Smart Cities – Pathway to the Possible Webinar

Robert Branson, President, MMTC

Robert E. Branson. Esq. is the President and CEO of the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC), a non-partisan, national nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and preserving equal opportunity and civil rights in the mass media, telecom and broadband industries, and closing the digital divide. 

Prior to joining MMTC, Branson served as Of Counsel at Empire Consulting Group a strategic business and public policy firm serving leading technology, wireless, broadcast and other industry clients. He brings his unique perspective as someone who has worked inside and outside government and who understands the challenges ahead in the diverse world we are creating in corporate America.   

In his corporate career, most recently, he was an Associate General Counsel with Verizon Communications.  In that position, hehad various responsibilities, including the 5G rollout in the Washington, DC area, privacy regulations, and relationship building with leaders in the federal and state governments.  He also coordinated with trade associations and internally with other legal, public policy and business groups.

He has been the General Counsel of the Association of Local Television Stations, Chief Legal Counsel of Post-Newsweek Stations and an Assistant General Counsel at the National Association of Broadcasters. He also has worked at the Federal Communications Commission as a Senior Legal Advisor to a Commissioner.

Branson has served as President of the Federal Communications Bar Association where he has gotten to know many of the leaders at the FCC, NTIA, FTC and other federal agencies.  He is a two-time recipient of the FCBA Distinguished Service Award.  He has championed diversity and inclusion in the Bar and has lead several efforts to expand the pipeline my mentoring and working to assist the careers of numerous people in the industry and government.  In part based on these efforts, he has been awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from MMTC.  

He has served on the Board of Trustees at Simmons University in Boston and was named an Honorary Trustee after his service.  He was a member of the Boards of the Ridley Scholarship Fund at the University of Virginia and the Hayride to Help Others in Washington, DC.

Branson received his law degree from Harvard University and his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia.

Dr. Marva Johnson, GVP, State Government Affairs, Charter Communications

Marva Johnson is the Group Vice President, State Government Affairs, for Charter Communications South Region.

In this role, Marva oversees state government affairs, regulatory, local franchising, state legislative matters, and implementing strategies for government and community initiatives for the nine Charter states across the Southern United States. Marva joined Charter Communications in 2016 with a focus on state Government Relations throughout the Southeast including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.

Prior to Charter, Johnson was Corporate Vice President, Government and Industry Affairs with Bright House Networks. In 2006, she joined the company as a key leader that brought the company’s competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) forward from concept to operational reality. Johnson’s tenure in the technology-driven industries includes prior service in numerous legal, regulatory and policy roles. Before joining the Bright House Networks team, Johnson worked at Supra Telecommunications (a subsidiary of FDN Communications) where she was General Counsel, and previously served as Vice President and Senior Counsel for KMC Telecommunications, where she oversaw KMC’s regulatory, legislative and industry relations at both the state and federal levels. Johnson has also held auditing, marketing, and product development positions with Arthur Andersen, BellSouth, and MCI.

Currently, Johnson serves as the vice chair of the Florida State Board of Education, on the Enterprise Florida board, and as the Immediate Past Chair for the Global Board of Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT). She served as a member of Florida’s Constitution Revision Commission, the Board of Directors of the Florida Virtual Schools of Florida, and the Advisory Board for Rollins College’s Crummer Center for Leadership Development.

Throughout her career, Johnson has been passionate about creating educational opportunities that enable success for every child. As a result, she received the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council’s Champion for Digital Equality Award in recognition of her extraordinary leadership and advocacy in helping bridge the digital divide in education for low-income families. She has received many other accolades, including being named one of Cablefax: The Magazine’s “MSO Executive to Watch” and one of the “Top Women in Tech.” Johnson has been recognized numerous times as a member of Cablefax’s Most Influential Minorities and the Most Powerful Women in Cable.

Johnson received her J.D. from the Georgia State University College of Law, a Master of Business Administration from Emory University’s Goizuetta Business School, and Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Georgetown University. She is admitted to practice law in Georgia.

She resides in Winter Garden, Florida with her husband and two children.

Satya Parimi, GVP, Enterprise Data Products & Smart Cities, Spectrum Enterprise

Satya Parimi is Group Vice President of Enterprise Products & Smart Cities for Spectrum Enterprise, a part of Charter Communications, Inc. In his role, Mr. Parimi is responsible for the full lifecycle management of all Enterprise products and leads the Smart City initiative across the company.

He previously held leadership roles in product management, product development and corporate strategy for Time Warner Cable, as part of the initial team that built the Business Services division. Prior to joining Time Warner Cable, Mr. Parimi help multiple roles of increasing responsibilities at a number of technology start-up companies in the telecommunication industry.

Mr. Parimi is a graduate of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, where he received his Master’s degree in electrical engineering. He received his MBA from the University of Massachusetts, and has received executive leadership certification from the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Patti Zullo, Senior Director, Smart City Solutions, Spectrum Enterprise

Patti Zullo is Senior Director, Smart City Solutions for Spectrum, a part of Charter Communications Inc. Ms. Zullo is responsible for defining and executing the Spectrum Smart City go-to-market strategy and representing the company with industry groups and events to raise awareness of the Spectrum Smart City solutions.

Ms. Zullo has over 20 years of enterprise leadership experience in the areas of IOT/analytics, cloud, Internet security and mobile communications. Most recently, she was the Sales Leader for Smart Cities at AT&T, and came to AT&T through the General Electric – AT&T partnership for Smart Cities. Prior to the AT&T, Ms. Zullo was Sales Director for Smart Cities at General Electric and launched the GE Smart Cities initiatives. She was responsible for GE’s largest Smart City implementation at the city of San Diego.

Ms. Zullo has also held leadership positions at IBM, McAfee and Nokia. Her extensive leadership experience focuses on launching new technologies into new markets and driving adoption with Public Sector and Enterprise clients. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Connecticut.

Lili Gangas, Chief Technology Community Officer, Kapor Center

Lili Gangas is the Chief Technology Community Officer at the Kapor Center working to create new and more inclusive tech innovation ecosystems regionally & nationally. Her work is centered at the intersection of racial justice,  technology, and action driven partnerships to tackle pressing social and economic inequities of underrepresented communities.  Her areas of focus and interest include tech advocacy themes such as closing the Digital Divide, Future of Work(ers), Responsible Technology, and Ecosystem Building as they relate to new models with cross sector partners. Lili believes that it is critical that we help prepare and upskill communities of color for the future and encourage going beyond being consumers to also being creators and owners. She was a New America CA fellow focused on Tech for Good, was recognized as SF Business Times Most Influential Women in Business and SF Business Times 40 Under 40, and is an MBA lecturer at Mills College.  Lili was recently a featured Salesforce Dreamforce and TEDxOakland speaker.    

Before coming to the Kapor Center, Lili was an Associate Principal at Accenture Technology Lab’s Open Innovation team, based out of Silicon Valley,focused on partnerships and programming to connect startups to Fortune 500 clients. She was also a founding member of the Innovation Services team at Booz Allen specializing in crowdsourcing, prize challenges, and open data solutions at the federal level. Before that, Lili could be found in the lab working on software and hardware solutions for the aerospace industry as a Senior Multi-Disciplined Software Engineer at Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems. She is an advisor to tech focused nonprofits such as AI-4-All.org as well as community investing organizations such as The Unity Council and Pacific Community Ventures.  Lili holds an MBA from New York University Stern School of Business, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California.  

Dr. Chad Womack, Senior Director, STEM Initiatives & HBCU Innovation, UNCF

Dr. Chad Womack currently serves as the Senior Director of National STEM Programs and Initiatives at the UNCF. At the UNCF, Dr. Womack has raised over $70M to support a portfolio of STEM programs that include the Annual HBCU Tech Innovation Summit, HBCU CS Academy, HBCU Center for Excellence in Computing and Computer Science and the Ernest E. Just Life Science Initiative. In addition, Dr. Womack is the Founding Director of the UNCF Fund II Foundation STEM Scholars Program – a $50M and 10-year commitment to support 500 academically talented African American high school students pursuing STEM as majors in college and careers in the tech-industry. Dr. Womack also manages several partnerships and programs in collaboration with several Silicon Valley tech-companies including Google, Facebook and Genentech. 

Prior to joining the UNCF, Dr. Womack, Dr. Womack led the White House-based HBCU Startup and Innovation Initiative, which resulted in the launch of the HBCU Innovation, Commercialization and Entrepreneurship initiative. In addition, Dr. Womack has previously served as a member of the U.S. Department of Commerce, Economic Development Agency (EDA) National Advisory Council for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE), and the DC Mayor’s Innovation and Technology Inclusion Council (ITIC). More recently, Dr. Womack co-founded CS4Philly – a Philadelphia-based nonprofit organization dedicated to equity and access to high quality computer science education for K12 youth in the City of Philadelphia; and Black Tech Ventures (BTV) as a nonprofit initiative committed to supporting entrepreneurial leadership among African American student and faculty innovators at HBCUs and STEM professionals. 

Dr. Womack completed several postdoctoral research fellowships at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Vaccine Research Center (VRC) and at the Harvard AIDS Institute and the Harvard School of Public Health in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases. Dr. Womack earned his Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from a joint graduate program with the Morehouse School of Medicine and the Harvard School of Public Health; and is a proud graduate of Morehouse College where he earned his B.S. degree in Biology with minors in Chemistry and Applied Physics