Eric Adkins

Senior Director of NGAN Deployment
Comcast

Eric is currently responsible for the implementation of the overall technical vision and direction of the NGAN Engineering department. Today that main focus is program managing a technology shift which involves the virilization of the legacy CMT platform to VCMT.

Prior to his current role he has worn many hats and has had a variety of jobs with Comcast throughout his 17-year tenure. He ran the National Warehouse and Staging Lab through a job rotation. He deployed the first Comcast Digital Voice trial, launched one of the first regionally based National Data Centers, and has been part of every cable acquisition in the last 15 years with a focus on CMTS. Eric ran and supported Commercial Services cell backhaul deployment efforts.

Eric is married with two kids, both in college.

Monique Barash

VP People and Capabilities
Crunchyroll

Monique Barash currently oversees recruiters and HR Business Partners who execute on talent acquisition and mobility, performance management, manager coaching, compensation, and other people/HR programs.

Monique started her career in PR/Communications and made a transition to the Human Resources field after completing graduate school. She has worked in tech, media and construction/engineering industries.

Monique received a bachelor’s degree in Communication Studies from California Polytechnic State University, and an MBA from San Francisco State University. She enjoys traveling, gardening, puzzling and organizing.

Daksha Bhasker

Principal Cybersecurity Architect
Comcast NBCU

Daksha has almost 20 years of experience in the telecommunications service provider industry. She’s held roles in both business management and technology development and is accountable for complex solution architectures and security systems development. Daksha’s security work spans carrier scale voice, video, data, and security solutions.

Prior to joining Comcast, she worked at Bell Canada developing their cyberthreat intelligence platform and securing cloud deployments. Daksha holds an MS in computer systems engineering from Irkutsk State Technical University, Russia, and an MBA in electronic commerce from the University of New Brunswick, Canada.

Daksha has various publications in international security journals and contributes to standards development. She is an advocate for women in cybersecurity.

Chris Brooks

Data Engineering Manager
GCI

After working as an analyst for several years, Chris accepted a management role with the mission of creating a dedicated data engineering team at GCI. He currently leads a team of data engineers who are in the final stages of migrating their big data operations from legacy on-premise systems to a modern cloud infrastructure.

Chris grew up in a military family, moving every couple of years. He had the privilege of living all over the world, including Germany, Japan, Panama, Washington State, and Ohio.

After completing High School, Chris served in the US Army as an Infantryman for several years. He then attended the University of Alaska, Anchorage. After graduating with a degree in Computer Science he joined the data analytics team at GCI, Alaska’s largest telecom provider.

Chris lives in Anchorage with his wife and two boys.

Katie Collins

Senior Director of Product Management
Charter

Katie is responsible for leading the development of Charter’s long-term Roadmap for Spectrum Mobile – at end of Q1 was named the fastest growing Mobile services in the U.S., as well as the fastest Mobile service in terms of speed. Katie has been part of the Charter Product team since 2015 and is responsible for the Spectrum Mobile services and product experience spanning speed leadership, voice, data, roaming, messaging, and advanced mobile features.

Katie is a 20+ year veteran of the telecommunications industry. Prior to joining Charter, Katie spent 10 years with Level 3 Communications where she led strategic development for some the world’s largest companies. Katie’s history of developing new services for the cable industry began with the deployment of the first ever cable telephony technology for TCI/AT&T Broadband/Comcast.

Katie holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and Master of Business Administration from the University of Colorado, Denver.

Christophany Creed

Senior Design Director
UX Research at Charter

Christophany currently leads a team of wildly smart and collaborative UX researchers who fiercely advocate for the voice of customer. She has positioned her team as client partners throughout the end-to-end product design journey including strategy and alignment, discovery, and empathy building, uncovering high-value problems, exploring and ideating on solutions, and testing and improving experiences.

At Charter, Christophany garnered executive buy-in to build two teams from the ground up: UX Design and User Research. Her diverse background, which includes contributions spanning visual design, UX design, and user research has supported her success in building relationships with organizations including product, CX, enterprise, operations, marketing, and technology.

Ryan Dulaney

Director, MDU WiFi Products
Charter Communications

Ryan started his professional career in telecom where he learned how to do training development and training delivery in Verizon’s SMB Credit and Collections organization. From there his role evolved into writing requirements for agent tools, testing those tools, and launching them. As he matured in his career, he started contracting with various consulting firms on a project basis, and fell into business analyst and project management roles across various industries and competencies, including insurance, brokerage, healthcare, and telecom. In these industries, he worked in data management, software development, and product management.

Currently, at Spectrum (almost 4 years now), he supports WiFi products geared toward multi-dwelling/ multi-family owners and their residents.

Ryan is a midwest native who moved to the Greater Denver, Colorado area about four years ago. Ryan earned a BS in Public Relations/Speech Communication and an MA in Communication. He also holds certifications as a PMP (Project Management Professional) and a PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner). In his free time, he loves to read, game, ski, hike, camp, and play volleyball. He and his husband currently have two dog children, Shorty and Elsa.

James Hosley

Sr. Director Information Security
Comcast

Jim is a seasoned information security executive, strategist, and leader. He is an expert in information security management, operations, strategic planning, program direction, risk management and process engineering.

As an information security leader, Jim has designed and led global organizations across both the finance and retail sectors, protecting diverse lines of business operating in more than 160 countries from cyber threats, fraud and franchise risk.

During his career, Jim has a developed a diverse background that includes developer, integrator, architect, team lead, manager, and strategist. As a result, he has demonstrated a unique ability to manage multi-disciplinary teams and to navigate complex challenges.

Tom Hurley

Head of Events & Creative
Liberty Global

Tom has a background of internal and external communications, creative services and executive support experience. He has worked in the retail, financial services and telecom sectors in the UK and he now leads a shared services team across Liberty Global and Virgin Media.

The Events and Creative Services team is responsible for creating, producing and delivering a wide range of branded content; including print, film and digital, events and experiential moments.

Robbert Krijger

Director of People
Liberty Global

Robbert is currently working as a Director of People Systems, where he’s responsible for all global HR systems. In Liberty Global this primarily means looking after Workday, which we have implemented for our 10 Operating Companies since October 2018. He leads a diverse team that maintains and improves the system.

After completing his masters degree in Strategic Management, he started his career in HR Operations, and more specifically in a Business Process Outsourcing delivery center in Czech Republic, providing services to a large Dutch FMCG. From there he joined IBM to start his consulting career in Enterprise Resource Planning systems (SAP), after which he eventually combined his prior experience (HR) with systems by becoming a Workday implementation consultant.

On a personal level, Robbert’s preparing myself to become a (first time) dad from early September onwards and together with his partner he is looking forward to welcome a girl into the world. Hobbies are sports-related; playing soccer and road cycling.

Kathy Lawn

Program Director
Charter Communications

Kathy is currently the Program Director for large scale network programs and products at Comcast in Philadelphia.

In her current role at Comcast, she owns all facets of nationwide implementation of Fiber (EPON) network, managing think tank engineers, customer focus teams, and division feedback to execute delivery, and leadership for all points in the customer journey from exploration to trial to deployment, simultaneously identifying risks and critical paths, ensuring program scopes, schedules and budgets.

She supervises ongoing team units of 25-50 people as Program Delivery Lead, SME. Cross-functional teams include executive leadership, customer support, legal, marketing, sales, field technicians, and product architect teams. Kathy directs 15 different work streams under each program to support highly efficient teams; refocusing and redirecting to meet project deadlines for successful implementation of market trials, national deployment, and program execution.

Kathy graduated with undergraduate degree and an MBA with a focus on International Business. On a personal note, Kathy was involved with Big Brothers and Big Sister and having a “little” from Center City, Philadelphia to guide and mentor. Also, she is a board director to Peace To The Planets.

Tyler Lie

Sr. Program Manager
Charter Communications

Tyler is currently leading the Enterprise Data Products Portfolio for the Technology Delivery team under Kevin Uyeno/Lori Lemmen. Tyler always strives to make a difference. “I am passionate about working with people with disabilities (I’m disabled myself), and raising money for a good cause (Movember 2019 I raised $2200 for men’s cancer by shaving my head)”.

Tyler lives in Parker, Colorado and was originally from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. His hobbies include SCUBA, motorcycles (modified), hiking, camping, movies, board games, patios & beer.

Tyler’s favorite quote is “Aspire to Inspire!” Tyler is taking this class because he has developed a mentoring program for students with disabilities and would like to get Spectrum Reach to adopt it. “If I could finagle my way into a position at Charter Communications where I am able to execute my mentoring program and make a real impact on the lives of disabled students, I would LOVE that”.

Ryan Mitchell

Sr. Director, Network Products and Services Engineering
WOW! Internet, Cable, Phone

As a senior technology director at WOW!, Ryan is responsible for the engineering and development of network, data center, and software products ranging from simple internet and voice up to the development of “IOT” systems that collect and process information from all of the devices in our network.

He is passionate about building high performance teams focused on generating significant value to the business through improved process or the efficient use of technology that drives down operating and capital expenditures. Ryan is an Agile evangelist who continues to drive the Agile mindset into our organization to enable teams to deliver value frequently and better adapt to ever-changing organizational priorities.

On a personal level, Ryan lives in southern Indiana with a loving wife, 2 kids, and 2 dogs. He used to be a water sports enthusiast but has recently gotten out of those to take up golf. He’s also an avid cyclist, occasional musician, and a woodworker.

Jennifer Page

Senior Manager, Legal Services – Employment Law
Charter Communications

Jennifer provides oversight of Charter’s Employment Law Team’s operations, including the development and oversight of processes that ensures the Company’s compliance with employment related rules, regulations, and laws, responding to government inquiries, and submission of reports to government agencies, as well as tracking, monitoring, and reporting to business leaders trends of employment-based claims brought against the company.

She also assists attorneys with strategic development and implementation of assigned projects and initiatives to support the team, business leaders, and Human Resources teams. In addition, Jennifer oversees and manages all employment-based immigration within the company.

Prior to her role as Senior Manager, Legal Services, Jennifer worked as paralegal on the employee law team within Charter for several years and prior to coming to Charter, she worked at various law firms providing paralegal support.

Jennifer holds a Master’s degree in Human Resources Management and her undergrad in Legal Studies. In her free time, Jennifer enjoys doing Pilates and traveling.

Erika Powell

Head of L&D
Crunchyroll

Fostering transformation at the personal and professional levels as well as creating workplaces and cultures where employees thrive are at the heart of Dr. Erika Powell's work. For the past 15+ years, she has partnered with leaders and organizations to design and facilitate training, employee engagement, and teambuilding solutions.

Over the course of her career, she has led and consulted for a number of initiatives related to leadership development, diversity and inclusion, effective communication, emotional intelligence, customer service, and technical and product/software training in a variety of industries, including corporate, higher education, and non-profit sectors, both nationally and globally. In her current role, she leads employee development, engagement, and diversity and inclusion efforts for Crunchyroll, a Warner Media company.

She is bilingual in Spanish and holds a doctorate in Instructional Technology and Design from the University of Virginia, a MS.Ed in Intercultural Communication from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Haverford College.

Cindy Shoemaker

Events and IA Outreach Manager
The Cable Center

Cindy Shoemaker joined The Cable Center in January 2019 with over 20 years of event management experience in the Denver market with an extensive background in venue management, marketing and outreach, non-profit event planning and development, community event management, and catering and design. She has a strong passion to assist our clients through the various event planning process to provide first in class events at The Cable Center, from corporate events to weddings.

When not managing the event department, Cindy is part of the IA team as Manager of Outreach.

Cindy is proud to be a Colorado native, growing up just blocks from The Cable Center in Washington Park. She has a passion for her family, pets, traveling, photography, and yoga. She is a certified power yoga teacher with Corepower Yoga since 2009 and often travels to Mexico and the Caribbean teaching yoga at resorts.

Sally Tait

Director of Digital Strategy and Operations
Charter Communications

Sally is a versatile business leader with a rich mix of experience in enterprise Agile transformation, organizational change management, portfolio and project management, people leadership, and operations.

She is passionate about solving difficult problems, simplifying complexity, and fostering continuous improvement.

She is a co-founder and organizer of the Denver Agile @ Scale meetup.

Rachel Vanderploeg

Manager, Satellite Distribution
Comcast

Rachel is the manager for the Managed Satellite Distribution (fna HITS) operations team. They are a part of Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS), supporting MVPDs and affiliates and providing cost effective solutions for service delivery and conditional access.

Rachel has been in the cable industry for 22 years and lives in the greater Denver area.

Kevin Yount

Manager of Learning Technology
Charter Communications

Over the last three years as Manager of Learning Technology, his team develops and supports custom and hosted learning applications focused on improving employee performance, connecting and enhancing the learning ecosystem, and learning data consolidation.

Kevin earned his Bachelor of Science in Business Education from Ball State University and went on to teach high school students for four years. During this time he also earned his Masters of Education in Instructional Design from UNC Charlotte and worked as an instructional designer and senior instructional designer for 10 years. Along the way he completed NC State’s Computer Programming Certification program and went on to develop custom Learning and Development applications.

Kevin, his wife (Ashely) and two children (Caroline and Dylan) live in Fort Mill, South Carolina just south of Charlotte, North Carolina. He and his family enjoy outdoor activities, such as tennis and hiking, as well as indoor activities, such as board games and video games.

Patty Bullington

Director of Accessibility
Charter Communications

As Director of Accessibility for Charter Communications, Patty focuses on outreach, training and communications. In 2019, Patty transitioned to accessibility after spending the past 15 years in ad sales with Spectrum Reach as head of marketing, and later leading the brand team.

Patty has received eight Cable Advertising Bureau awards in addition to receiving their top sales achievement award for strategic positioning of cable advertising in 2010 for the Business Ambition television campaign. She was honored as a Woman to Watch in 2011 from the WICT Rocky Mountain chapter. Additionally, Patty successfully created a single brand voice upon the merger of Charter, Time Warner and Bright House Networks in 2016. Patty has championed and supported Adaptive Spirit for almost 20 years. She is currently the silent auction co-chair and has proudly held this position since 2003.

Patty Bullington is a graduate of Spring Hill College with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Marketing and a Minor in Philosophy. She resides in Denver, Colorado.

Eric Burger

Senior Director of Product Management
Charter Communications

Eric Burger is a native of St. Louis, but has lived in various locations and now resides in Colorado. He enjoys quality time with family and friends doing the typical Colorado activities such as skiing, mountain biking and paddle boarding. As well as traveling, attending concerts and exploring museums.

Professionally, Eric is fortunate to still enjoy a career in Mobile that has provided a wealth of experiences from field to corporate roles, from retail design to leveraging sponsorships and from business development to product development. He is adept at product lifecycle management with significant experience managing product roadmaps, budgets and partnerships. Currently, leveraging strategic planning, consumer and market trends, and analytical skills to create successful device portfolios brings him satisfaction. Jacqueline Clary, Senior Director, Program Network Policy at NCTA

Jacqueline Clary

Senior Director, Program Network Policy
NCTA

Jacqui Clary is an experienced communications and policy professional. Her current role is senior director of program network policy at NCTA – The Internet & Television Association.

Prior to joining NCTA, Jacqueline worked with a nonprofit organization conducting advocacy on civil rights issues in the media, telecommunications, and broadband industries.

Jacqueline earned her B.A. from John Carroll University, her J.D. from Syracuse University College of Law, and is a member of the New York State Bar.

Paul Edmondson

People Director
Liberty Global

Based in London, Paul has worked within the people function across a number of industries: Oil & Gas, Food and for the last 4.5 years, telecommunications. His experience also spans a variety of settings, from chemical refineries to manufacturing facilities and corporate head offices.

Paul’s role is to work with senior leaders to help them create and execute their people strategies and ensure they are developing and nurturing the next generation of talent. Paul has also started looking into how the nature of work may change permanently as a result of the pandemic and the impact this could have on working practices and locations. Paul thrives when given new challenges, given his passion for learning; building relationships; and understanding commercial context.

Outside of work, Paul loves to go walking with his wife and son, especially watching the deer in his local park. Conforming to most English stereotypes, Paul is a huge football (soccer) fan and you are highly likely to see him drinking a cup of tea on webcam during the classes.

Asad Haque

Senior Director of Security Architecture
Comcast

Asad has over 25 years in Information Security Technology specializing in Enterprise Technology Architecture with a focus on Networks and Application Security including Single Sign on (SAML) and Identity Management, API security, IoT firmware and ecosystem.

Currently leading a large-scale design and deployment of @scale PKI systems for IoT devices integrated with an innovative Blockchain backend for IoT, apps and smartphone devices. As a board member of Zigbee Alliance, focusing on protocol resiliency, security and strategy.

Asad possesses extensive hands-on experience as a chief application and network architect, including experience in systems management, information security, software development, large secure network (TCP/IP) design and deployment, departmental oversight and management.

Nicholas Lawson

Program Manager of Sustainability
Comcast NBCUniversal

Nick was one of the foundational members of the Sustainability team when it formed five years ago. In his current role, he serves in both a financial and operational capacity. He handles day-to-day management of a portfolio of vendors through the NRP as well Comcast’s largest municipal solid waste hauler. Prior to joining the sustainability team, Nick spent ten years in the finance and accounting function, and he holds a CPA.

He has experience in variety of industries including telecommunications, health care, and consulting.

Outside of work, he enjoys spending time with family, including toddler, Tommy, and working on home renovation projects.

Shane Martin

Director of Accessibility
Charter Communications

Shane started his career in Accessibility right out of college, working as an intern (before transitioning to an employee) at Integration Technologies Group. Here he strived to learn Accessibility technology quickly as his main duties were to deliver, install, and train government (IRS, SSA) employees on their newly purchased Accessibility technology. This work gave Shane first-hand experience to the difficulties people with disabilities face every day due to a widespread lack of digital Accessibility compliance.

Shane’s next role with Level Access was a natural one, focused on learning technical Accessibility compliance and supporting client development teams remediating their digital (web, mobile, and video) assets. In this role he worked with many clients in the financial and telecommunications spaces but spent extensive time with Comcast on the Accessible development and launch of Xfinity Mobile. He came to Charter in 2018 as an Accessibility Architect contracted through Level Access, before transitioning to Senior Manager leading the web and mobile Accessibility efforts. He currently serves as Director of Technical Operations focused on ensuring the Accessibility of all Charter’s digital assets in the web, mobile, and video platforms.

Jill May

Product Manager
Comcast Technology Solutions

Recently celebrating her 20-year anniversary with Comcast, her areas of expertise include broadcast origination, transmission, cable headend conditional access platforms, and content distribution. In her current position as Product Manager at Comcast Technology Solution, she is responsible for Managed Satellite Distribution and Conditional Access products (aka HITS).

She has been an active member of WICT Rocky Mountain for over 15 years, and currently sits on the WICT Board of Directors, as Director of Sponsorship. She is also a member of PMI Mile Hi and PMP certified.

Originally from Michigan, Jill has lived in Colorado for almost 40 years. She lives in Littleton with husband of 24 years, with her two sons, who are 19 and 15 years old. They enjoy the Colorado outdoors, both boys have a passion for mountain biking and skiing, which has them traveling to many Colorado mountain towns, Crested Butte being one of her favorites. She also enjoys gardening, cooking and yoga. Her family recently took up paddle boarding, which she says is a blast.

Stephen Rementer

Director of Data Platforms
Charter Communications

Steve is currently a Director at Charter Communications where he and his team own the underlying infrastructure for product data insights.

His career so far has taken him from Washington, D.C. to Atlanta, GA and finally to Denver, CO. He has a B.S. in mathematics from Penn State University and considers himself a die-hard Penn State and Philadelphia sports fan. Outside of work, he enjoys hiking, fishing, golfing, grilling, and playing guitar.

Carl Rhoades

L&D Systems Admin
WOW! Internet Cable and Phone

Carl has worked at WOW! for over 12 years in many roles, starting on the phones as a customer support Tier 2, a short time in QA and Call Center Application Development, and most recently moving to System Resource Administrator for WOW’s Learning & Development department.

In his current role, Carl maintains the knowledge base for all call center agents, dispatch, L&D, and is currently working to integrate company knowledge bases and learning resources for all departments. Outside of work, Carl is the owner of a small graphics design company. He likes to explore Colorado, go biking, and sit down to a good online video game to connect with friends.

Somaskandan Santhanam

Director, Data Engineering
Comcast

Somaskandan Santhanam (Somas) has been working in Comcast since April 2018. He is currently a Director in Data Organization of Comcast leading a Data Engineering team.

Prior to Joining Comcast, Somas has been working in Tata Group on leadership roles for multiple customers like Comcast, NBCU, and British Telecom. He has been playing customer engagement roles for past eight years. Somas currently serves on the Board of Directors in WICT Rocky Mountain and Rocky Mountain Cable association (RMCA).

Outside of work, Somas like to travel and spend time with his twin daughters. They spend most of the weekend hiking and exploring Colorado.

LaShaun Solomon

Regional Sales Effectiveness Leader
Comcast

In her current role at Comcast, LaShaun is responsible for the development and execution of sales effectiveness initiatives that educate and build selling skills of advertising sales teams across the Southeast Region and enterprise.

LaShaun has 12 years of experience in the telecommunications industry, with a track record of growing new and existing businesses. LaShaun recently served as President of the Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT) Southeast chapter. She led one of WICT’s largest chapters supporting over 1,000 members across AL, GA, and TN with professional development programming to elevate women in the telecom and media industry.

LaShaun has a bachelor’s degree in marketing and attained her MBA from Kennesaw State University.

Ferhan Ture

Director
Comcast Technology

Ferhan Ture leads the Natural Language Processing team at the Comcast Applied AI Lab, where he blends latest advancements in the field into a suite of voice-activated Xfinity products used by millions every day.

Prior to that, he was a scientist at BBN Technologies, developing novel algorithms for multilingual question answering as part of the DARPA BOLT program. From 2008 to 2013, he worked on search and language translation problems under the supervision of Jimmy Lin, as part of his doctorate studies at the Department of Computer Science at University of Maryland.

Tara Young

Media Marketing Manager
Comcast

Tara Young is a 20-year veteran of the cable industry establishing herself as a respected sales and marketing leader within the Comcast organization. In her current role as Manager of Media Marketing Strategy she is responsible for managing Comcast’s media investment to generate consumer demand, grow profitable relationships and build brand consideration and affinity.

Tara was recognized with the prestigious Elite award for Innovation in 2015 for developing a breakthrough sales tool providing a one-stop resource for all frontline facing employees.

She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Rocky Mountain Cable Association where she is active in marketing the organization and its programs.

Tara holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and is a graduate of the Professional Marketer Program at Seattle Pacific University. Tara is passionate about movies, travel, and lifelong learning. She enjoys watching her favorite sports teams with her husband, Gary, and taking their Alaskan Klee Kai, Budda, for long walks outside in the Colorado sunshine.