Derek Garnier is a 30-year industry veteran in digital infrastructure, specializing in corporate strategy, and has successfully built, operated, and sold companies.

He was most recently co-founder of Arcadian Infracom, a long-haul fiber optic company operating in the Southwest. Prior to Arcadian, Derek served as President and COO of Evocative Datacenters, the predecessor to VPLS, which he again joins as President and COO.

Derek also served as the CEO of Layer42 Networks, a national network services and colocation provider, which he successfully exited in 2015 through a sale to Wave Broadband. Post-acquisition, Derek continued as Wave’s SVP of Datacenter services. Before his tenure at Layer42 Networks, Derek held management positions at QTS Datacenters and AboveNet Communications through the acquisition of Sitesmith, a global managed services provider of which he was an early employee. Derek began his career as an engineer, serving in the rolefor network and data center provider ISI, later renamed Global Crossing via multiple acquisitions, as well as at network companies MFS Datanet and Cabletron Systems.

Mark leads Iron Mountain’s emerging colocation data center business with full

responsibility for profit and loss, sales and operations at facilities in five states.

Under Mark’s leadership, Iron Mountain’s data center business has grown

tenfold in four years.

Prior to this role, Mark served as head of corporate strategy as a member of the

Iron Mountain senior executive team. During his 14-year tenure with Iron

Mountain, he has also held roles in portfolio management, capital investments

and finance. Prior to joining Iron Mountain, Mark worked in the New York office

of Thomas Weisel Partners, a boutique investment banking firm. Mark graduated

with his A.B. in economics from Harvard University.

Lahoud is responsible for the implementation of the company’s overall business strategies and go-to-market operations, including the expansion of Stream’s Hyperscale Solutions and Critical Environments practice.

He has more than 13 years of experience in critical systems design and operations, with projects including avionics platforms for $100 million plus military aircraft, solutions architecture supporting a number of global power and cooling product manufacturers, and data center operations.

Additionally, Lahoud has managed Stream’s critical facilities and technology practice since 2010, overseeing business strategy, with an emphasis on managing the data center portfolio and positioning leadership for growing areas of the organization.

He is actively involved in the technology community, serving on the Partner Council of Infrastructure Masons (IM), an organization established to provide infrastructure executives and technical professionals, an independent forum to connect, grow and give back.

Lahoud is also on the Board of Governors for the 7×24 Exchange Lone Star Chapter, an organization that is the leading knowledge exchange in North Texas among those who design, build, use and maintain mission critical enterprise information infrastructures aiming to improve end-to-end reliability.

Robert Covington is a Partner of RedBird Capital Partners, where he is responsible for RedBird’s Business & Financial Services, Communications Infrastructure and Technology related investment activity out of its Dallas office.

Mr. Covington led RedBird’s investments in Lifeline Capital Management, an asset manager specializing in purchasing of whole-life insurance policies; N3, an outsourced sales and marketing company focused on cloud services; Majority Strategies, a political advertising and marketing business driving constituent influence via direct mail, mobile marketing and other forms of media; and Compass Datacenters, a leading wholesale data center developer, specializing in customized build-to-order solutions for enterprise, cloud computing and service provider customers.

Mr. Covington has over 15 years of experience assisting entrepreneurs and families build their business with a specific focus in the Southern U.S. region. Prior to joining RedBird, Mr. Covington spent six years as a Managing Director of The Stephens Group, LLC, a private equity firm investing the capital of the Stephens family, one of America’s longest tenured private equity investors whose business activities began in 1933.

Prior to joining The Stephens Group, Mr. Covington was a General Partner at SSM Partners, a private equity firm focused on expansion stage technology, business services and consumer services companies. Prior to SSM, Mr. Covington was the Founder and CEO of Firstdoor, now part of Infor, where he built and directed a seventy-person organization that was one of the earliest “Software as a Service” business models.

Mr. Covington holds a B.S. in Natural Sciences and Mathematics from Washington and Lee University and received his MPH from Yale University.

Jim Jindrick is a Director of Corporate Engagement at the University of Arizona. He has 30+ years experience in electronics research and development, real-time multitasking software operating systems, product engineering, manufacturing operations, international marketing, and new business venture development. He has launched internal corporate ventures, spin-off and spin-in companies, and independent startups. Products and ventures he developed have generated well over a billion dollars lifetime revenue to date. Jim is an Eller Entrepreneurial Fellow and was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of Arizona and the University of Oregon. He has received 44 U.S. and international patents, has written two books on innovation, and is an IEEE Life Member.

Anthony oversees business development and leasing across Fortune 500 enterprise accounts, and is instrumental in guiding the company’s collaborative ecosystem of partnerships, which include brokerage relationships, alliance partners and Stream’s growing channel program.

Bringing more than two and a half decades of technical real estate expertise to the team, Anthony delivers data center and commercial real estate insight to ensure Stream excels at meeting customers’ evolving needs with tailored mission-critical solutions.

Over the years, Anthony has served as an expert panelist and guest speaker for a number of professional data center organizations, including datacenterHawk, Data Center Dynamics, in addition to multiple AFCOM events and panels.

Prior to joining Stream Data Centers in 2007, Anthony was a founding member of the data center solutions group at CBRE, where he specialized in delivering data center services to technical real estate owners and users.

Anthony holds a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Economics with an emphasis in Real Estate Valuation from Texas A&M University.

In his work with Black & Veatch’s Data Center division, Rob focuses on consulting, engineering, construction and commissioning for data centers. Rob’s background includes roles as Chief Executive Officer, President, Chief Operating Officer, CFO, and Managing Director. He has practical experience providing a diverse group of clients with engineering, assessments, remediation, construction, problem solving and commissioning. Rob’s recent focus has been on Edge computing, which includes authoring a white paper on the subject.

Kevin has over 35 years of experience in the planning, design, implementation and management of data centers, information systems and networks/communications systems. As a consultant for the past 25 years he has worked with many colleges and research universities, healthcare, pharmaceutical and financial institutions, including from the Fortune 100 list. Kevin is the Managing Principal responsible for all client strategic data center consulting work for EYP Mission Critical Facilities. Kevin spearheaded the use of both financial and technical architecture models to allow clients to understand the “cost timeline” for infrastructure, technology and organizational options to assist CIO’s / CTO’s / and CFO’s in the control and predictability of their Hybrid IT and Data Center budgets.

Mark Bauer has been involved in commercial real estate for over 25 years and has specialized in the data center and colocation industry for the past 15 years. Mark has served as broker to tenants, landlords, buyers and sellers, as well as serving as national consultant to a number of brokers, clients and data center developers across the United States. Mark’s experience includes an in-depth knowledge of the data center and telecommunications industries that assists clients with their mission-critical primary data center and disaster recovery needs. Mark has established himself as a master leader and recognized expert in his field and is a Managing Director and National Director at Jones Lang LaSalle and is a leader in their Data Center Solutions (DCS) group that focuses on globally representing companies with their real estate planning and the execution of mission-critical data center relocations and expansions.

David Dunn is COO of H5 Data Centers. Mr. Dunn has nearly 15 years of experience managing significant growth and delivering outsized returns on investment in the Internet infrastructure space. Mr. Dunn most recently served as vice president at the Zayo Group where he was responsible for managing the wavelength and mobile infrastructure business units. Prior to Zayo, Mr. Dunn was senior vice president at CoreSite where he held leadership roles in mergers & acquisitions, leasing, marketing and strategy. Before joining CoreSite, Mr. Dunn held roles at several private equity firms including The Carlyle Group and J.E. Robert Companies. Mr. Dunn earned a B.S. in Finance from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Arman Khalili is the Founder and CEO of Foundation Data Center and is a Board Member of Evocative and brings with him over 25 years of experience in Internet Infrastructure industry.

Prior to joining the company, Arman served as a Principal at Industry Capital a real assets based private equity firm in San Francisco. He was the founder and CEO of CentralColo also known as Element Critical. Prior to that, he was the CEO of Black Lotus, a leader in DDoS mitigation company, which was acquired by Level 3, and was the Founder/CEO of UnitedLayer, the largest privately held colocation provider in San Francisco. He was the founder of Sirius – one of the first ISPs in Silicon Valley, as well as the Co-founder and CTO of MusicBank, the first music subscription company. He has held numerous senior consulting positions at Level3, AT&T and Apple Computers.

John Regan serves as the Chief Investment Officer and has been in the technology and facilities infrastructure space for over three decades. In his most recent role as SVP of Acquisitions and CTO for Landmark Dividend, he executed on over a $1 billion in Digital Infrastructure acquisitions.

Prior to Landmark, Mr. Regan worked with Carter Validus (CV) Advisors where he was instrumental in the development and execution of the CV Mission Critical REIT I & II data center platforms from inception. Mr. Regan made CV’s first acquisition in July 2011. By October 2017, pipeline development and management led to closing of over 50 deals, amassing $2 billion of data center assets totaling more than 4.5 million square feet. Mr. Regan is a data center industry leader frequently speaking and moderating at conferences across the U.S. having a number of articles published by and about him.

Mr. Regan’s experience spans over 35 years within information technology, facilities infrastructure, business development, sales and acquisitions serving in various leadership positions while also providing advisory services and consulting for multiple startups. Mr. Regan served in leadership positions for 18 years with PWC, LLP as National Director of Data Center Services, National Director of Network Services, and Director of Infrastructure Delivery.

In these roles, Mr. Regan led technology and facilities infrastructure engineers and project managers through the execution of more than 26 million square feet of real estate projects spanning renovations, restacks, retrofits, consolidations, new builds and the merger of technology and facility infrastructure of Coopers & Lybrand and Price Waterhouse.

Mr. Regan achieved recognition by ComputerWorld for PWC as the number one Green IT organization worldwide in 2010 after the completion of a state-of-the-art Tier III LEED Gold-certified data center and driving other conservation practices organizationally. Mr. Regan is also an expert in BCDR having developed and executed a multi-tiered program creating PWC’s firm-wide Disaster Recovery program.

Mr. Regan has a bachelor’s degree in Accounting from St. Leo University where he graduated Magna Cum Laude. Mr. Regan holds several certifications in the infrastructure space having achieved Accredited Tier Specialist (ATS), Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP) credentials. He holds multiple certifications and various systems designations through Digital Equipment Corporation, Research Triangle Institute, and NCSU.

Jack McCarthy PE, DCEP – Principal and Studio Leader for HED, Jack specializes in mission critical design and brings over 25 years of electrical design. Registered in 20 states, his project experience ranges from 1,000SF server rooms to large-scale facilities of all tier levels and sizes exceeding 100,000 SF, with projects located throughout the U.S., as well as Canada, Mexico and the Middle East.

With more than 25 years of experience in mission critical construction and design, Lane Anderson has an extensive background in MEP projects and design and construction leadership. Having delivered over 3.5 million square feet of data center projects, Lane is well versed in designing for efficiency to pursue low PUE facilities and has strong expertise in building design and construction teams.

At QTS, he is responsible for Corporate Development, Construction, Design and Strategy, as well as Strategic Procurement.

Mike Higgins is responsible for driving INAP’s top line growth through customer acquisition and retention. Mr. Higgins leads INAP COLO’s sales, solutions engineering and client account teams including overseeing the customer experience from initial solution design through onboarding and post-sales account management. He is a seasoned executive with extensive business development, financial analysis, product management and leadership experience in the data center and telecommunications industries. Mr. Higgins most recently served as INAP’s senior vice president of marketing and customer service, where he led marketing activities, communications, public relations, branding and strategic planning. Previously, he held the position of senior vice president of business development, where he drove technical customer solutions and customer retention strategies. In addition, Mr. Higgins also served as INAP’s senior vice president of data center services and was responsible for colocation product management and data center design and engineering. In this role, he led the data center expansion strategy which doubled the size of INAP’s data center footprint across the nation. He joined INAP in January 2004 as vice president of financial planning and analysis. Prior to INAP, Mr. Higgins held numerous leadership roles in business operations, business development and finance over an 18-year career span at MCI, most recently serving as vice president of business operations. Mr. Higgins holds an MBA in Finance from the University of Bridgeport and a B.S. in Accounting from Villanova University.

With over 30 years of industry experience, Phill has played a pivotal role in shaping the future of data center infrastructure, network architecture, and cloud solutions worldwide.

As Chief Innovation Officer at Aligned Data Centers, Phill spearheads the identification of emerging trends and technologies, strategically leveraging them to shape Aligned's innovation roadmap. He's instrumental in cultivating a culture of creativity, driving the development of new products and partnerships that ensure the company remains both competitive and highly adaptable in today's rapidly evolving market.

Before joining Aligned, Phill served as Chief Innovation Officer at EdgeConneX, where he was instrumental in developing edge-based network data centers that underpin today’s digital content ecosystem. His career spans senior executive roles at Virtacore, Alcatel-Lucent, SAVVIS (now CenturyLink Technology Solutions), and MCI (now Verizon Digital Media Services), as well as Compaq/HPE.

Phill holds eight active technology patents and serves as a board member for organizations such as Netrality Data Centers, the Clean Energy Buyers Association (CEBA), and the Nomad Futurist Foundation. Known for his ability to distill complex technical concepts into actionable strategies, Phill is a sought-after speaker and advisor, recognized for his innovation and commitment to advancing sustainability in the digital infrastructure sector.

Phill’s unique journey—from his early roles in enterprise systems development and digital infrastructure to his leadership in global technology firms—reflects his passion for challenging the status quo and empowering the next generation of technology leaders.

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.

Don Mitchell is the Data Center Division Manager for Victaulic, aligning global business unit resources

with data center and IT industry needs for zero impact fire suppression, as well as innovation in cooling

solution designs.  Mitchell has over 15 years of experience in holistic data center solution development,

including hyper-scale, enterprise, and hybrid cloud solution environments.

Prior to joining Victaulic, Mitchell held leadership roles with Eaton, Schneider, APC, and served as an

officer in the naval nuclear submarine program.   He has been an active participant and contributor in

7x24 for over 10 years, as well as various other IT Industry organizations.   Don has earned degrees in

Mechanical Engineering, an MBA, and a MS in Information Technology, as well as a variety of industry

and military certifications.

Tom is a native Arizonan with over 30 years of experience as a contractor, data center developer,

and facility design and construction engineer. He is the Southwest Advanced Technology Core

Market Leader for DPR Construction, one of the country’s top technical builders and #3 ranked

data center and telecommunications contractor in the U.S. (ENR 2017).

He has built data centers for many leading wholesale, colocation, cloud and network services

developers, and internet/telcom, healthcare, financial and energy enterprise clients. He is also

active in sustainability, renewable energy, and advanced manufacturing projects.

Tom is a board member for the 7x24 Exchange Arizona chapter and received his Bachelor of

Science and Master of Science Degrees in Civil Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of

Technology (MIT). He is a licensed Civil Engineer and USGBC LEED® AP accredited. He has

been part of project teams receiving Uptime Institute, Green Grid, AIA, CMAA, NAIOP, ASLA,

AZRE Red and ASHE awards.

For more information about DPR Construction, please visit www.dpr.com.

Chris leads business and commercial efforts for ScaleMatrix and its various brands and business units. Focused on both strategic direction and overall execution, he credits his nearly two decades of experience across a broad spectrum of positions within the hosting space with helping him anticipate the constant changes which face this ever evolving industry. Prior to ScaleMatrix, Chris served as president of the Complex Drive Data Center Group for four years, and held a number of key leadership positions within the hosting and colocation industry.

Before joining Constructiv, Brian spent the lesser part of a decade working for a large energy management organization focused on enterprise, colocation and cloud infrastructure deployments. Brian has been involved with numerous large-scale projects, including the design and build of complex power and cooling systems for the largest hyperscale cloud providers in the world. Brian’s natural approach includes a deep understanding of the client’s business along with the physical and technical requirements for their data center operations.

John, a native New Yorker, spent 20 years in the military after completing high school. His career deployed him to numerous overseas assignments and locations where he developed force protection, operations, security, and resourcing experiences. After his military career, John conducted security, threat, risk, and vulnerability assessments and analysis for water, power, and business clients. John has been an instructor, trainer, and material developer for 20(+)years.

John was a lead instructor with the Department of Energy National Training Center in Vulnerability Assessments, Physical Security Systems, Performance Testing, Tabletop Exercise developments, and Active Shooter training. John is currently a Data Center Security Manager for the Los Lunas, New Mexico Facebook Data Center.

In his off time, John enjoys the outdoors.

As a Market Segment Director on Swanson Rink’s Mission Critical projects, Ryan Sims is responsible for managing the design process and coordinating with the Owner and construction team to help successfully deliver projects with no downtime to operations. Mr. Sims has a passion for the data center industry and helps work with clients to find solutions in challenging situations. He is a key team member for Swanson Rink, a Denver and Phoenix based consulting engineering firm providing design services across the US for mission critical companies.

Bhu is in charge of architecting Hybrid IT Solutions for

ViaWest’s strategic customers and prospects. Bhu has been

with Flexential for seven years and has over 19 years of

experience in IT infrastructure technology. He is responsible

for designing hundreds of unique and successful customer

implementations of cloud, Disaster Recovery, colocation,

customized managed infrastructures, custom networks, and

storage environments that have allowed Flexential customers to enjoy high

performance, highly available and efficient solutions. Prior to Flexential, Bhu was an

IT Manager at Zoll and Watermark Financial Partners. He has a Master’s of Science in

Business Administration and Computer Information Systems.

Kent Grove is the Vice-President of Mission Critical for TCM Corp, a Southland Industries company. He oversees all mission critical market sector activity for his company and helps to lead and integrate the national contracting strategies at Southland Industries to provide their clients with the highest level of consistency, repeatability, and reliability across their national infrastructure development programs. With over 30 years of experience, Kent began his career in aerospace project engineering and management, and throughout his career, Kent has managed the preconstruction and construction operations for projects in various industries including manufacturing, high-tech, mission critical, hospitality, and healthcare. Kent has successfully managed the preconstruction and construction phases of an extensive amount of data center projects for clients of all sizes from colo providers to large enterprise clients, and he has over 700MW of hands-on total deployment experience. Kent earned his MBA from Pepperdine University and his BS in Manufacturing and Industrial Engineering Technology from Western Illinois University.

Therese is based in the Company’s Denver office and leads EdgeCore’s day-to-day data center operations and customer-lifecycle activities, from lease execution and move in through expiration and move out, including space build out, on-going support, and incident management. Therese brings significant experience in designing strategy and leading execution and operation of end-to-end service-delivery and customer-support teams, systems, and processes. Therese joined EdgeCore following roles of progressive accountability at CoreSite Realty Corporation, most recently as Vice President supporting and leading the company’s activities around customer-lifecycle management for more than 1,200 customers and $500M+ in annualized revenue. Her responsibilities included a) on-boarding and capacity deployment, b) on-going support via self-service systems (portal management) and a team of Strategic Account Service Representatives, c) capacity and contract management, d) service-processes design and improvement, and e) incident engagement, remediation, and avoidance. Prior to CoreSite, Therese was a Dean’s Research Fellow at the University of Colorado Law School, where she authored and collaborated in authoring works related to cybersecurity, telecommunications, and technology. Therese holds a B.A. in International Business from The University of Texas at Austin and a J.D. from the University of Colorado School of Law.

Jeff is the Chief Information and Brand Officer for District Medical Group (DMG) in Phoenix where he is

responsible for Information Technology, Marketing and Facilities. He is an experienced Healthcare IT

Executive with over 20 years of experience leveraging the use of technology to meet the needs of

Healthcare Organizations in the Acute Care, Academic, Public and Ambulatory domains. He has a wealth

of experience in leading teams in the implementation and support of multiple vendor EMRs, Vendor

Neutral Archives, Medical Imaging Systems, Ancillary Clinical Systems, Perioperative Systems, Supply

Chain Management Systems, Solution Design and Disparate System Integration.

Jeff holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Ramapo College of New Jersey and is a

Certified Professional in Health Information Management Systems and a Certified Healthcare CIO. He

has been an active member of the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society for over 20

years where he currently serves on the board of the Arizona state chapter as President elect. Jeff is also

a member of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, also known as CHIME. Jeff

gives back to the community through his service on multiple Boards including Health Current, Consova,

Mach 7 Technologies and FC Batavia.

Mark Hurley is a Data Center Solution Architect at Schneider Electric, responsible for bringing together the full suite of Schneider Electric products and services to provide right-sized, cost-effective, risk-based, innovative data center solutions for our customers. Mark has spent 30 years in the commercial real estate industry and has been involved in the MEP design, start-up, commissioning and operation of commercial office buildings and enterprise data centers. Prior to joining Schneider Electric, Mark was the SVP/Engineering Services Executive at a large financial institution, responsible for Engineering and Energy Services delivered to a 120 million square foot real estate portfolio.

Dr. Jess Shoop leads the Operations and Digital Transformation (ODT) team within the

University Technology Office (UTO) at ASU. In her role within UTO Jess aligns with fellow UTO

senior executive leadership and executive leadership across ASU to help advance the mission

of the university. The ODT portfolio spans across many UTO departments to include all Cloud

and Advanced Network Engineering Services (CANES), Strategic Implementation Office (SIO),

Experience Center and Learning Space Services (ECLS), IT Service Transformation (IST),

Engagement and Consulting Services (ECS), and the Strategic Finance and Business Office

(SFBO). Through a transparent and collaborative approach to servant leadership, Jess works

with her team to advance the mission of the University. The ODT team provides services that

include all network, server, storage, data center, public and private cloud services, identity and

access management, enterprise architecture, enterprise systems, project and portfolio

management, experience center (help center), desk-side services, customer engagement teams,

training and event services, instructional design, classroom support, new construction design,

all budget and HR within UTO, and UTO service management systems.

Prior to joining ASU, Jess has a proven track record as a senior information technology

executive with strong global and regional experiences within multiple sectors like

finance/insurance, consulting, and education/healthcare. A recognized technology executive

known for designing and enabling the strategic vision to achieve operational goals, Jess offers

a unique blend of executive acumen, global leadership, and technology solution development

contributing to a successful record of accomplishment through operational improvements and

increased efficiency. Jess is an executive that is passionate about transformational change,

agile methods, design implementation and execution. Jess achieves her operational successes

with key enablers within technology adoption, design innovation, design modeling and data

science experience, which shape and guide the implementation of strategic initiatives. Working

in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors, Jess provides a unique lens to innovation and

change.

Jess is also a recognized scholar and research fellow that specializes in design thinking,

quantitative methods, structural equation modeling, knowledge structures, credible leadership

and leadership effectiveness. https://weatherhead.case.edu/departments/design-and-

innovation/fellows

Josh Williams heads the sales engineering team at INAP, delivering application-driven, custom infrastructure and network solutions for clients that balance performance and efficiency. Known for getting in the trenches with all levels of client IT organizations, Williams has more than 16 years of experience architecting complex solutions in the enterprise. His deep IT management and consulting background, paired with INAP’s robust cloud, colocation and network portfolio, generate performant solutions tailored to the unique goals of clients. Williams holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Computer Information Systems from Saint Ambrose University and multiple data center certifications from major technology providers such as VMware, Cisco, and EMC.

Lori Gary was chosen to lead the city of Goodyear’s economic development team in September 2018. She has more than 30 years of economic development experience and holds the professional designation of Certified Economic Developer (CEcD) with the International Economic Development Council (IEDC).

Prior to Goodyear, Lori spent six years with the city of Mesa’s Office of Economic Development. As part of the Mesa team, Lori was responsible for leading redevelopment efforts in Mesa's Fiesta District and business attraction efforts in the medtech / medical devices and technology industry sector.

Lori also led a regional economic development organization and managed two municipal economic development departments. Her economic development experience spans three states – Illinois, Tennessee, and Arizona – where she designed and implemented successful economic development programs.

Lori holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Western Michigan University and performed her graduate work at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She is a past president of Arizona Association for Economic Development (AAED), the statewide economic development professional association with over 400 members, and served in various board roles since 1998.

Bryan Marsh is our Managing Director of North America and is responsible for sourcing, analyzing, structuring, financing and executing acquisition, expansion and leasing activities on behalf of the company. With his nearly 40 years of real estate experience, he has been directly involved in approximately $7 billion in commercial real estate acquisitions, dispositions, development, financings and asset management.

Prior to StratCap Data Centers, Bryan was a Vice President at Digital Realty where he served as the company’s Portfolio Manager for its U.S. Central region. In this capacity, he had overall responsibility for the strategic planning, acquisitions, dispositions, development, operation, leasing and financial performance of a portfolio of data centers, internet gateways and powered base buildings valued in excess of $5 billion. His portfolio ranged in size from 40 to 55 buildings and from 5.8 million to 8.1 million square feet with annual operating revenues ranging from $400 million to $600 million.

Prior to joining Digital Realty, Bryan was a Senior Vice President and Partner at Equastone, a private equity firm, where he was involved in the acquisition and asset management of a 4.3 million square foot office portfolio in Dallas valued at over $600 million. At that time, Equastone was the city’s 3rd largest office landlord with 21 buildings spread across most of the city’s major submarkets.

He also was formerly a Vice President with RREEF, a pension fund advisor and investment management firm, where he led an office that managed over 18 million square feet of office and industrial space in Texas and Oklahoma. Bryan personally oversaw a roughly 9 million square foot portfolio valued at approximately $500 million. Bryan has closed real estate transactions in over 250 cities and 15 states during his career. He is a past Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Richardson Chamber of Commerce, and he also served on the Board of Directors of Tech Titans which is the largest technology trade association in North Texas. He has been recognized for each of the past 5 years as a member of the Dallas 500 which is a list of the most powerful and influential business leaders in the DFW metro area according to D CEO Magazine. He graduated from the University of North Texas with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree with a double major in finance and real estate.

Jason has worked as an Owner and Contractor in the data center design, construction, and commissioning industry for over 19 years. He serves as Director of New Development for Vantage. Jason and his team are focused on data center development in new markets, expansion of data centers in existing markets, and data center evaluations associated with mergers and acquisitions.

Brad Smidt is the Senior Vice President of Business Development for GPEC. He manages the team that works with companies considering large industrial, office and data center projects in the Phoenix area. During his time at GPEC, Brad has helped more than 150 companies expand or relocate to the Greater Phoenix area.

Prior to GPEC, Brad worked in economic development in both the cities of Mesa and Chandler. Brad is a native Arizonan who grew up in Greater Phoenix. His local ties have contributed to his vast knowledge of the area and familiarity with the unique assets of its workforce. In 2008, Brad received the Economic Developer of the Year award from the Arizona Association of Economic Development.

Brad is an active member of the Fiesta Bowl Committee, and serves on the University of Arizona Eller MBA Industry Advisory Board. Brad earned a bachelor’s degree in regional development from the University of Arizona. He holds a Certified Economic Developer Certification from the International Economic Development Council.

Mr. Busch is the CEO of BigData Southwest & Chairman of Az4Solar.Org. Mr. Busch has over 25 years experience in the Global Semiconductor Industry. For the last decade, Mr. Busch has focused on Economic Development in the Energy and Data Center Industries. Mr. Busch currently serves on the Board of AzSTEM & Arizona Energy Consortium.