James Brehm & Associates

An independent advisor and technology evangelist, James Brehm is a regular speaker at industry conferences and one of the leading voices on the state of the IoT and M2M market today. Mr. Brehm is a regular contributor to CNBC and is frequently quoted by media outlets such as Business Week, RCR Wireless, ComputerWorld, PC Magazine, and the San Jose Mercury News. Over the past decade, Mr. Brehm has spoken to various groups on topics including wireless services, mobile marketing and advertising, mobile content, VoIP, activation and provisioning, service creation, mobile apps, premium messaging, wireless security, fixed-mobile convergence, mobile broadband (LTE and WiMAX), the telecom regulatory environment and vertical market deployment of web-enabled services. From 2011 to 2014, Brehm served as practice leader, strategist and senior consultant for Compass Intelligence. Prior to joining Compass Intelligence, Mr. Brehm served in multiple roles for nine (9) years at Growth Consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. Prior to joining Frost & Sullivan, Mr. Brehm worked in marketing, sales management, and business development roles for Rackspace Managed Hosting and Interland (now Web.com), two of the largest pure play web hosting companies in the U.S. His responsibilities included research on the competitive landscape of the market, developing new product offerings, assessing emerging markets, improving the over all value chain for Global 1000 clients, due diligence, and acquisition analysis. Mr. Brehm entered the high tech arena in the mid 1990’s working in sales management within the telecom arena for MCI and later working for Gateway, Inc in multiple roles including product marketing, product management, training, and sales management.

ABI Research

Ryan Martin is a Research Director at ABI Research covering new and emerging transformative technologies, including Industry 4.0, Digital Transformation, and the Internet of Things (IoT). He currently leads the firms Manufacturing, Industrial, and Enterprise IoT research. Prior to joining ABI Research, Ryan spent the past several years working at technology market research firms, including Yankee Group and, most recently, 451 Research. Before his time as a market research analyst, Ryan served as a consultant at Mobile Future Institute, a U.S.-based think tank focused on business strategies and marketing tactics for the mobile ecosystem. Additionally, he held advisory, consultative, and managerial positions at a number of early- to late-stage startups.

Wireless Wars

After an early career as a writer and marketer with Young & Rubicam, Jonathan Pelson joined Lucent Technologies during the telecom boom of the ‘90s, helping create and market some of the company’s breakthrough technology solutions. He later served as the Chief of Convergence Strategy for British Telecom, developing a global wireless plan for the company. During his time with these and other telecom companies, he traveled to China and saw that country’s fledgling telecommunications companies grow and eventually seize the world lead. With deep personal experience in the sector and rare access to the people who ran the world’s largest telecom companies, he decided to investigate how the lead was lost to the Chinese and what we could do to take it back. Jon has a degree in economics from Dartmouth College and an MBA from the Darden School at the University of Virginia.

Motivitee

Akshay Sharma is a tech analyst, ex-Gartner, having authored 280+ research notes, on emerging technologies like DevOPs, Software Defined Data Centers, 5G, and IoT. A frequent speaker at tech events, he is often quoted in leading institutions like CNN, Wall St. Journal, and CIO.com. He is a former CTO of one of the first video/WiFi smartphone firms and an entrepreneur in the tech sector, having worked for firms that are now part of leading firms like Intel, IBM, Nokia, and Ericsson. He advises many emerging startups, such as Kovair, where he is CTO, in the DevOps/ALM arena, having worked for 3 startups that are part of IBM Rational/DOORS in ObjecTime, Verilog, and Telelogic on integrated development, test and operational environments. Additionally, he is CTO of LB-N, and the Motivitee Alliance on 5G-enabled Smart X (City, Campus, and Grid) Industry4.0 solutions, all provided as a Service.

Hitachi Vantara

Frank Antonysamy leads the development of Hitachi Vantara consulting and advisory services, IoT and industry practices. He also lead company and partner delivery capabilities which help advance clients’ data-driven business initiatives. Before joining Hitachi Vantara, Frank spent 17 years at Cognizant, where he led numerous Fortune 500 global delivery management and transformation programs. He was most recently global markets leader for Cognizant’s IoT and Engineering business.

Vodafone

Erik has over 20 years’ experience in the communication technology field, his experience covering hardware, software, services and solution elements of the industry. Having held senior sales and product management roles across the globe, Erik joined Vodafone in 2010. As Vice President IoT New Business Development, Erik’s responsibilities include building and developing the IoT domestic new business team including the Latin America region, driving M2M solutions into Vodafone Global Enterprise accounts along with additional customers and markets, and defining, developing and nurturing the IoT ecosystem within the marketplace.

KORE

In his role at KORE, Steven leads product management in delivering KOREs Licensed and Unlicensed IoT Connectivity Service offerings, Platform and Data Services, and Healthcare vertical solution enablement. Over his 30 year telecommunications career, Steven has specialized in wireless and optical network technologies and has filled individual and leadership roles spanning product management and marketing, sales and business development, and software engineering. Steven has authored multiple cellular and optical network patents during his career and holds a BA in Computer Sciences from the University of Texas.

Airgain

Morad Sbahi is responsible for managing and marketing Airgain’s products as well as driving adoption of the company’s newer technologies across the globe. As the SVP of Global Product and Marketing, Mr. Sbahi is also responsible for developing and executing a comprehensive marketing and communication strategy that supports business growth and enhances brand awareness. By operating across all segments of the company, Mr. Sbahi’s role is to help Airgain expand into new markets and product categories worldwide. Since joining Airgain in 2013, Mr. Sbahi has held a number of senior management positions, including most recently as Vice President of Corporate Strategy, where he spearheaded the company’s recent acquisition of NimbeLink, a leader in edge-based cellular connectivity solutions for the Industrial Internet of Things. Prior to that, Mr. Sbahi was Airgain’s General Manager, EMEA, where he helped to establish Airgain’s solid presence in the geography. Before joining Airgain, he served as General Manager, EMEA for SMC Networks, Inc., a provider of customer premise equipment for service providers, where he led the development of SMC’s European business and directed the company’s planning and execution efforts across the market. Mr. Sbahi brings over 20 years of international executive management experience in the semiconductor and telecommunications industries to Airgain. A recognized industry leader, he has held executive management positions with such companies as Broadcom, Texas Instruments, Applied Micro Circuits, and Ubee Interactive. Mr. Sbahi holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech and an M.B.A. from the Warwick Business School.

AT&T

AT&Ts IoT Solutions group is a global facing practice over a decade of IoT/M2M solutionexperience with over 60 million assets under management with many of the world’s top globalbrands such as GM, Coke, Whirlpool and Kimberly Clark. The IoT Solutions Group works inpartnership with the AT&T Foundry Innovation Centers worldwide. The IoT Foundrys purpose isto help customers accelerate their own innovation curve by providing world class lab facilitiesand resources for rapid software & hardware prototyping by which to reduce our customer’stime-to-market of next-generation connected (IoT) products and better operationally manageassets in a global deployment context.Mallie is responsible for overseeing IoT go-to-market execution across AT&T’s largestenterprise Fortune 1000 customers within the AT&T IoT Solutions Group, whose mission is tohelp clients realize their connected product and operational digital transformation vision througha combination of consulting, design & implementation resources that provide a true IoT end-to-end solution on a global scale. AT&T’s IoT Solutions leverages AT&T’s cloud-based SaaS IoTplatform services that are often pre-integrated with a best of breed IoT ecosystem ofhardware-software partners paired with AT&T’s world-class wireless/wired IP infrastructure thatmeet our customers’ business needs of creating new revenue streams and driving internaloperational efficiencies that serves to reduce ongoing Line of Business execution cost.Prior to AT&T, Mallie held various Director of Marketing, Sales & Channel Managementpositions within the Internet and software industry serving medium to large enterprise segments.

Trend Micro

Eduardo Cabrera is responsible for analyzing emerging cyber threats to develop innovative and resilient enterprise risk management strategies for Fortune 500 clients and strategic partners. Before joining Trend Micro, he was a 20-year veteran and former CISO of the United States Secret Service with experience leading information security, cyber investigative, and protective programs in support of the Secret Service integrated mission. He started his career investigating transnational cyber criminal groups targeting the financial and retail sectors and later led cyber forensic operations in support of Secret Service large-scale data breach investigations. He then served as the Secret Service Strategic Advisor to the DHS National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center (NCCIC).

Zadara

Nelson has over 30 years of experience in the enterprise software infrastructure industry. He is known for creating innovative products and successfully bringing them to the market. Prior to co-founding Zadara, he was a Fellow and Vice President of Software Engineering at LSI Corporation, where he was responsible for an engineering team of over 250 people. Previously he was CTO and co-founder of StoreAge Networking Technologies, which was acquired by LSI in 2006. At StoreAge, he invented the out of band storage virtualization system, building and leading the engineering to a successful product that was adopted by HP and led to the acquisition of StoreAge by LSI. Nelson holds 10 patents related to storage technologies. He is a graduate of the Technion, the Israeli Institute of Technology.

Georgetown University

Dr. Burger is a Professor at Georgetown University. He was on detail to the White House as the Assistant Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and prior to that on detail to Federal Communications Commission as its CTO. Dr. Burger contributed to the Secure 5G and Beyond Act Implementation Plan, as well as ensured funding and support for the R&D and scaling of 5G IoT, smart city, and mobile applications. His research and teaching covers cybersecurity, distributed computing, DLT, systems economics and risk, policy, and network governance. He serves as an advisor to numerous companies and prior to his government service served on corporate boards. Prior to Georgetown he was CTO of several public and private network equipment and enterprise software companies. Dr. Burger holds over 20 patents and has published over 20 IETF, 3GPP, and W3C standards. He served on numerous industry association boards. He is a Distinguished Member of the Association for Computing Machinery and a Senior Member of the IEEE. He has a SBEE, MBA, and PhD from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

NimbeLink

As Co-Founder and CEO of NimbeLink, Scott has a long history of building profitable businesses and successful teams. In his role at NimbeLink, he is responsible for corporatevision, strategy, and the overall leadership of the company. Prior to founding NimbeLink in May of 2013, Scott held leadership roles forseveral industry-leading companies, including Logic PD, HDM, and Celestica. Healso served and retired after 20 years in theU.S. Navy as a Cryptologic Linguist. He earned his BS at New York University and his MBA from Cardinal Stritch University.

SMART Logistics

David has 25 years of leadership experience bringing innovative products and services to market. He began in the 90’s working for enterprise software systems such as LBMS and PLATINUM Technologies and in the 2000’s he introduced a new class of micro robotic systems to the US defense and security services at ReconRobotics. In 2009, David co-founded SMART Logistics with business partner Tim Watson. Together they have built a company which provides their clients’ unprecedented visibility into their supply chains and control over their reusable shipping assets.

BH IoT Group

Steve Brumer, Partner at BH IoT Group a consultancy firm providing companies across all industries with innovative IoT go-to-market strategy & execution services. With over 30 years+ M2M/IoT, Mobile and Wireless experience Brumer’s specialty is working with executives and entrepreneurs to define and execute their IoT solutions and accelerate their positioning within consumer or enterprise markets.Before BH IoT Group, Brumer was a Partner and IoT Practice Lead at 151 Advisors a consultancy firm providing technology companies with a combination of advisory and execution services. Brumer also co-founded and served as CEO of Wireless Rain which helped wireless carriers, manufacturers and solution providers build channel programs for B2B products, M2M products, and professional services. Prior to Wireless Rain, Brumer co-founded and served as President of Global Wireless Data, a national master dealer and value-added distributor of wireless products and services. Under his tenure, GWD grew from a self-funded start-up to 184 on the INC 500 as the largest Master Dealer for AT&T Wireless, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and Sprint. Earlier in his career, Brumer founded and served as CEO of Wireless Data Corp, and has held various executive management positions at Millicom, RAM Mobile Data and BellSouth Wireless.

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman

Glenn Richards is a partner and chair of the communications practice group at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. He represents a wide range of communications service providers and investors, including voice over internet protocol (VoIP) providers, wireline and wireless telecommunications carriers, television broadcasters, equipment manufacturers, satellite operators, banks and private equity firms in transactional and litigation matters, and before the Federal Communications Commission, state public utility commissions and the International Telecommunication Union. Glenn also represents large corporate users of communications services in contract negotiations with their suppliers.Glenn is also Executive Director of the Voice on the Net Coalition (www.von.org). Since 1997, VON has been educating state and federal policymakers about the benefits of Internet communications and the impact of regulation on this emerging technology. Glenn received a journalism degree from West Virginia University in 1982 and a law degree from New York Law School in 1985. He is admitted to practice in New York and Washington, DC. He is based in Washington, DC and can be reached at 202-663-8215 or glenn.richards@pillsburylaw.com