Board of Directors
William Wallace
William Wallace is a Co-founder of US Ignite and now serves as the Chairman of the Board of Directors. He brings to US Ignite more than 30 years of experience in the telecommunications industry, most recently as co-founder of DigitalBridge Communications (DBC), a venture-backed startup dedicated to bringing 4G broadband wireless services to underserved portions of the U.S.
Prior to DBC, Mr. Wallace was co-founder and CEO of OnePoint Communications, which was purchased by Verizon Communications in 2000. OnePoint and its successor company, Verizon Avenue, provide bundled communications services to concentrated communities nationwide, including apartment communities, military bases, and rural areas.
Previously, he served as head of the Telecommunications practice and Chief Operating Officer for Gemini Consulting, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Cap Gemini Sogeti group. In that role, he led teams that developed strategies and improved operations for many of the world’s largest carriers.
Mr. Wallace received an AB degree in Government and Economics from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Lev Gonick
Lev Gonick is an educator, technologist, and smart city architect, and currently serves as Chief Information Officer at Arizona State University.
Prior to his current role, Lev was co-founder and CEO of DigitalC, the award-winning non-profit organization enabling and celebrating innovation, collaboration, and productivity through next generation broadband networks, big open data solutions, and IoT for public benefit.
Lev was also previously CIO at Case Western Reserve University from 2001-2013. He and his colleagues were internationally recognized for technology innovations in community engagement, learning spaces, next generation network projects, and organizational development. Lev’s innovations, including the Case Connection Zone catalyzed national projects, including US Ignite and Gig.U.
Joe Kochan
Joe Kochan is one of the Co-founders of US Ignite. He helped launch US Ignite in 2012 and served as CEO from January 2020 – May 2021.
Joe is the Executive Director of the National Spectrum Consortium. Prior to US Ignite, Joe worked as part of the Department of Commerce’s BTOP grant program. Prior to that role, he was a founder and Vice President–Operations of DigitalBridge Communications (DBC), a Virginia-based startup backed by over $40M in venture funding dedicated to bringing broadband services to small, underserved markets nationwide using broadband wireless technology. Previously, he was with Verizon, with responsibility for strategic planning and strategic project management, specifically focusing on the military housing market and the implementation of the first Verizon FiOS networks at military bases across the country.
Joe received a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree from Princeton University and lives in Washington, DC.
John Leibovitz
John Leibovitz is a Venture Partner with Columbia Capital, an investment firm that builds companies in the mobility, Internet infrastructure, and enterprise IT sectors. Previously, he served as Deputy Chief of the Wireless Bureau and Special Advisor to the Chairman for Spectrum Policy at the Federal Communications Commission. Prior to the FCC, John helped launch the Technology, Innovation, and Government Reform working group for President Obama’s transition team. Before that, he was a wireless entrepreneur and strategy consultant. He started his business career with McKinsey & Company. John has written about technology and telecom policy in the Yale Law Journal and the Yale Journal of Law and Technology. He holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.Phil. from Cambridge University, and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
Mike Marcellin
Chief Marketing Officer, Juniper Networks, Inc.
Mike Marcellin is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, leading the global marketing team responsible for marketing Juniper’s product and services portfolio and stewarding the brand, driving preference for Juniper in the market, training its partners and sales teams, and developing a differentiated digital experience for its customers. Before joining the global marketing organization, Marcellin led business strategy and marketing for Juniper’s industry-leading portfolio of high-performance routing, switching and security products.
Prior to joining Juniper in 2010, Marcellin served as Vice President of Global Managed Solutions for Verizon, where he oversaw product development and marketing of its managed IP networking, hosting, security and IT solutions for businesses around the world. He also served as Vice President of Global Product Marketing for Verizon Business, executive director of Verizon Business’ IP and Ethernet portfolio as well as leading the company’s eCRM marketing division. Marcellin began his career with Price Waterhouse IT consulting.
Marcellin is a Board Vice-Chair for the Telecommunications Industry Association and a Board Member of US Ignite, an NSF-sponsored initiative. Marcellin holds two patents and was a Rodman Scholar at the University of Virginia, where he received a bachelor of science degree with distinction in systems engineering. He is based in Sunnyvale, California and you can follow him on Twitter https://twitter.com/mmarcellin.
Nick Maynard, PhD
Nick Maynard serves as the Co-founder and CEO of US Ignite, where he is responsible for leading the organization in its mission to accelerate the smart community movement and to strengthen public-private partnership programs to drive smarter community development and advance key network and sensor-based technologies. In his previous role as COO, Maynard was instrumental in building out US Ignite’s smart community program and in establishing the Smart Bases program.
Prior to US Ignite, Nick was a Program Director at the National Science Foundation, where he launched a national advanced wireless research. He was also the Assistant Director at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he managed federal IT R&D portfolio, launching more than $1B in new programs, including a photonics foundry as well as the President’s ConnectHome program to bring broadband to underserved students. Previously, Nick was a member of the National Broadband Taskforce at the FCC, where he created a public-private partnership to offer technology training to small businesses in low-income communities. Nick also spent ten years in the telecom industry, consulting with leading global carriers and vendors on next-gen networks and services. Nick received his BA and MA from the University of Chicago and a Public Policy PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Celia Merzbacher
Celia Merzbacher is Deputy Director of the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C), where she is building a new consortium to enable and grow a robust quantum industry and supply chain in the United States. Cr. Merzbacher has extensive experience in industry consortia direction and management having previously held the position of Vice President for Innovative Partnerships at the Semiconductor Research Corporation, a consortium of the semiconductor industry. She has navigated the creation of programs that bring together industry, government and academia to meet the goals of all part of the innovation ecosystem.
In 2003-2008, Dr. Merzbacher was Assistant Director for Technology R&D in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where she oversaw the establishment and coordination of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. She also served as Executive Director of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Dr. Merzbacher began her career as a materials scientist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C., where her research led to six patents and numerous scientific and technical publications. She has served as Chair of the National Materials and Manufacturing Board of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, on the Board of Directors of ANSI, as well as on advisory boards of startups and university research centers.
Renata Rawlings-Goss
Dr. Renata Rawlings-Goss is a biophysicist and a nationally recognized leader in Data Science.
She is the Executive Director of The South Big Data Innovation Hub, an NSF-funded 16 state center connecting industry, academia, and government around data science innovation. She is the Director of Strategic Partnerships for the Georgia Institute of Technology – Institute for Data Engineering and Science (IDEaS), and also the founder of Good with Data LLC, which runs The Data Career Academy for professionals and faculty looking to accelerate their careers with data.
Formerly, Dr. Rawlings-Goss worked with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy founding the National Data Science Organizers and co-leading the writing team for the Federal Big Data Strategic Plan. Through her roles, she has served as an executive strategist, career mentor, and policy advisor to Fortune 500 companies, individuals, as well as over 19 federal and state government agencies around data science education, Big Data, Digital Transformation, Public-Private Partnerships, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), Machine Learning, Data Career Success, Professional Development and Data Innovation.
Author of “Data Careers, Training, and Hiring” published in 2019 by SpringerPress, her work across fields has been recognized in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and as one of White House’s Top 100 Impacts in Science and Technology.
Dorothy Robyn
Dorothy Robyn is a public policy expert who writes and consults on transportation, energy and telecommunications policy. She is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow with Boston University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy.
Dr. Robyn served in the Obama Administration as the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Installations & Environment in the Department of Defense, where she had DoD-wide oversight of U.S. military bases around the world (2009-2012), and as Commissioner of Public Buildings at the U.S. General Services Administration (2012-2014).
From 1993-2001, Dr. Robyn was a Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy on the staff of the White House National Economic Council, where she coordinated policy issues related to aviation, aerospace, defense, telecommunications, and science and technology. Previously she was an assistant professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government; a principal with The Brattle Group, an economic consultancy; and a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution. She is the author of Braking the Special Interests: Trucking Deregulation and the Politics of Policy Reform (University of Chicago Press) and Toward an Evolutionary Regime for Spectrum Governance: Licensed or Unrestricted Entry (Brookings Press) (with William J. Baumol).
She has an MPP and Ph.D in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley.
Glenn Ricart
Glenn Ricart is one of the Co-founders of US Ignite and serves as CTO. Glenn Ricart brings forty years of innovation in computer networking and related fields to US Ignite. Glenn is an Internet pioneer who implemented the first Inter-net interconnection point (the FIX in College Park, Maryland) and was recognized for this achievement by being inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in August 2013. In one of his previous roles where he was academic CIO at the University of Maryland, his campus implemented the first institution-wide TCP/IP (Internet) network in 1983 using low-cost PDP-11 routers (“Fuzballs”) with software devised at the University of Maryland. Glenn was principal investigator of SURAnet, the first regional TCP/IP (Internet) network of academic and commercial institutions.
Dr. Ricart has also held other senior management positions including Executive Vice President and CTO for Novell in the 1990s, Managing Director of PricewaterhouseCoopers, and CEO and President of National LambdaRail. Dr. Ricart is also the founder or co-founder of five startups; the one previous to US Ignite, CenterBeam, was sold to Earthlink in 2013 after 14 years of independent operation.
Glenn’s formal education includes degrees from Case Institute of Technology and Case Western Reserve University, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science is from the University of Maryland, College Park. His inventions have resulted in more than a dozen patents. Dr. Ricart has served on the boards of three public companies, CACI, the SCO Organization, and First USA Financial Services, in addition to numerous non-profits.
Deb Socia
Deb Socia is President and CEO of The Enterprise Center, a nonprofit that nurtures innovation in Chattanooga with the goal of connecting people to resources and building an inclusive community. Growing the entrepreneurial ecosystem and the Innovation District, building digital equity, and supporting research and implementation of smart city applications are all a part of the organization’s focus. Prior to her current role, Deb was the Executive Director of Next Century Cities, a nonprofit that supports community leaders as they seek to ensure that all have access to fast, affordable, and reliable Internet. Previously, Deb was the Executive Director of the Tech Goes Home program in Boston whose mission is to ensure digital equity. Deb’s early career included 32 years as an educator and administrator. She was the founding principal of the award winning Lilla G. Frederick Middle School, a Boston Public School where she led the one-to-one laptop initiative.
Deb has been the recipient of many awards for her work, including the NATOA Community Broadband Hero, the Pathfinder Award from MassCUE, the CRSTE Leadership and Vision Award, a Google Digital Inclusion Award, Motherboard Human of the Year, an NTENny Award, and the Charles Benton Digital Equity Award.
Advisory Board
Monisha Ghosh
Dr. Monisha Ghosh is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. She is also the Policy Outreach Director for SpectrumX (https://www.spectrumx.org/ ), the first NSF Center for Spectrum Innovation. Her research interests are in the development of next-generation wireless systems: cellular, Wi-Fi and IoT, with an emphasis on spectrum sharing and coexistence and applications of machine learning to improve network performance. Prior to joining the University of Notre Dame in 2022, she was the Chief Technology Officer at the Federal Communications Commission, a Program Director at the National Science Foundation, a Research Professor at the University of Chicago, and spent 24 years in industry research at Bell Labs, Philips Research and Interdigital. She obtained her B.Tech from IIT Kharagpur and Ph.D. from USC. She is a Fellow of the IEEE.
Bob Metcalfe
Bob Metcalfe was an Internet pioneer at MIT starting in 1970 and in 1973 received his PhD from Harvard for “Packet Communication.” He invented Ethernet in 1973 and founded 3Com Corporation (now part of HP) in 1979. He was a publisher-pundit in the 1990s with International Data Group and a venture capitalist in the 2000s with Polaris Venture Partners.
Dr. Metcalfe has received awards including the ACM Grace Hopper Award in 1980, the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal in 1988, the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1996, the National Medal of Technology in 2005, induction into to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2007, the Fellow Award from the Computer History Museum in 2008, and the Japan NEC C&C (Computing and Communication) Prize in 2011. He is a life trustee of MIT and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Sue Spradley
Sue Spradley is CEO of Motion Intelligence, Inc., and Board Chair of US Ignite, a public/private partnership with NSF to drive application adoption across smart cites and 5G deployments. She also serves on the boards of Qorvo, Inc., Avaya, and NetScout. A veteran telecom senior executive leader, Sue has previously served as Executive Vice President of Viavi, Head of North America for Nokia Siemens Networks, and President of Nortel Networks. Sue’s experience spans P&L management, sales, R&D, operations, and services across the globe. She specializes in managing all phases of growth, turnaround, and diversification from start-up to $2 billion in revenue. She is active in government and community affairs and currently resides in Colorado Springs, CO.
Commissioner Anna Gomez (Former Advisory Board Member)
Commissioner Anna M. Gomez is the first Latina-American to be confirmed to the FCC in over two decades. She believes the FCC does best when its work honors the people it serves.
Gomez has worked at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) handling a wide range of communications and Internet policy issues with a particular focus on spectrum management, public safety communications, and NTIA efforts to expand broadband access and adoption for all Americans. Gomez was previously Vice President, Government Affairs at Sprint Nextel. Prior to her work in private industry, Gomez served for 12 years in various management positions at the Federal Communications Commission. Gomez also served as the Senior Legal Advisor to former FCC Chairman William Kennard. In addition, Gomez was Deputy Chief of Staff in the National Economic Council during the Clinton Administration; Staff Counsel in the U.S. Senate for the Subcommittee on Communication, Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation; and an associate at the law firm of Arnold & Porter.
Gomez is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University and earned her J.D. from George Washington University. She is a member of the District of Columbia’s Hispanic Bar Association and the Federal Communications Bar Association. See her full bio here.
