Chris Crosby is a recognized visionary and leader in the datacenter space and has served as founder and CEO of Compass Datacenters since 2011. Chris has over 25 years of technology experience and over 15 years of real estate and investment experience. Previously, Chris served as a senior executive and founding member of Digital Realty Trust. Chris was Senior Vice President at Digital Realty Trust, responsible for roles included global responsibility for corporate development, sales, marketing, design, construction, technical operations and customer service. Prior to the initial public offering of Digital Realty, Chris was founder and managing director of Proferian, which served as an operating platform for the private equity fund, GI Partners, and was rolled into the IPO for Digital Realty Trust. Prior to Proferian, Chris served as a consultant for CRG West, now Coresite. For the first ten years of his career, Chris was active in international and domestic sales, sales management and product development at Nortel Networks, a major supplier of products and services that support the Internet and other public and private data, voice and multimedia communications networks. Mr. Crosby received a B.S. degree in Computer Sciences from the University of Texas at Austin. He serves as the Vice Chair of the board for the Masters in Datacenter Systems Engineering degree program at Southern Methodist University. Chris is also active in the Lonestar chapter of YPO.

Jason C. Reed brings more than 20 years of real estate experience in complex global real estate transactions, law and management to Carter Validus. As Chief Acquisitions Officer and Senior Vice President, Data Center Investment Management, Mr. Reed provides the strategic vision to turn business goals into actionable plans with appropriate risk management. As acting Principal of Longview Real Estate Advisors, a full service advisory firm to the data center and telecommunications industry with a focus on mission critical real estate assets, he was responsible for the firm’s acquisitions, leasing and management strategy. Formerly the Senior Vice President, Global Real Estate at Equinix, Inc., Mr. Reed was accountable directly to the Chief Development Officer and Real Estate Committee of the Board of Directors for the allocation and investment of $2 billion annually across 22 countries and 44 metropolitan areas. Notably while at Equinix, Mr. Reed successfully implemented a global real estate administration program with coordination across several stakeholder groups including the regional Presidents, Tax, SEC accounting and Audit.

Prior to Equinix, Mr. Reed served in various roles at Level 3 Communications, most recently as Vice President, Global Real Estate and Facilities, where he was responsible for the strategic planning, investment and management of 23 million square feet of global real estate consisting of over 10,000 properties across North America, EMEA, and Latin America.

Mr. Reed received a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration, followed by earning his Juris Doctor and Master of Laws in Taxation at the University of Denver.

John Sheputis is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at Primary Digital Infrastructure, an independent data center investment platform. From 2019 through 2023, John was a Managing Director at GI Partners where he led the technology real estate acquisitions and headed the Essential Tech + Science Real Estate Fund. Prior to GI Partners, Mr. Sheputis was President of Infomart Data Centers. In 2018, the Dallas Infomart was acquired by Equinix and the remaining Infomart assets and operations were acquired by IPI Partners to be the initial properties for STACK Infrastructure. Prior to Infomart, Mr. Sheputis was Co-Founder and CEO of Fortune Data Centers. Mr. Sheputis received a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA and an MS Engineering from Northwestern.

As Executive Vice President – Hyperscale / Enterprise Markets for T5 Data Centers Tim is responsible for leasing T5’s international portfolio of Tier 3, concurrently maintainable and fault tolerant enterprise grade data centers, focusing on large enterprise and hyperscale markets, and build-to-suit pursuits. Spanning a construction, development, and real estate career over twenty-five years, Tim has managed the construction, development management, and leasing of a myriad of project types including data centers, call centers, switch locations, colocation facilities, corporate headquarters and regional offices, condominiums and multi-family rental projects, and raw land. In addition to being a LEED Green Associate, Tim holds an undergraduate degree in Architecture, a Masters of Building Construction, and a Finance Minor from the University of Florida.

Some people are happy to run with the herd or even lag behind it. And then there are people like Ab Atkins—those who identify trends and rush in front of the herd. Ab has been identifying trends for nearly 40 years, which helps him lead KDC’s Mission Critical Data Center practice. In his current role, he oversees site acquisition, development, financial analysis, asset management, leasing and disposition of projects. Since he joined the firm in 2007, he’s been involved in 15 ground up greenfield data center projects in Kansas, Texas, and Virginia in addition to office and industrial build-to-suits projects in Texas and Nebraska.

Rob is a leading expert within the data center industry with over a decade of mission critical projects both nationally and internationally. Mr. Morris has directed more than 250 megawatts of development in North America. Previous roles include U.S. Practice Leader for Cassidy Turley’s Datacenter Solutions Group as well as Senior Associate to Cushman & Wakefield’s Datacenter Advisory Group.

Lucas Rae has served as lead designer and mechanical engineer on a number of important Mission Critical projects. He has worked on projects across the data-center spectrum – including colocation, enterprise and hyperscale, and his international proficiency – including work in Australia, the United Kingdom and beyond -- is a boon. His expertise extends from concept through design, construction, commissioning and testing to completion. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree with honors from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.

With over 30 years of professional engineering experience, Kevin is a Principal and Director of Mission

Critical Projects for Jacobs Buildings & Infrastructure, a Fortune 500 global provider of mission critical

facility solutions. A graduate of Penn State University with a degree in Architectural Engineering, for the

last 11 years he has led Jacobs teams in the successful delivery of critical data center projects up to

$1.2B in construction value and 100 MW in total capacity for our clients. In addition to design, he has

provided a variety of services including planning/site selection studies, audits, risk assessments,

construction cost estimating, scheduling and commissioning of systems.

At RagingWire, Mr. Leach is the overall marketing leader responsible for

a data center portfolio of 1.5 million square feet and 113 megawatts of

critical power in the United States and a global data center platform of

140 locations in 20 countries and regions as part of the Nexcenter brand

of NTT Communications.

Over his 30-year career, James Leach has been part of the core teams developing internet,

telecommunications, and infrastructure solutions, including: DNS security, global web domains,

performance monitoring, industry vertical solutions, content delivery networks (CDN), virtual

private networks (VPN), cloud computing, and data center colocation.

Mr. Leach spent the first 15 years of his career at IBM, starting out as an engineer and then

moving into sales, business development, and marketing. For the last 15 years, James has been

a top marketing executive at Savvis, Internap, Neustar, Harris Corporation, and now

RagingWire.

Mr. Bond is Managing Director and Co-Leader of JLL's global Data Center Solutions practice team. He is a recognized leader in the real estate industry whose knowledge of technical issues, infrastructure, and labor assessment has allowed him to develop the unique skill set required for mission critical and contact center requirements. He works with clients to develop the necessary strategies to meet their individual objectives including tenant and owner representation, investment sales and acquisitions, leasing and development of these unique assets.

As a Principal at Page and Director of the Science and Technology sector, John has managed the design of over 30 data centers. Serving as Project Director for Mission Critical projects, John’s projects have accounted for more than $5 billion in construction throughout the United States and internationally. He is an expert in the design of mission critical facilities, secure compartmentalized information facilities (SCIFs), EMP shielding and the latest in data center cooling technologies including liquid immersion cooling. He is a founding board member of the 7X24 Exchange Central Texas Chapter, which supports the growing network of mission critical professionals and facilities in the Central Texas region.

Mike Kotubey joined TDIndustries in 2013 as President of the Dallas Office. Prior to joining TD, Mike began his career with Carrier and Trane moving up to Service General Manager before moving over to construction. Mike worked for many years in the Design / Build market designing, estimating and managing a variety of projects including hotels, medical facilities, commercial office buildings, energy conservation and co-generation. He then oversaw construction operations for Limbach Company’s largest branch in Detroit before joining MMC Contractors in Kansas City. He spent 9 years as their President where he helped build them into a national healthcare construction leader. Mike brings a wealth of leadership experience to TD and is responsible for all construction and service efforts in the Dallas region.

Mike attended Drexel University, then transferred to Villanova where he switched majors. He achieved a bachelor's of science degree in Management with a minor in Marketing from Franklin Pierce University.

Mike is married to Susan and together they have three children.

Mark Thompson leads the National Advanced Technology/Mission Critical Group for DPR

Construction, one of the country’s top technical builders and data center and telecommunications

contractors in the U.S. (ENR 2017). With more than 28 years of experience in the delivery of

mission critical, semiconductor, life science and corporate office projects, Thompson works with

DPR business units across the country to enhance overall project delivery and quality of service

for the company’s Advanced Technology customers, which include industry leaders such as

Digital Realty, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo. He also serves as Project Executive on several of

DPR’s current mission critical facility projects and his extensive technical expertise includes

project evaluation, scheduling, project logistics, cost control, subcontractor management and

strategic planning.

Mark received his Bachelor of Science degree in Construction Management from California State

University, Chico and is an Uptime Institute Accredited Tier Specialist.