career at Deloitte focused on external audit for the private and public sector, then she was headhunted to join Toyota Financial Services to complete or lead international and domestic internal audits. At ARYZTA, a global food manufacturer, she was the subject matter expert for the Americas region in all things internal audit and internal controls; she synergized three companies’ policies into one standard operation procedure program for finance and operation functions and poise the region for long-term growth. When she joined the SunPower team, she led an outsourced accounting team to grow a commercial asset portfolio from 80 to 110+ assets. Tiffany has sharpened her experience developing and testing financial controls, operational controls, and internal policies and has been trained in auditing, preparing, and reporting financial statements, in both an internal and external role. Tiffany graduated with honors at Indiana University with a BS in Accounting, BS in Operations Management and a minor in Spanish. She is passionate about leading teams, initiatives, and projects in her professional and personal life.

Jason Thibodeau is the Senior DevOps Engineer at Underline. His background includes managing on-prem as well as cloud infrastructure for multiple large organizations including Tripadvisor, CVS/Health, and j2 Global. He brings a wealth of experience in infrastructure management, automation, and systems design to the group. Jason specializes in removing unneeded complexity and distilling systems to their minimum-necessary complexity, while maintaining or enhancing functionality. His deep knowledge and experience managing diverse systems gives him the type of intuition needed to build innovative, stable, and performant systems that integrate the latest technologies without compromising their integrity.

Christine Marlowe is the Community Engagement Manager at Underline. Passionate about connecting with the very people who live, work and socialize in specific communities, who make each so unique, Christine has had the pleasure of working closely with numerous constituencies while representing all levels of government– at the federal, state and local levels. Previously, Christine worked for the Democratic Leader, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer, as well as represented numerous NYC and NYS agencies for various infrastructure projects. She has experience developing and implementing brand messaging and strategic communication plans, in addition to dynamic public outreach strategies and community engagement events. Christine attended The University at Albany and earned her Master of Arts degree in Organizational Communication.

Jaime Espinosa is the Director of Industry Partnerships & Supply Chain Management at Underline. He has over 20 years of experience in Sales, Account Management, Project Management, Market Development, Consulting and Engineering. He has experience managing sales growth and experience with multi-channel distribution and account strategy domestically and internationally with multi-million dollar and long term revenue accounts. He started his career as a Project Manager with General Electric performing technical analysis, sales support, project viability, and supervising the refurbishment of power generation plants using PC-based supervision software SCADA, and PLC-based automation. From General Electric he went to Corning Optical Communications where he held different roles over 15 years: Field Engineer and Project Manager, Systems Engineer responsible for the Latin American markets, National Broadband Stimulus Account Manager responsible for a network of business associates and recipients of federal funding for broadband infrastructure projects, Manager for National Contractors, and Manager for Market and Business Development for Carrier Networks where he created the business strategy for Municipalities, Electric Membership Cooperatives and Rural Electric Cooperatives, and the next generation of FTTx projects in the Americas.

Harikrishna Rajagopalan is the Senior Network Engineer at Underline. After graduating with a Masters in Telecommunications, Hari started his career as a Voice and Telecommunications Engineer setting up Call Center Technology. Working as a Network Engineer at AT&T and GE, he gained competence in both Service provider and Data Center Networking.

He was the sole Network Engineer at Drew Marine managing more than 70 locations connected via MPLS technology. At Interactive Data, part of NYSE today, he helped design and maintain a world wide network which specialized in market data and ultra low latency networks.

At Dell Technologies, he was a member of a global team of Network experts which dealt with highly escalated and complicated issues of Enterprise and Data Center Network Technologies.

Throughout his career, he built and designed network infrastructure which was cutting edge as well as practical and is continuing the same at Underline.

Coty Beasley is the Head of Product and Design at Underline. His background combines Product Design, Product Management, and Computer Science to create software experiences that are usable, intuitive, and communicative.

A veteran of early-stage technology ventures, Coty has been a founding member of multiple startups, developing new technologies and industry-firsts. These experiences have exposed him to complex work in artificial intelligence, healthcare outcomes, medical devices, telecommunications, civic tech, fintech, robotics, and physiology.

After living in the Bay and braving the Austin heat for many years, he now lives in the Midwest with his wife, four cats, and a shollie. At any time, you can find him restoring vintage audiovisual equipment, growing vertical hydroponic gardens, or thumbing through an extensive vinyl collection.

Mark Kropilak serves as General Counsel for Underline. Mark is an attorney and business leader with vast experience in the areas of infrastructure investments, acquisitions, technology commercialization, and utility valuation. He has served as General Counsel and SVP of Business Development for large regulated utilities engaged in the water and wastewater profession. Mark spent over 20 years with Aqua America where he completed over 200 acquisitions and growth ventures, establishing the platform for investing over $2 Billion, growing the company from 250,000 customers to over 950,000 customers. Prior to Aqua, Mark was associated with Morgan Lewis and subsequently served as Of Counsel for Saul Ewing working on various regulatory matters. Mark has also served as CEO of a start-up water treatment company and has been a Board advisor to other technology companies engaged in water quality measurement and cloud-based applications for plant operators. Mark holds a law degree from Columbia University, an EMBA from Villanova University and undergraduate degrees in Economics and Accounting from Saint Vincent College.

Lance Addison leads Underline’s national and local fiber network Engineering, Construction, and Operations. He has more than 25 years of Wireline and Wireless industry experience in a variety of Operational, Financial, Construction, EHS, Logistics, and Employee Development support disciplines. Lance has been involved in building more than 30,000 route miles of fiber. Most recently, Lance was the Director of Telecom Operations for a Quanta Services business unit. Quanta is the nation’s largest publicly held (NYSE: PWR) Infrastructure Services Contractor with annual revenues exceeding $11B.

Over the past two decades, Lance has held senior management positions on both the Network Owner and Network Contractor segments of Wireline/Wireless industry including President/COO of Bear Communications, where he led a team of 1000 people building the business from $50M to $200M in revenue, and Vice President of UniTek Global Services, a preeminent Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) firm that focuses on large FTTP/x construction builds. Preceding network owner leadership roles include Charter Communications—the second largest cable provider and competitive local access providers Everest Connections (now Consolidated Communications) and McLeodUSA.

Kyle Glaeser is the Director of Emerging Networks at Underline. He started his career as a network design engineer working on projects for Google Fiber, AT&T, Verizon, and FTTH builds around the world. Using his background in GIS, Kyle created scripts and models to drive efficiencies into network designs, shaving millions of dollars off large builds. He began implementing GIS based innovations into the design, construction, and financing of large FTTH builds. After seeing a number of projects explode past their projected budgets, he created a program to use LiDAR collection data and autodesign tools to accurately analyze a market’s cost before construction. Through this work, Kyle took an interest in information infrastructure as the basis of smart city technologies, developing network architectures that are custom tailored to communities infrastructure needs. Upon learning about the emerging open access market and software defined networking, he became passionate about developing specific network use cases and architectures that would propel the open access model forward as the network of the future.

Josemar has more than ten years of experience building software and worked in every aspect of software development from ideas to architecture to Backend APIs and Frontend User Experiences. His expertise in all these areas gives him the perfect knowledge about what is required to build efficient, scalable, maintainable software platforms.

Previously to Underline, Josemar worked as Principal Software Engineer at Neighborly, working on financial services tools to create community demand for projects. In the past, Josemar helped build the first open-source crowdfunding platform for creative projects. Today, it is the biggest crowdfunding platform in South America.

Josemar is passionate about open source software; and believes that shared solutions are the foundation for efficiently building the next generation of software services while elevating the quality of the projects.

Jason White leads Engineering at Underline. For more than 30 years, Jason has provided thought leadership, guided cultural change, and applied his technological expertise to industries ranging from biotechnology and healthcare IT, to food processing, documentation management, digital wellness, and blockchain. Jason has repeatedly built innovative teams that pragmatically challenge the status quo, and has guided those teams to success. His previous major deployments have been in biotechnology and healthcare IT, in which he grew large teams of full-time employees, managed multi-million dollar budgets and helped close acquisitions and exit events by demonstrating technological excellence. Jason connects the dots between business vision, organizational structure, and technology strategy.

Bob Thompson is the Founder & CEO of Underline, a venture-backed company focused on deploying intelligent infrastructure for U.S. communities.

Prior to founding Underline, Bob served as SVP & Head of Corporate Finance Solutions for Guardian Life, where his mandate ranged from Treasury & Liquidity Risk Management, to Capital Markets Strategy and Balance Sheet Optimization, Corporate Development, M&A, and Strategic Investments. During his tenure with Guardian, Bob led a number of strategic initiatives, including serving as Chairman and President of Guardian Investor Services and Guardian Strategic Ventures.

Over the years, Bob has led multiple efforts including acting as Head of Capital Markets for a boutique insurance bank and Group Head of the Special Transactions Group at CIBC World Markets, working with the UBS Global Structured Products Group, and executing various first-of-their-kind derivative/concentrated risk transactions. In 2009, Bob and his wife founded One Life Missions, operating in the U.S. and internationally; as a result, Bob has worked in various missions and relief capacities in the U.S., Haiti, and Guatemala.

Bob attended Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, earning a Bachelors in Science of Foreign Service.

Eva Arevuo leads marketing and communications for Underline. Eva is an experienced communications strategist, with a passion for social impact ventures, civic tech, and urban innovation.

Before joining Underline, Eva led marketing and communications for Neighborly, managed a team of six as the Innovation Team Director at Small Girls PR, working on clients like GE, and ran corporate and executive communications at Change.org. Eva has also consulted on brand, policy, communications, and product marketing for a number of startups, investment firms, and advocacy groups. She has deep experience with brand positioning, strategic partnerships, executive thought leadership, content strategy and creation, and coordinated grassroots marketing campaigns.

Taking central communications roles, Eva has developed core branding and big ideas—from the power of business to scale social impact, to the role of city leaders to deliver opportunity to residents, and the impact of open access fiber networks to transform communities across the U.S. Eva was born and raised in London, and has a BA from the University of Oxford and Princeton University.

Robert Schmidt is a certified public accountant and a certified internal auditor with more than 27 years experience in the finance and accounting profession. Prior to coming to Underline, Robert spent 22 years as a consultant guiding numerous clients from various industries on making their organizations run smoother and improving their policies, procedures, and processes. Robert married Florence in 1985 in Osengion Switzerland and had 2 girls who are now married and have children of their own.

Jeff Bankston leads Business Development for Underline Technologies. Jeff has 25 years of in-depth experience across a variety of telecommunications technologies, such as FTTH, Optical Transport, Routing, LTE/5G, and Cloud.  Jeff started his career at Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia in roles from software development to sales leadership, with accomplishments such as the deployment of the world’s first 5G Standalone Core on public cloud with DISH Wireless. Prior to joining Underline, Jeff led the Private Wireless business segment at Amazon Web Services, driving sales, business development and partnerships, culminating in the launch of new products such as AWS Private 5G.  Jeff draws on this wide base of business and technology acumen to drive successful outcomes for customers, partners, and stakeholders.

Jeff lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife Michelle and daughters Evelyn and Brooklyn.  He enjoys playing guitar and bass, wakesurfing, and woodworking.  He has Electrical Engineering and MBA degrees from the University of Texas at Dallas.

‍

Suzanne Heritage is Director of Community Partnerships & Policy at Underline, where she works hand in hand with communities to support their connectivity goals. Passionate about building—and amplifying—the conditions where communities can thrive, Suzanne has centered her career around cultivating partnerships that pair organizational growth with positive community impact.

Prior to joining Underline, Suzanne worked for findhelp, a social care technology start up, where she led business development and go-to-market strategy, generating and expanding partnerships with key industry stakeholders and state government markets. In this role she synthesized federal and state policy to inform business and product strategy, working closely with prospective clients to understand needs, identify and carve out opportunities, and foster and maintain strategic relationships centered on trust.

Suzanne attended The University of Texas at Austin, earning a Master of Science in Social Work.

Gus Prieto is a Technical Design Engineer at Underline, focused on bridging engineering and construction practices for efficient and successful infrastructure execution.

With more than 8 years of OSP telecom experience, Gus has taken on many roles, from drafting permits as a CAD technician, to transitioning into GIS designing routes and performing spatial queries/analysis as a Network Designer. He gained field experience as a Make-Ready Specialist and Production Manager, and in his last role before joining Underline, directed and leveraged 3rd party resources to meet production needs as an Associate PM. Throughout his many roles, Gus has developed a well-rounded understanding of the aspects that go into a network infrastructure build.

Gus attended Texas State University, earning a Bachelors of Science in Engineering Technology.

Cameron Scholze is a Network Designer at Underline. She has experience in OSP telecom design working on new markets for a large U.S. telecom company. With an excellent GIS education from the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater, she utilizes her background to improve the efficiency and efficacy of telecom design. Cameron grew up in an unincorporated rural town with limited access to resources. Seeing first-hand the detriment this has caused to her neighbors is what drives her interest in providing connectivity infrastructure to communities that need it most.

Bradley Hilton is a Senior Software Engineer at Underline and has more than eleven years of experience in software development. Prior to Underline, Bradley worked as an Interconnectivity Architect at Rocket.Chat with a focus on tools to enable businesses and communities to interconnect their various other communication tools. While at Rocket.Chat, he created the App Engine and the App Marketplace to distribute Rocket.Chat Apps. Bradley enjoys working with real estate and has built several solutions for helping manage it, including writing software to help manage owner finance loans. Bradley is passionate about family, faith, and spending time outdoors while hiking or mountain biking.

Kristen Gliniecki is a Cybersecurity Analyst at Underline. She graduated with honors from Baker College with a BS in Information Technology & Security, and a minor in Information Assurance. She has 12 years of experience in information technology with seven years specializing in cybersecurity in the defense industrial base. Her areas of expertise include vulnerability management, endpoint protection, security operations, incident response, security auditing, risk assessment, certification & accreditation, policy development, process optimization, compliance reporting, configuration management, and server administration.

Eric is the Head of Organizational Strategy at Underline, focused on execution strategy. He has varied experience building scalable operations and high-performing teams through hyper growth business cycles.

Eric started his career at Silicon Valley Bank working with early-stage tech companies and quickly transitioned to venture capital/private equity services, driving portfolio growth of more than 100% year-over-year for 6 years straight. From there, he moved to a CFO/COO role at Kapost, a marketing SaaS technology company, where he restructured the finance, operations, and HR functions to support a successful sale of the business to Upland Software (NASDAQ: UPLD) within 2 years. Since the sale in 2019, Eric has worked with various other early-to-mid stage businesses on alignment, scale, and tangible results (one of which grew revenue more than 14x during his 2 year tenure).

Eric has a BS in Business Administration with emphasis in finance, a certificate in entrepreneurial studies, and a minor in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Mia Komel is a Sr. Product Manager with more than 10 years of experience building products in startups as well as big companies. During her career she had the opportunity to work on B2B / B2C, marketplaces, and e-commerce products.

Her experience allows her to work tightly with engineering teams and engage various different types of stakeholders. Mia is obsessed with understanding user needs and pain points and looks at product simplicity and short cycles as a way to build products that users love.  She won a top award for innovation in Brazil prior to migrating to Silicon Valley.

Mia is experienced in agile methodologies and applying lean manufacturing strategies into product management to product / market fit.  She firmly believes that organizations that are able to understand and deliver products that balance user needs with long term technological viability tend to become leaders in their markets.

On any given weekend you will find her either playing with her modular synthesizers, listening to her growing vinyl collection or taking photos with her 4x5 wooden camera.

Ann Reck is the Senior Brand Designer at Underline. She has previously worked at many of the leading advertising agencies, and most recently helped grow the design department at a health and fitness startup. With more than 10 years of creative professional experience, she has a background in Design, Production, Art Direction, and Illustration. Ann uses these skills to create brand consistency through design and communications from start to finish.

Although born in Virginia, she has lived in Colorado, Boston, and now Philadelphia. Her passions consist of supporting Philly Sports, working out at her CrossFit gym, and collecting sneakers.

Gene Armstrong is a Senior Software Engineer at Underline and has more than ten years of experience in software development. Over his career, Gene has worked in many aspects of technology including networking, system administration, support, as well as back-end and front-end development. His experience in these areas has equipped him with the knowledge to build efficient and innovative software solutions focussed on positive user experiences.

Ryan Plum is the National Director of Technical Services at Underline. Ryan has more than 15 years of Fiber Splicing, Technical Field Services, Project Management, and Organizational Leadership Experience.

For more than a decade, Ryan worked for Ledcor in their Managed Technical Services Division as Field Services Supervisor, Project Manager, and most recently as Senior Business Services Manager. Ledcor is an Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractor in the Power, Mining, Oil, Gas, and Telecom sectors with more than 6500 employees and +$3B annual revenue. At Ledcor, Ryan led the PMO Office and Service Delivery for the U.S. and Canada, with monthly field volumes of more than 40,000 person hours per month across a variety of customer portfolios.

Professionally, Ryan is passionate about improvements and innovation; challenging the status quo is his default, while he seeks to better understand new ways of doing things.

Ryan has led teams and initiatives that have successfully changed business processes related to Resource Planning, SLA Reporting, Customer Onboarding, Training, Quality, and Operational Efficiencies.

Justin Holder is the Senior Outside Plant (OSP) Engineer at Underline. With more than 10 years of experience in the OSP industry, Justin specializes in the development of automated GIS processes along with hosting custom made web maps. He has worked on a wide range of fiber build outs internationally and domestically. His expertise involves implementing efficient processes to help get the product/deliverable out the door.

Christina Lynn is the Senior Product Designer at Underline. Her background as a technologist started as a technical writer for software and office infrastructure to support 11,000 retail offices, robotic process automation to handle technical support center reporting, and designing mobile platforms for users in a retail environment at 80,000 desks.

After moving into a role as a principal designer for an insurance distributor and healthcare services company, Christina implemented a new design library to advance the development of shared components for customer relationship management and clinical pharmacy tools. This enabled her team to introduce rapid prototyping into the intake and design process, which provided both business stakeholder and software engineers with essential interface references. Her experiences have given her the ability to creatively navigate technical limitations and articulate both complex and simple concepts into holistic and meaningful user experiences.

She strongly believes in dedicating talent toward initiatives that have a lasting and positive impact on communities.

As Underline's National Director of Construction, Tom has a 30-year career in the telecom industry. With experience in engineering, construction, and implementation services, Tom has overseen the construction of tens of thousands of plant miles associated with fiber-to-the-home projects deployed across all regions of North America.

Before joining Underline, Tom was Vice President of NX Utilities, a subsidiary of QualTek—a turnkey provider of infrastructure services to the telecommunications industries—where he built and directed teams of more than 500 people.

Before QualTek, Tom served as Vice President of Operations for Bay Networks, Inc, where he oversaw a call center and field operations that provided installation for more than 3000 buried fiber-optic service wires weekly.

Thomas Esposito is a Software Engineer at Underline focusing on API and Integration execution. He has 6 years of experience at companies ranging from startups to AT&T. Thomas has worked with a variety of technology environments in a full stack capacity, building both backend services and frontend components to consume them. His experiences have shaped his passions for system integration and information infrastructure.

Reid Drapp is the GIS Manager at Underline. Utilizing a Master’s of Science in GIS, along with his detail oriented approach to OSP network design, Reid specializes in geodatabase maintenance and the creation of automated QA/QC processes. Reid has more than a decade of experience working with geodata and was previously GIS Lead at Foresite Group, where he worked on the FTTH buildout of Huntsville Utilities and Verizon fiber deployments in cities including Seattle (WA), Cleveland (OH), Nashville (TN), and Knoxville (TN). Before Foresite Group, Reid was at Atlantic Engineering, working on Google Fiber in Austin (TX), and Actavo, building FTTX in the Caribbean. His expertise also includes a focus on value engineering and using GIS analysis to highlight design inefficiencies and equipment constraints to reduce costs and produce an accurate data driven billing of materials. With his versatile skill set and knowledge of both the geospatial and network engineering fields, Reid can efficiently guide a project from conception to completion, and be involved in both the technical aspects as well as the day-to-day production.

Nashwa Khalid is the Data Analyst at Underline. Passionate about data-driven decision making to maximize impact, she joined Underline after an extensive career in global health. Nashwa has successfully implemented evidence-based interventions to bridge health delivery gaps in Ghana, Pakistan, and the USA. Nashwa received her Master’s degree from The Fletcher School, Tufts University where her research focused on the nexus between foreign direct investment and entrepreneurship-led development in emerging economies.

Roy Coleman is a Senior Security Operations Engineer at Underline. He has more than 19 years of experience with modern information technology and tools across various industries and platforms. His background includes work with financial extranets, telecommunications service providers, the defense industrial base, and software development companies. As a career contractor, Roy has worked for companies including Raytheon and General Dynamics, in roles that include leading task orders for the Information Technology Directorate, and managing information assurance and certification efforts for federal agencies. He has been recognized for his leadership in cybersecurity on defense and national security related projects. Roy’s experience with Open Source has led him to specialize in integrating effective security solutions with operations on limited budgets.

Tiffany Kretler is the Senior Controller for Finance at Underline. She started her career at Deloitte focused on external audit for the private and public sector, then she was headhunted to join Toyota Financial Services to complete or lead international and domestic internal audits. At ARYZTA, a global food manufacturer, she was the subject matter expert for the Americas region in all things internal audit and internal controls; she synergized three companies’ policies into one standard operation procedure program for finance and operation functions and poise the region for long-term growth. When she joined the SunPower team, she led an outsourced accounting team to grow a commercial asset portfolio from 80 to 110+ assets. Tiffany has sharpened her experience developing and testing financial controls, operational controls, and internal policies and has been trained in auditing, preparing, and reporting financial statements, in both an internal and external role. Tiffany graduated with honors at Indiana University with a BS in Accounting, BS in Operations Management and a minor in Spanish. She is passionate about leading teams, initiatives, and projects in her professional and personal life.

Jason Thibodeau is the Senior DevOps Engineer at Underline. His background includes managing on-prem as well as cloud infrastructure for multiple large organizations including Tripadvisor, CVS/Health, and j2 Global. He brings a wealth of experience in infrastructure management, automation, and systems design to the group. Jason specializes in removing unneeded complexity and distilling systems to their minimum-necessary complexity, while maintaining or enhancing functionality. His deep knowledge and experience managing diverse systems gives him the type of intuition needed to build innovative, stable, and performant systems that integrate the latest technologies without compromising their integrity.

Christine Marlowe is the Community Engagement Manager at Underline. Passionate about connecting with the very people who live, work and socialize in specific communities, who make each so unique, Christine has had the pleasure of working closely with numerous constituencies while representing all levels of government– at the federal, state and local levels. Previously, Christine worked for the Democratic Leader, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer, as well as represented numerous NYC and NYS agencies for various infrastructure projects. She has experience developing and implementing brand messaging and strategic communication plans, in addition to dynamic public outreach strategies and community engagement events. Christine attended The University at Albany and earned her Master of Arts degree in Organizational Communication.

Jaime Espinosa is the Director of Industry Partnerships & Supply Chain Management at Underline. He has over 20 years of experience in Sales, Account Management, Project Management, Market Development, Consulting and Engineering. He has experience managing sales growth and experience with multi-channel distribution and account strategy domestically and internationally with multi-million dollar and long term revenue accounts. He started his career as a Project Manager with General Electric performing technical analysis, sales support, project viability, and supervising the refurbishment of power generation plants using PC-based supervision software SCADA, and PLC-based automation. From General Electric he went to Corning Optical Communications where he held different roles over 15 years: Field Engineer and Project Manager, Systems Engineer responsible for the Latin American markets, National Broadband Stimulus Account Manager responsible for a network of business associates and recipients of federal funding for broadband infrastructure projects, Manager for National Contractors, and Manager for Market and Business Development for Carrier Networks where he created the business strategy for Municipalities, Electric Membership Cooperatives and Rural Electric Cooperatives, and the next generation of FTTx projects in the Americas.

Harikrishna Rajagopalan is the Senior Network Engineer at Underline. After graduating with a Masters in Telecommunications, Hari started his career as a Voice and Telecommunications Engineer setting up Call Center Technology. Working as a Network Engineer at AT&T and GE, he gained competence in both Service provider and Data Center Networking.

He was the sole Network Engineer at Drew Marine managing more than 70 locations connected via MPLS technology. At Interactive Data, part of NYSE today, he helped design and maintain a world wide network which specialized in market data and ultra low latency networks.

At Dell Technologies, he was a member of a global team of Network experts which dealt with highly escalated and complicated issues of Enterprise and Data Center Network Technologies.

Throughout his career, he built and designed network infrastructure which was cutting edge as well as practical and is continuing the same at Underline.

Coty Beasley is the Head of Product and Design at Underline. His background combines Product Design, Product Management, and Computer Science to create software experiences that are usable, intuitive, and communicative.

A veteran of early-stage technology ventures, Coty has been a founding member of multiple startups, developing new technologies and industry-firsts. These experiences have exposed him to complex work in artificial intelligence, healthcare outcomes, medical devices, telecommunications, civic tech, fintech, robotics, and physiology.

After living in the Bay and braving the Austin heat for many years, he now lives in the Midwest with his wife, four cats, and a shollie. At any time, you can find him restoring vintage audiovisual equipment, growing vertical hydroponic gardens, or thumbing through an extensive vinyl collection.

Mark Kropilak serves as General Counsel for Underline. Mark is an attorney and business leader with vast experience in the areas of infrastructure investments, acquisitions, technology commercialization, and utility valuation. He has served as General Counsel and SVP of Business Development for large regulated utilities engaged in the water and wastewater profession. Mark spent over 20 years with Aqua America where he completed over 200 acquisitions and growth ventures, establishing the platform for investing over $2 Billion, growing the company from 250,000 customers to over 950,000 customers. Prior to Aqua, Mark was associated with Morgan Lewis and subsequently served as Of Counsel for Saul Ewing working on various regulatory matters. Mark has also served as CEO of a start-up water treatment company and has been a Board advisor to other technology companies engaged in water quality measurement and cloud-based applications for plant operators. Mark holds a law degree from Columbia University, an EMBA from Villanova University and undergraduate degrees in Economics and Accounting from Saint Vincent College.

Lance Addison leads Underline’s national and local fiber network Engineering, Construction, and Operations. He has more than 25 years of Wireline and Wireless industry experience in a variety of Operational, Financial, Construction, EHS, Logistics, and Employee Development support disciplines. Lance has been involved in building more than 30,000 route miles of fiber. Most recently, Lance was the Director of Telecom Operations for a Quanta Services business unit. Quanta is the nation’s largest publicly held (NYSE: PWR) Infrastructure Services Contractor with annual revenues exceeding $11B.

Over the past two decades, Lance has held senior management positions on both the Network Owner and Network Contractor segments of Wireline/Wireless industry including President/COO of Bear Communications, where he led a team of 1000 people building the business from $50M to $200M in revenue, and Vice President of UniTek Global Services, a preeminent Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) firm that focuses on large FTTP/x construction builds. Preceding network owner leadership roles include Charter Communications—the second largest cable provider and competitive local access providers Everest Connections (now Consolidated Communications) and McLeodUSA.

Kyle Glaeser is the Director of Emerging Networks at Underline. He started his career as a network design engineer working on projects for Google Fiber, AT&T, Verizon, and FTTH builds around the world. Using his background in GIS, Kyle created scripts and models to drive efficiencies into network designs, shaving millions of dollars off large builds. He began implementing GIS based innovations into the design, construction, and financing of large FTTH builds. After seeing a number of projects explode past their projected budgets, he created a program to use LiDAR collection data and autodesign tools to accurately analyze a market’s cost before construction. Through this work, Kyle took an interest in information infrastructure as the basis of smart city technologies, developing network architectures that are custom tailored to communities infrastructure needs. Upon learning about the emerging open access market and software defined networking, he became passionate about developing specific network use cases and architectures that would propel the open access model forward as the network of the future.

Josemar has more than ten years of experience building software and worked in every aspect of software development from ideas to architecture to Backend APIs and Frontend User Experiences. His expertise in all these areas gives him the perfect knowledge about what is required to build efficient, scalable, maintainable software platforms.

Previously to Underline, Josemar worked as Principal Software Engineer at Neighborly, working on financial services tools to create community demand for projects. In the past, Josemar helped build the first open-source crowdfunding platform for creative projects. Today, it is the biggest crowdfunding platform in South America.

Josemar is passionate about open source software; and believes that shared solutions are the foundation for efficiently building the next generation of software services while elevating the quality of the projects.

Jason White leads Engineering at Underline. For more than 30 years, Jason has provided thought leadership, guided cultural change, and applied his technological expertise to industries ranging from biotechnology and healthcare IT, to food processing, documentation management, digital wellness, and blockchain. Jason has repeatedly built innovative teams that pragmatically challenge the status quo, and has guided those teams to success. His previous major deployments have been in biotechnology and healthcare IT, in which he grew large teams of full-time employees, managed multi-million dollar budgets and helped close acquisitions and exit events by demonstrating technological excellence. Jason connects the dots between business vision, organizational structure, and technology strategy.

Bob Thompson is the Founder & CEO of Underline, a venture-backed company focused on deploying intelligent infrastructure for U.S. communities.

Prior to founding Underline, Bob served as SVP & Head of Corporate Finance Solutions for Guardian Life, where his mandate ranged from Treasury & Liquidity Risk Management, to Capital Markets Strategy and Balance Sheet Optimization, Corporate Development, M&A, and Strategic Investments. During his tenure with Guardian, Bob led a number of strategic initiatives, including serving as Chairman and President of Guardian Investor Services and Guardian Strategic Ventures.

Over the years, Bob has led multiple efforts including acting as Head of Capital Markets for a boutique insurance bank and Group Head of the Special Transactions Group at CIBC World Markets, working with the UBS Global Structured Products Group, and executing various first-of-their-kind derivative/concentrated risk transactions. In 2009, Bob and his wife founded One Life Missions, operating in the U.S. and internationally; as a result, Bob has worked in various missions and relief capacities in the U.S., Haiti, and Guatemala.

Bob attended Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, earning a Bachelors in Science of Foreign Service.

Eva Arevuo leads marketing and communications for Underline. Eva is an experienced communications strategist, with a passion for social impact ventures, civic tech, and urban innovation.

Before joining Underline, Eva led marketing and communications for Neighborly, managed a team of six as the Innovation Team Director at Small Girls PR, working on clients like GE, and ran corporate and executive communications at Change.org. Eva has also consulted on brand, policy, communications, and product marketing for a number of startups, investment firms, and advocacy groups. She has deep experience with brand positioning, strategic partnerships, executive thought leadership, content strategy and creation, and coordinated grassroots marketing campaigns.

Taking central communications roles, Eva has developed core branding and big ideas—from the power of business to scale social impact, to the role of city leaders to deliver opportunity to residents, and the impact of open access fiber networks to transform communities across the U.S. Eva was born and raised in London, and has a BA from the University of Oxford and Princeton University.