Wavelengths speakers

Andrew Schmitt

Directing Analyst

Cignal AI

As the founder and directing analyst at Cignal AI, Andrew Schmitt draws upon more than two decades of comprehensive experience in the optical network industry, first as a talented engineer and manager in the field and then as an industry analyst. He uses this first-hand knowledge to bring a unique perspective to market research.  At Cignal AI, Andrew directs all research activity on the networking market’s entire supply chain – from carriers and equipment manufacturers to chips and components. He is quoted and consulted by industry publications such as Lightwave and Lightreading and participates in the OFC planning committee. He is invited to speak annually at events such as OFC, ECOC, FOE, and IIR conferences as well as private events. He is also a consultant to startups, carriers, vendors, and the investment community, where he provides insight on developing business opportunities and market strategy.  Prior to Cignal AI, Andrew was business unit director for Vitesse Semiconductor and was a principal analyst at Infonetics Research and then IHS/Markit. He holds multiple engineering patents and received his BS in Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Andrew resides with his family in the New England area.

Stephen Ruppa

Senior Principal Engineer

Comcast

Stephen Ruppa is Sr. Principal Engineer at Comcast where his focus is optical architecture, roadmaps for the Metro and Commercial optical networks and defining requirements for transport software. Currently he is working on how the network evolves to support 400GbE including disaggregated line systems and coherent pluggable optics. In the past he was a leader in creating unified design and naming standards for all transport networks at Comcast. Previous to his current role he has held many technical positions. Starting as an entry level cable installer and working up through construction lineman, fiber technician and transport engineer. His knowledge of the end-to-end network from customer home to core network gives a unique perspective on creating new architectures. In all Stephen has 25 years of experience, all of it being at Comcast.

Ilker Alici

Regional Product Line Manager

NOKIA

Ilker is Regional Product Line Manager focused on SROS Model-Driven Management & SR-Linux solutions and products within Nokia's Network Infrastructure Division based in Sunnyvale, CA.  ilker has 15 years of experience in the networking industry within the areas of network design, pre-sales, business development and product line management.  He has gained extensive international experiences with a deep understanding diverse cultural and business practices by participating projects and holding different roles within Nokia over 20 Countries, 5 Continents. Ilker has a Master of Business Administration, Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering degrees. 
 

Marco Belotti

Optical Certification Program - Trainer

NOKIA

Marco Belotti is a Training and Certification Professional and he deals with the “Optical Networks Certification” Program. Prior to joining the Learning Services, he played as Project Manager and TEC engineer, with focus on Optical products (1830 PSS, 1350 OMS, 1850 TSS, etc.). He handled introduction, management and configuration of optic/electric transmission systems in major customers’ networks, becoming a world traveler by joining more than 60 projects in about 25 countries worldwide during his 10-year experience in Nokia.

Oriol Bertran Pardo

Solutions Engineering Manager

NOKIA

Oriol Bertran Pardo obtained his PhD from Télécom Paris in electrical engineering. His research work dealt with optical-communication systems, focusing on the physical propagation, for building high-speed long-haul WDM optical transmissions based on coherent detection. After joining development as R&D system engineer and then as product line manager, he contributed to the advanced engineering rules for WDM transmission of the Alcatel-Lucent next generation photonic network architectures. He is currently product line manager of subsystems and DSP in Nokia Optics Business Group. He has authored and co-authored more than 80 conference and journal contributions, totaling more than 1,500 citations, and holds 13 patents. Among the publications done during his PhD, one was awarded an IEEE student grant and obtained the Photonics21 award. He deserved the Bell Labs president award in 2010 for his contribution and insights on the development of the first 100G coherent solution. He is also a distinguished member of technical staff since 2019.

Haitham Bouzeineddine

IP/Optical Professional Services

NOKIA

Haitham BouZeineddine is a Product Manager at Nokia leading the WavePrime Professional Services business portfolio driving the automation and custom software services for Nokia’s Optical customers. Within two years of joining Nokia Haitham developed and executed an evolution strategy for Nokia’s CNV Optical reporting SaaS and established the professional services for Nokia’s Data Centre Fabric. Prior to joining Nokia Haitham lead the pre-sales and Capture Management within the Public Safety industry across the Middle East and North Africa and played a key role in securing the annual regional targets. Haitham’s background in research and development accompanied by his leadership and business acumen have established him as an asset to customers that seek transformation and growth through technological evolution.

Shane Branton

Learning Services Subject Matter Expert  

Nokia    

Shane is a Training and Certification Professional with over 22 years in the telecommunications industry. He works with leaders across Nokia to develop and deliver Network Services Platform (NSP) learning products to a global customer audience. Prior to joining Learning Services, Shane held roles as a support specialist in the IP Technical Expertise Center (TEC) and as a Network Management Services (NMS) design specialist in the Network Design Engineering team. Shane has travelled to customers in over 20 countries, performing networking tasks such as NMS installations and upgrades, regression and performance testing, troubleshooting, network operations audits and instructional design/delivery.

James Cumming

Senior Product Line Manager, SROS Routing, Platform and Programmability

NOKIA

James Cumming is the Product Line Manager for the Nokia SR OS router software with a specific focus on Network Programmability (NETCONF/YANG/GRPC/MD-CLI) within Nokia’s IP and Optical Networks Division.  He has an extensive background in the Internet Service Provider industry beginning in 1997.  He has worked as the lead Network Architect in several global service providers leading the efforts in network integration, product and service development as well as end-to-end network architecture across all technologies.  He has a particular passion for the virtualization and programmability areas as his background combines networking, systems, programming and operations which all collide in this exciting period for the industry.  He holds a B.Sc. Hons. degree in Computer Science from the University of Kent.  James is based in London, England.

Ritesh Dass

Optical Transmission & Subsea Product Line Manager    

Nokia

Ritesh Dass is the Product Line Manager of photonic line systems, amplifiers and node configurations at Nokia. He is also the Product Line Manager of Terrestrial-Subsea integration. Ritesh has extensive knowledge of optical communication systems and expertise in fiber-optic communications. Ritesh holds a Master’s degree in Electronic Engineering Systems from King’s College London, UK and is based in Ottawa, Canada.

Roman Dodin

Product Line Manager

NOKIA

Roman is a Product Line Manager at Nokia, where he steers the development of various programmable interfaces featured on Nokia's data center switching gear. Before joining the product management team, Roman has been helping major service providers to embrace model-driven network automation in his consultant engineering role. During his seven years tenure at Nokia, he spanned multiple technology domains, gaining experience in networking, virtualization, network testing, and network automation. Roman heavily gravitates towards software engineering and open source communities. He is a maintainer of a few popular open source projects as well as an avid contributor to various community-renowned ones.

Pedja Dragovic

Product Line Manager, IP/Optical Networks

NOKIA

Pedja has spent 17 years in the telecom industry with various roles ranging from network architect to systems engineering. His current role is Product Line Manager for Multi-service Transport platform, 1830PSS. He holds a Bachelor and Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Belgrade in Serbia. His career interests include: advancing technical and operational knowledge in transport network evolution, how emerging technology in optical and electronics domains enables network transformation, network functions virtualization, software aspects of transport networks evolution and extending expertise into other communication technologies that complement optical transport.

Kevin Drury

Vice President, Strategic Business Development, Optical Networking Division

NOKIA

Kevin Drury received his undergraduate degree in Electronical Engineering from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada where he specialized in telecommunications. Further in his academic career, he completed a Master’s in Business Administration. Kevin is the Strategic Initiatives PLM Leader for the Optical Networks business division at Nokia. Previously he has held several leadership roles at Alcatel-Lucent, including the Deployment and Professional Services leader for the Optical Networks business unit and the Optical Products and Solutions Marketing leader in the IP Routing & Transport Division. He has over 25 years’ experience in the Telecommunications industry with particular expertise in the areas of fiber optic transmission, wavelength division multiplexing, OTN switching, narrowband and broadband access, carrier voice and applications, and LAN/WAN networking. He has presented or co-authored papers for numerous industry events including WDM & Next Generation Optical Networking, ITPX/NCUG, ITU Telecom, Supercomm, OFC, NFOEC, Terabit Optical & Transport SDN and the Big Telecom Event.

Ed Englehart

Vice President of Engineering and Head of Subsystems Product Unit, Optical Networks Division

NOKIA

Ed Englehart leads two roles in the Nokia Optical Business unit. The first is leading the worldwide R&D for the 1830 portfolio of products. The second is leading the R&D and PLM for the Optic’s Subsystem team, this team is taking some of the key innovations from the Optics R&D teams to new application spaces and markets. In his 31 years of experience he has worked in key areas of Optics, Enterprise, and Access with a focus on service provider and enterprise customer solutions. He was part of the original development team that introduced the 1830 to the market and has held leadership positions in Product Line management and throughout R&D to evolve and expand this product to where it has become. Ed holds a Masters of Engineering from Columbia University.

George Francis

Optical Networking Software Product Line Manager  

Nokia

George Francis is a Product Line Manager for the Wavesuite – Network Operations Center (erstwhile NFM-T) software. In this role George is responsible for managing key customers and key product enhancement requests for North & South America regions. George has over 20 years of experience in the Optical Telecommunications domain specializing in SONET, SDH, OTN and DWDM technologies. George started his career within R&D team and has since taken up System Engineering and Product Management roles, and also has diverse experience across Network Elements, Management Systems and Planning Tools. George holds a Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Mumbai, India.

Giancarlo Garcia

Principal Consulting Engineer

NOKIA

Principal Consulting Engineer with over 14 years of experience in IP Networks holding different positions from Network Integration to Business Development helping Communication Service Providers across the Americas region. Currently supporting Cable, Wireline and WISP Service Providers in the US within Nokia IP Networks business unit and also acting as the regional Product Line Manager for the 7250 IXR covering the North American market.

Holds a Telecommunications Engineering degree and has been with Nokia since 2009. Currently based in South Florida.

Sabyasachi Kar

NPI & Trails IP Engineer  

NOKIA

Sabyasachi Kar is NPI & Trail IP Engineer focused on SRL and SROS Products within Nokia's Network Infrastructure Division based in Ottawa, CA. Sabyasachi has 13+ years of experience in the network industry within the area of Network Design, Pre-Sales, and Network Support. Prior he is a Speaker for Cisco Live (Next Generation Multicast) and has gained extensive international experience in various forums. Sabyasachi has Masters in Networks & Management, Cisco Regional Academy. Holding expert certificates: Nokia SRA, 3xCCIE (SP| DC | ENT), JNCIE SP.

Peter Landon

Senior Product Line Manager  

Nokia

Peter Landon is a Director of Product Line Management for the Nokia Network Services Platform, with a focus on multi-layer SDN solutions. Peter has over 25 years of experience in ASIC/system design and Product Management including senior roles at Juniper Networks, COMDEV/NASA, Lucent Technologies/Bell Labs, and while at BTI leading the architecture and design of the BTI/Juniper 7800 Series Intelligent Cloud Connect platform.  Peter earned his BSc in Engineering from Queen’s University with post graduate work at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario.

Karyn Lennon

Senior Director, IP/Optical Networks Learning Services

NOKIA

Karyn Lennon leads the Learning Services function for Nokia’s IP/Optical Networks Business Group.  In her role, Karyn is responsible for setting the strategic direction and development of Nokia’s Optical educational services which includes the Nokia Optical Networks Certification Program.  In addition to the Optical program, Karyn directs both Nokia’s flagship IP/MPLS certification program, the Service Routing Certification (SRC) Program which has over 14,000 individuals participating globally and the Nuage Networks Virtuoso Certification Program (NN-VCP). Prior to her role in Learning Services, Karyn held various PLM and Marketing positions at Newbridge Networks and Alcatel-Lucent. Karyn received her Bachelor of Commerce from  McGill University and holds a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Ottawa.

Bo Li

Product Line Manager

NOKIA

A senior IP/LTE NPI engineer with more than 10 years working in Nokia IP product division. Nokia SRA certification since 2008.

Giovanni Manto

Leader 1830 Product Line Management, Optical Networks Division

NOKIA

Giovanni has global product management responsibilities for Nokia’s Optical portfolio, covering all aspects of product management and future portfolio strategies.  Giovanni has over 25+ years of industry experience and has held several senior management positions at LG, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, and Nortel Networks. During his tenure at LG, Giovanni was the general manager of the Fiber access business unit with responsibility for the productization and commercialization of an innovative optical technology for the fiber access portfolio serving a diverse global customer base.   Giovanni holds a Bachelor in Electrical Engineering from Concordia University in Montréal, Canada and is based in Ottawa, Canada. 

Jerod Munson

Senior Solution Architect  

Nokia  

Jerod Munson is a Senior Solution Architect and a member of an advanced hardware architecture team for the IP/Optical North American Regional Business Center, a role he has held since 2019 when he joined NOKIA. In this role he is responsible for working with customers to better define ways to integrate IP/Optical technologies to improve business outcomes. His team provides detailed network modeling expertise to demonstrate how tighter integration, both hardware and software, can simplify networks from both a CAPEX and OPEX perspective. Before joining NOKIA Jerod spent 16 years at Coriant (formerly Tellabs) and 3 years at Cisco in various technical sales roles supporting North American customers.

Karim Radhouani

Technology and Architecture Consulting Engineer

NOKIA

Karim Radhouani is a Technology and Architecture Consulting Engineer at Nokia, based in California. Karim focuses on assessing future technologies that will help shape the networking platforms of tomorrow. He has 14+ years of technical experience with Nokia spanning multiple regions, covering Support, NPI, Consulting and Product management in various networking domains. He has a passion for network emulation, automation and open interfaces. He is also the maintainer of a few open source projects.

Tod Sizer

Optical Research Leader

Nokia Bell Labs

Dr. Theodore(Tod) Sizer is Executive Vice President of Optical Systems and Device Research in Nokia Bell Labs, leading teams innovating in all aspects of optical systems and devices for core, submarine, and data center communications.  Prior to his current role, Tod lead Wireless Research in Nokia Bell Labs for eight years driving the vision and research of 5G. Tod graduated from Amherst College, and received his Masters and Doctorate in Optics from the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester.   In 2012 he received the Popular Science Breakthrough Innovation award for the lightRadio invention.  Tod is a Fellow of Bell Labs, WWRF, and IEEE.  He is the author of 55 US patents and a member of the IEEE and OSA.

Nick Slabakov

Senior Director, Regional Product Line Management

NOKIA

Nick leads the Regional PLM organization in North America, whose focus is to understand customer’s requirements, identify common trends, and ensure they are prioritized for development and delivery. He brings over 25 years of experience in the networking industry, supporting customers from various verticals – Service Providers. Web-Scale, Enterprise. When he joined Nokia 4 years ago, he brought along the experience of having worked both on the operator and the vendors side, as well as the perspective of wide industry involvement, with contributions to standards development in the IETF, and regular participation in various industry forums and conferences. Nick’s technical interests are diverse, but his last few years have been focused on Segment Routing. Segment Routing, along with its adjacent technologies, has been re-imagining most areas of networking – transport, control and data-plane separation, programmability, traffic engineering, tunneling, source -routing (to name just a few) - and that is just fascinating! Nick’s passions outside of work revolve around flying (and teaching people how to fly) aerobatics. He has been thinking of ways to apply Segment Routing to that. Still work in progress.

Lubo Tancesvki

Leader Software Strategy and Solutions, Optical Networks Division

NOKIA

Lubo Tancevski  is responsible for  Product Strategy and end-to-end solution for Transport SDN   and  Cloud services.  Prior, he worked on various aspects of transport networks, including  Data Center Interconnect, and  Ethernet for LTE Mobile Backhaul. He  also worked on   early developments in Carrier-Grade Ethernet, including  IEEE 802.1  standardization activities.   Lubo has more than 20 years experience in the  telecommunication industry, has authored numerous papers and patent,   and invited presentations and talks at industry’s main events.  He joined Alcatel in 1998.   He holds BSc, MSc,  and PhD in  EE from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

James Tindall

SVP Network Infrastructure IP and Optical Americas

NOKIA

Jim holds the position of Senior Vice President in the Network Infrastructure Division and is responsible for the IP and Optical business for the Americas. In this capacity he leads a diverse team, including consulting engineering and technical presales support, delivery and logistics, program management, and customer and resident engineering functions. Jim’s interest in technology and communications began at an early age with an interest in Amateur Radio, and he became a licensed operator at 11 years of age.  After studying physics at SUNY Oswego for several years, he enlisted in the US Navy as an Electronics Warfare specialist and was on active duty for 6 years from 1982 to 1988. His first job out of the military was at Proteon, an early pioneer in Internet Routing, starting as a bench technician in manufacturing and leaving as the global director of systems engineering. From there he worked in a series of successful startups, including IPOs with Cascade Communications and Redback Networks, in a variety of customer facing technical roles, leaving Redback as Vice President of Product Management. He joined Alcatel in 2005 in the newly formed IP division from the acquisition of Timetra and found a home away from the startup world. Jim still maintains his passion for technology and building world class networks, and the shared sense of accomplishment that comes for successful deployments. 

Mike Thompson

Global Network Automation Practice Leader

NOKIA

Mike Thompson leads Nokia’s global network automation practice focusing on Nokia’s Network Services Platform (NSP) and SDN to help service providers and large enterprise customers improve operational efficiency, productivity, lower MTTR, reduce churn, and accelerate revenue streams. Prior to Nokia, Mike was a leader at Charter Communications in Operations and Engineering. He has held leadership positions at Nokia, Charter, Cisco, BearingPoint, and Verizon. Mike has extensive experience in large scale software, network automation, routing, and optical. Mike has held leadership roles in Engineering, Software Development, Operations, Architecture, Sales, Consulting, and Product Management teams and as a Business Unit General Manager. He has a Master of Science in Information Management and a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology.

James Watt

President and General Manager, Optical Networks Division

NOKIA

James Watt is President and General Manager for the Optical Networks Division at Nokia. Prior to this, James was the Vice President and General Manager for the Services Business Unit, IP/Optical Networks, at Nokia and its predecessor in Alcatel-Lucent, President of the Optics Business Line in Alcatel-Lucent and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the Alcatel-Lucent Carrier Product Group. Until 2008, James held the position of Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Alcatel-Lucent’s IP Business Division and had previously held the role of Vice President Network Strategy for Alcatel. James joined Alcatel in 2000 as Chief Technology Officer of the Carrier Internetworking Division through the acquisition of Newbridge Networks, where he was Assistant Vice President, Access and Network Management Strategy. During his 15 years with Newbridge, James held a variety of positions within the research & development, product management and marketing organizations. James holds multiple patents, primarily in the areas of traffic management and Internet Protocol. He received a B.SC. in Electrical Engineering from Queens University in Kingston, Ontario in 1986.

Szilard Zsigmond

Senior Director, High-Speed Electro-Optics subsystem Product/Portfolio/Strategy/Sales

NOKIA

Szilard Zsigmond is responsible for overall product/portfolio strategy and component sales. Leading multiple teams covering different aspects of subsystem components from DSP to optical frontend leading the silicon photonics programs through the former Elenion PLM team and related engineering rules. Responsible for the go-to-market strategy, and business development, for subsystems products.­Szilard has extensive knowledge of optical communication systems and expertise in fiber-optics communication, high-level modulation formats, coherent transmission, and digital signal processing.