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Laren Whiddon President & CEO Laren Whiddon is President & CEO of DBS Communications, Inc. Mr. Whiddon joined the Mr. Whiddon has twenty years experience in the wireless industry, joining American Cellular Communications Corp., a BellSouth partnership, in 1987. Prior to joining DBS Communications, Mr. Whiddon was Vice President and General Manager of Cingular Wireless, where he was responsible for the Illinois and Wisconsin Region, one of the three largest within Cingular, with over $2B in revenues. He held similar positions in several other regions, including Kentucky, Louisiana, and Florida. Prior to his general management background, he held various executive finance roles including Chief Financial Officer of Los Angeles Cellular Telephone Company, a $1B operating entity jointly held by AT&T Wireless and Bellsouth Cellular Corp. He began his career with Ernst & Young in 1984 as an audit and tax consultant. Laren received a BSBA with a major in accounting in 1984, from the University of Southern Mississippi. He is also a Certified Public Accountant.
Al Ramirez Al Ramirez is the Senior Vice President of Finance and CFO at DBS Communications. He is responsible for leading all aspects of finance. Mr. Ramirez has over twenty years in the telecommunications industry. He spent nearly sixteen years with Ameritech where he was the CFO of their largest division with revenues in excess of $5B. He was instrumental in taking a start-up division of Ameritech from $25M to over $500M in revenues driven by acquisitions and consolidations. Additionally, he served on the Board of Advisors for MATAV, the Hungarian Telephone Company. Prior to joining DBS, Mr. Ramirez was the CEO of a start-up wireless content provider and transitioned the company to a media entertainment company. Mr. Ramirez has been instrumental in launching four new businesses 1) an electronic futures trading platform 2) a management logistics corporation 3) a telephony software transaction platform and 4) a software development and consulting business. Mr. Ramirez was also employed by the Ford Motor Company where he served in various finance and labor relations positions. Mr. Ramirez holds an MBA from Eastern Michigan University and a BBA from Eastern Kentucky University.
Daniel J. McFarland
Scott Merkle Scott Merkle is the Senior Vice President of National Accounts and Marketing at DBS Communications. He is responsible for leading MVNE sales, marketing and engineering, serving MVNO partners across the United States. Prior to joining DBS, Mr. Merkle was a Vice President and General Manager for NextiraOne, a leading communications infrastructure solution provider with over 20,000 customers. Mr. Merkle managed a 440-person sales and operations team, delivering $110M in annual revenue. He was responsible for direct sales, service and support of Nortel and Cisco data networking, PBX, VoIP, contact center, and managed network services solutions to enterprise accounts in 26 states. Prior to joining NextiraOne in early 2004, Mr. Merkle was the Vice President of Global Channel Sales for Apropos Technology, a publicly held contact center software company. At Apropos, Mr. Merkle led the company’s channel sales and alliances teams from initial funding through a successful IPO. Prior to joining Apropos, Mr. Merkle was the Vice President of OEM Sales and Marketing for Cruise Technologies, a pioneer in 802.11 wireless thin client technology. His 19 years in the high tech and communications industry also include senior marketing and product management positions with Zenith Data Systems, GO Corporation, and Andersen Consulting (Accenture). Mr. Merkle holds an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley; and an Economics Degree from Northwestern University.
Dana Krug In addition to his eleven year career at Paging Network, Mr. Krug has been involved in three successful start up companies which included being the Co-founder and Vice President of Sales of Brightpod ASP., a wireless application service provider where he successfully merged the company and brought it public under the name Inphonic in 2004. Most recently Mr. Krug was the Vice President, North American Sales for Spotwave Wireless, an In-building wireless coverage start up where he grew sales from zero to over $10M in under 2 years. Mr. Krug is a graduate of Western Michigan University, earning a BBA in General business in 1987.
Galen Thomas, Mr. Thomas joined DBS in 2003 to grow a customer-centric culture and triple the size of his organization. He enjoys managing the complexities of multiple product lines within multiple distribution channels in a multi-site configuration. Mr. Thomas championed a self-service face for DBS that now handles 91% of all customer transactions. Prior to coming to DBS, Mr. Thomas served in vocational Christian Ministry for 15 years. He earned a BS in Computer Science from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo (California) in 1988. Mr. Thomas is married to his wife, Angelica, and has four kids.
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