Guest Blog Post by Ali Afrashteh, Chief Technical Officer
Yesterday we profiled the new Deputy Chief Technical Officer Jeff Bratcher and our plans for managing and overseeing the technical and engineering teams that are supporting the successful deployment of a nationwide public safety broadband network. Today, we are happy to introduce some of the technical contractors that are supporting the FirstNet CTO office. In addition to discussing their backgrounds and primary areas of expertise, they also share about what makes them so dedicated and committed to the FirstNet mission.
Three teams have been awarded contracts for technical support through the Department of Commerce’s Office of Acquisition Management: Redhorse Corp., Information Management Resources, Inc. (IMRI)Technology and Engineering Solutions; and Costas Group, Inc. Today we feature two of the IMRI team members – Brian Kassa and Mark Golaszewski – and one of the Redhorse team members - John Saboe. We will also be profiling additional members of the technical support team in future blog posts.
At Redhorse, John is Program Manager of Network Operations. His team is supporting FirstNet’s technical evaluation of projects with approved spectrum lease agreements. John’s credentials are plenty – a senior technical leader with over twenty years of experience in the design, deployment, operations, and continuous improvement of wireless telecommunications (2G, 3G, and 4G) products and services. He has also worked on various engineering and national network operations projects. Based on his qualifications alone, John would be a natural fit for the team, but it was a life experience that reinforced his appreciation and commitment to the public safety mission.
It happened last April, when tragedy (almost) hit him. John’s son was sitting at the finish line of the Boston Marathon just minutes before the explosions that killed several and left many others injured. Fortunately, at the time of the blast, John’s son was about 200 feet away, just far enough to escape physical injury. Reflecting back on that tragic day, John says: “I am confident the work we are doing will be a significant step forward to enable improved intelligence, communications, and responsiveness to this type of event. I’m proud of the first responders that were immediately present and joined the scene as the attack occurred and likely saved many lives. And I’m proud to be part of the team helping enable this advanced network that will ultimately improve our ability to avoid such tragic events in the future.”
It doesn’t take many stories like John’s to understand the need for a broadband network dedicated to public safety. Some of those on the contracting staff are public safety professionals themselves, such as Brian Kassa, who works for IMRI as a Program Manager, End-to-End Architecture to FirstNet.
Brian has been an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), an Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Dispatcher, firefighter (for eight years), a wilderness search and rescue volunteer (for 17 years), and has been a member of the King County Search and Rescue Association and the Snoqualmie EOC Support Team. Brian’s most recent activity was on the tragedy in Oso, Washington as a helibase manager supporting Regional Aviation Enterprises (RAVEN). For FirstNet, Brian focuses on end-to-end architecture, ensuring that services, features and functions work across all of FirstNet’s technology domains.
Mark Golaszewski recently started supporting FirstNet as the Senior Applications Manager for IMRI. He brings 35 years of experience in wireless and networking applications including network equipment and applications development, cloud application development, application and network security solutions and service provider operations. He’s also been involved with the planning and/or deployment of Enhanced 911 solutions with two communications service providers.
Mark says his role is to help enable the vision of FirstNet to empower America's first responders with state of the art communication tools, a project that has value and benefit to all first responders and the communities they support. “I am excited to be a part of such an accomplished team, working on such a worthwhile mission,” Mark tells FirstNet. “I look forward to the opportunity to work with people in public safety and with first responders to understand and deliver to their key requirements.”
His primary responsibilities involve supporting the definition of the applications and necessary applications infrastructure to be provided to first responders over the network. He’s involved with supporting the analysis of the Applications and Applications Platform Request for Information (RFI) responses as groundwork for creating the applications requirements in the FirstNet.
On behalf of the FirstNet technical team, we welcome our contract support and look forward to their contributions to deploying a nationwide broadband network dedicated to public safety.
-Ali
