Rear Admiral (Retired), U. S. Navy
Consultant, Director – Fair Winds Consulting, LLC

Jan leads Fair Winds Consulting, LLC, providing project-based consulting and speaking services in the areas of cyberspace, education, leadership, and diversity.  Previously she served as chancellor of the College of Information and Cyberspace at National Defense University after having retired from the U.S. Navy in the fall of 2012 at the rank of Rear Admiral (Upper Half).  

RADM Hamby’s military career focused on the employment of telecommunications, space and computer systems to make information available for command and control of the Force and to enhance decision making at all levels of the chain of command.   Her service included two command tours at a regional telecommunications and networking site in the southeast United States and of a major information hub in Italy supporting military communications from Iceland to Iraq.  Her Washington, DC service included providing analytic support to the Chief of Naval Operations to validate and justify Navy investments in space, cyber and information programs.  She was the senior leader of the U.S. Navy Information Professional Officer Corps and is credited with developing its mentorship program and directing implementation of its professional qualification program that subsequently became the model for qualifications across the Information Warfare community.

During a one-year assignment in Baghdad, Iraq, Jan played a key role in untangling information disconnects and made substantive contributions to the Coalition Force’s second campaign plan.  As a flag officer she directed the global operations of the Navy’s offensive and defensive cyber forces, served as the director of the North American Aerospace Defense/U.S. Northern Command telecommunications and computer networking efforts, served as Vice Director for Command, Control and Computer Systems on the Joint Staff and was Deputy Chief Information Officer for the Department of Defense’s operational telecommunications and computer networks and cyber technology infrastructure.  

Highly decorated, Rear Admiral (Retired) Hamby’s highest military award is the Defense Distinguished Service Medal.  She holds a Doctor of Management degree and master’s degrees in the Management of Information Systems, Business Administration and National Security and Strategic Studies.  Her doctoral research focused on mitigating the impact of toxic leadership at all levels of the organization.  She serves on several boards of directors and is directorship certified by the National Association of Corporate Directors.

Major General (Retired), U.S. Marine Corps
12th NASA Administrator
Founder & CEO Emeritus, The Charles F. Bolden Group

Retired Marine Corps Major General Charles Frank Bolden Jr. was the Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) from July 2009 until January 2017.

Bolden’s 34-year career with the Marine Corps included 14 years as a member of NASA’s Astronaut Office. After joining the office in 1980, he traveled into orbit four times aboard the space shuttle between 1986 and 1994, commanding two of the missions and piloting two others.

Today, in addition to his numerous professional affiliations, General Bolden serves as the Founder and CEO Emeritus of The Charles F. Bolden Group, providing leadership in the areas of Space/Aerospace Exploration, National Security, STEM+AD Education and Health Initiatives.

Bolden is a graduate of C.A. Johnson High School in Columbia, SC. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the U.S. Naval Academy and a Master of Science degree from the University of Southern California.

Bolden is married to the former Alexis Walker of Columbia, SC. They have two children, A. Che’ Bolden, Colonel, USMC (Ret.), Dr. Kelly M. Bolden, MD, FACS, and four grandchildren – granddaughters Mikaley, Kyra and Talia and grandson Walker Elias.

Reed E. Hundt is the Chief Executive Officer of the Coalition for Green Capital, a non-profit that advises governments on the creation and operation of green banks—government-charted finance authorities dedicated to increasing public-private investment in the new clean energy platform. He is a consultant to Covington & Burling, principally working with that firm’s communications practice group. He sits on the Board of Directors of Intel Corporation, the world’s leading semiconductor design and manufacturing firm, as well as on the boards of a number of private firms and the Connecticut Green Bank. He was Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1993 to 1997 and served on Barack Obama’s 2008-2009 Presidential transition team.

Mr. Hundt has written many articles and four books: Zero Hour: Time to Rebuild the Clean Power Platform (E-Book; Odyssey, 2013); The Politics of Abundance: How Technology Can Fix the Budget, Revive the American Dream, and Establish Obama’s Legacy, an e-book co-authored with Blair Levin, (E-book; Odyssey, 2012); In China’s Shadow: The Crisis of American Entrepreneurship (Yale University Press, 2006); and You Say You Want A Revolution: A Story of Information Age Politics (Yale University Press, 2000). He graduated from Yale College and Yale Law School.

Timothy M. Donahue is the former Executive Chairman of Sprint Nextel Corporation and the former President and Chief Executive Officer of Nextel Communications, Inc. Since his retirement in 2006, Mr. Donahue has played active roles in advising and counseling numerous companies in the industry and technology sectors, including serving as a non-executive chairman of UCT Coatings as well as a director for Tyco International Ltd., Covidian Ltd., and Eastman Kodak.

Additional tenure includes his positions as northeast regional president for AT&T Wireless Services; president of the central region of its predecessor company, McCaw Cellular Communications; and president of McCaw’s paging division. Mr. Donahue also currently serves as a director for several other companies, including The ADT Corporation, NVR Inc., and Radius Networks.

Doug Smith is President and Chief Executive Officer for Ligado Networks and is responsible for directing the vision of the company and managing every aspect of its day-to-day operations. He leads efforts to utilize its state-of-the-art communications assets in operating a network solutions firm designed to extend coverage, increase capacity, and accelerate the delivery of next-generation technology for America’s wireless and critical infrastructure industries.

With more than 25 years of domestic and international telecom and wireless industry experience, Doug has engineered, built, and launched nationwide networks for GTE, Nextel, Sprint Nextel, and Clearwire.

From the outset of the commercial cellular industry, Doug has been involved with the development and technical support of several nationwide cellular networks spanning every generation of technology from the first analog networks through today’s state-of-the-art systems. Joining Nextel when it was a start-up company, Doug helped build the business from the ground up. He was responsible for the design and operation of Nextel’s nationwide network consisting of more than 20,000 cells and serving more than 20 million subscribers. Following that network deployment, he served as Sprint’s Senior Vice President and Chief Technical Operations Officer and embarked on the deployment of the company’s 4G network.

Doug received a Master of Science in Management of Technology from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Merrimack College.

Lawrence T. Babbio, Jr. was the vice chairman and president of Verizon until his retirement in April of 2007. He was responsible for the Verizon Telecom and Verizon Business units.  He was also a member of the board of directors of Verizon Wireless.

Babbio began his communications career in 1966 with New Jersey Bell Telephone. He served in a variety of positions in engineering, network construction, and technology development with New Jersey Bell and AT&T. In January 1995 he was elected vice chairman of Bell Atlantic Corporation.

Prior to the Bell Atlantic/GTE merger, Babbio was president and chief operating officer for Bell Atlantic. He shared oversight of, and responsibility for, all of the corporation’s business operations, restructuring of the business units, the GTE merger process, and developing new growth opportunities.

Babbio also served as chairman of the company’s Global Wireless Group, one of the largest wireless operations worldwide. He was the lead executive in charge of developing Bell Atlantic’s domestic and international wireless communications strategy. Under his leadership, Bell Atlantic substantially increased the size and scope of its domestic and international wireless holdings.

After retiring from Verizon in 2007 he became a Senior Advisor for Warburg Pincus until March, 2012.

He served on the board of Compaq and Hewlett Packard from 1995 until 2011. He was a director of ARAMARK from 1999 to 2017 and on the board of the Wallace Foundation from 2006 to 2018. He is currently on the board of a number of U.S. and international private wireless companies. Babbio also serves on the Board of Trustees of Stevens Institute of Technology.

He holds a B.E. in electrical engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology, and an M.B.A. from New York University.

Alfred F. Hurley, Jr. is a member of Ligado Network’s Board of Managers, serving on the Audit Committee. An independent consultant since 2014, Mr. Hurley has extensive experience in corporate development, management and finance.

Mr. Hurley also serves on several other boards, including the New Mountain Finance Corporation, Merrill Corporation, and The Stars Corporation. Previously, he was a vice chairman at Emigrant Bank and Emigrant Bancorp, advising the chief executive officer on strategic planning, acquisitions and divestitures, asset and liability management, online banking, and new products. He also chaired the bank’s Credit and Risk Management Committee.

Prior to joining Emigrant, Mr. Hurley led M. Safra & Co., a private money management firm, as its chief executive officer. His experience also includes nearly 30 years at Merrill Lynch where, in addition to advising companies regarding mergers, acquisitions and financings, he held a number of senior management positions in the firm’s investment banking and private equity divisions.

Mr. Hurley received an A.B. in History, cum laude, from Princeton University.

John Fischer serves as an advisor to several high-tech start-ups and has significant experience advising telecommunications clients. As Logica Consulting’s managing partner of Telecoms, Mr. Fischer directed a wide range of telecom industry projects in 16 different countries on behalf of major U.S., European, and Japanese companies. In addition to his tenure at that pan-European management consultancy, Mr. Fischer served as general counsel of LCC International, Inc., a global wireless communications engineering company. He has more than 30 years of legal, management, and transactional experience at both major corporations and emerging growth companies throughout the U.S. and abroad. He has negotiated and closed acquisitions and related financings with a total value of more than $12 billion.

Mr. Fischer currently serves as the general counsel of Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage, Inc. (NYSE: NGVC), a rapidly growing specialty retailer of natural and organic groceries and dietary supplements. From 2006 to 2012, he served first as general counsel and subsequently as interim president and chief executive officer of The Berry Company, LLC, one of the country’s largest local search firms.

Mr. Fischer holds a BA degree from Stanford University (Phi Beta Kappa) and JD and MBA degrees from the University of California at Los Angeles.