White Paper: Published in Disaster Recovery Journal

"Outsourcing Incident-Response Communications to Improve Operational Resilience."

Explore how a managed services provider's expertise and assets can be leveraged as a cost-effective, viable means to augmenting current business continuity and disaster recovery practices.

Hurricane Gustav: A Managed Services Case Study

"One day without communications can set you back 100 years in a response and recovery effort.

CommsFirst deployed to Grand Isle by helicopter within hours of Hurricane Gustav moving out of the area. The ability to have communications within hours of a major disaster was a once in a million event; It's never been done before."

- Aubrey Chaisson, Grand Isle Fire Chief and Gustav Incident Commander

Learn more in this Managed Services Case Study

Download White Paper for Assuring Interoperability

How will you assure interoperability when infrastructure is toppled by a manmade or natural incident?

Explore new methodologies in this white paper, "Looking Beyond Infrastructure for Assuring Interoperability."

Leadership

Management Team

Steve Fox: Operations and Logistics
Joe Fiorentino: Sales and Marketing
John Cayanne: Director of Training
Michael Reagan: Chief Financial Officer

Board of Directors

Alan Silverman    
Stephen McGowan
Michael Chandler


Steve Fox

OPERATIONS AND LOGISTICS

Steve Fox is a graduate of West Virginia State University and the Armed Forces Staff College of Norfolk, Virginia (Joint Command, Control, and Communication Staff and Operations). He attended the U.S. Army Europe Combat Support Training Center and the U.S. Army Signal Schools at Fort Gordon, Georgia and Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.

He has served as CEO of Operations Security International, LLC (OSI), providing tactical and technical support for first responders with staff including veteran law enforcement, military, government, and professional personnel. The mission of OSI was to provide first responders with the best solutions available for information sharing, collaboration, and intelligence.

He has 35 years of information technology experience, including command, control, communications, and intelligence. During the last ten years of his military career, he was the senior executive officer of a major U.S. Army command. He directly supervised and managed all planning, project implementation, and deployments in support of major mobile command, control, communication, and intelligence systems with mobile commands involving 1,600 personnel.

Back to top

Joe Fiorentino

Sales, Marketing and Services

With over 30 years of experience, Joe heads up global Sales, Marketing and Service operations for Commsfirst.  Joe oversees all field sales and channel activities, strategic partnering relationships, marketing programs and service delivery. Joe’s background is in leading early stage start-ups through rapid growth and development stages. Joe brings a commercial focus to this effort having scaled software and service companies in the enterprise compliance space and enterprise software markets.

Prior to Commsfirst, Joe has held executive leadership positions in emerging companies resulting in four successful acquisitions and two initial public offerings. Joe has played a leadership role as the CEO or VP of Sales in companies such as FTP Software, American Internet, Idiom Technologies, Eprise and Ecora. This proven track record of driving rapid revenue growth, building teams and launching successful products and service offerings is a great addition to the management team.

Back to top

John Cayanne

Director of Training

For over 18 years, John Cayanne has provided training for military special operations groups, and federal, state, and municipal law enforcement agencies in the United States and abroad. He has designed base defense plans for military installations, and has developed courses for numerous tactical training companies. Teaching others how to operate in high-threat tactical environments is his primary expertise.

John has extensive experience as a law enforcement officer and veteran Marine. He is a federally certified Terrorism/WMD Instructor, SWAT Team Leader, firearms and tactics instructor, and Scout Sniper.

Prior to CommsFirst, he was a lead instructor for the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Apprehension Strike Team (FAST) and California Narcotics Officers Association High Risk Entry Search Warrant Class (CNOA Region 1). He also teaches POST-certified classes in weapons violations and criminal law for the Alameda County Sheriff's Academy and Las Positas College in Northern California.

Back to top

Michael Reagan

Chief Financial Officer

Michael, a CPA with over 25 years’ experience, holds an MBA from Syracuse University, an M.S. in national resource strategy from National Defense University and a B.S. in business administration from the University of Arkansas. Prior to assisting CommsFirst (while in his concurrent role as CFO for The Ginn Group – a CommsFirst partner), Mike built his expertise in military finance and operations most recently as a manager at KPMG LLP where he advised the Army Budget Office on IT spending and process improvements. As deputy director of resource management at the U.S. Army Forces Command in Ft. McPherson, Ga., Mike managed an annual operating budget over $15 billion supporting the global war on terrorism.

His prior experience includes DoD assignments with increasing responsibility in finance policy, including as CFO/Commander for the 13th Finance Group at Fort Hood; assistant to the director of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service; CFO/Commander for the 9th Finance Battalion and 10th Finance Support Unit in Fort Lewis, Wash. and Vicenza, Italy; assignments at U.S. Army Headquarters; and as a senior accounting instructor at the Army Finance School.

Back to top

Alan Silverman    


He has been a managing, founding or early stage investor in companies both public and private that have been  involved in internet service providers, internet and chip technology, movie theatres, Hispanic TV broadcasting (Telemundo), HDTV direct broadcast satellite broadcasting to venues,  international call center outsourcing (TTEC, NASDAQ), Hispanic Retail Grocery and biotechnology. His investments also include companies that service the rapidly growing Hispanic marketplace in the United States. He is, or has been a director of numerous corporations; public, private and charitable.

He is a present director of: LRN, Bodega Latina, Caza Financial, Inc., Director and President of CommsFirst, Inc.

He is a past director of The American Cancer Society, The Infant Welfare Society of Chicago and a past executive director of the National Association of Theatre Owners and the  Board of The Lymphoma Research Foundation. He is on the Board of Trustees at The Naval Postgraduate School Foundation  

Alan Silverman, graduated from the University of Southern California

Back to top

Stephen McGowan

As the former chief financial officer and executive vice president of corporate resources for Sun Microsystems, Inc., Mr. McGowan had management responsibilities for Sun's finance, legal, information technologies, and global business services functions. He reported to Sun's chairman and CEO.

McGowan was a 14-year Sun veteran and has more than 30 years of finance leadership in the computer industry. He served as vice president of finance, planning and administration for Sun's Global Sales Operations organization. In this position, McGowan was responsible for the fiduciary and planning functions for the Global Sales Operations organization worldwide, managing finance, IT, workplace resources, leasing, and Sun's demand/supply functions.

Prior to joining Sun, he held senior finance and operational positions during a 17-year career at Digital Equipment Corporation working in both Canada and the U.S.

McGowan holds a B.S. in finance from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts and an M.B.A. from Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Institute of Management Accountants and is a Certified Management Accountant.

Back to top

Michael Chandler

As former president of General Dynamics Information Technology, Mr. Chandler led a diverse organization of 16,000 professionals that provided systems integration, information technology, systems engineering and professional services to customers in the defense, intelligence, homeland security, federal civil and commercial sectors.

Prior to this assignment, he served as president of General Dynamics Network Systems and before that as president of General Dynamics Worldwide Telecommunications Systems when GD acquired GTE’s Government Systems Corporation where he had been VP and general manager.

Before joining GTE in 1985, Mr. Chandler served 20 years in the United States Navy, retiring with the rank of commander. He holds a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Auburn University and a Master of Science in management from the Naval Postgraduate School. He is also a graduate of the Stanford University Executive Program.

He currently serves on the boards of two other private companies and is an executive officer on the board of trustees of the Naval Postgraduate School Foundation.

Back to top