The Lightstream Difference

As an avid fly fisherman, Jim knows that the sport can push you to your max and reward you in big ways—taking you to incredible places that you wouldn’t normally go to. Jim brought that same passion to the co-founding of Lightstream with a vision to provide companies more flexibility and choice than carriers were able to offer individually. 

 Jim has been developing telecommunications solutions for more than 20 years. He has extensive experience in management and sales, developing strategic enterprise solutions for small to large companies. Jim’s focus has always been on developing lasting relationships while providing the best solutions with unmatched customer service. 

Rod is a big fan of concerts. He truly enjoys the creative possibilities that can be realized when a group of talented people get together and decide to do something great.  

Co-founding Lightstream twenty years ago was like that, and the company culture still reflects it today.  Rod has worked in sales and engineering positions with some of the largest names in telecommunications and has an engineering background that includes design, implementation, and deployment of core voice and data backbones. His love for business led him to a Masters degree in Business Administration and fueled a passion to create a world-class tech company.

Kurt is a bit of a foodie. He appreciates precise ingredients, expert preparation, and nuanced know-how that go into making great food. As co-founder and VP of Engineering at Lightstream, Kurt approaches architecture and design similarly – bringing together the right ingredients and expertise to deliver solutions that just work as expected and needed.

Kurt’s areas of expertise include internetwork architecture and design in both enterprise and service-provider worlds, security, network operations, data engineering and troubleshooting, as well as business technology development and advisement. His experience includes designing and managing networks for Fortune 500 organizations and designing backbone internetworks for regional ISPs.

Sharon loves to travel, especially taking cruises around the world. She has been cruising around the telecommunications industry in Utah for 30 years, managing most of the large and complex fiber projects in the state during her twenty years at Qwest where she held positions in engineering, sales support, and support management. She is also a co-founder at Lightstream.  

Sharon has implemented many large long-distance networks with advanced features for major call centers. She has worked closely with all major carriers including all the independent LECs. Sharon has extensive experience in project management of voice and data, long distance and local services. 

Jeff spends a lot of time on airplanes. That’s why we say his head is in the clouds! He has been providing leadership and strategy to cloud, managed services and telecommunications providers for more than 15 years.

Before joining Lightstream, Jeff led the sales and engineering organization for EarthLink’s Cloud and Managed Services Division. Prior to this he held strategy, sales engineering and network engineering leadership roles at XO Communications and Concentric. Jeff also has extensive experience designing and implementing infrastructure, application and security convergence solutions for Fortune 500 companies throughout the world.

Sjon is a big soccer fan. If he could automate parts of the game, he probably would but for now he brings that passion to helping develop technology and business analytics solutions at Lightstream. 

Sjon has been implementing business automation solutions for more than 15 years. He developed custom software solutions for 1-800CONTACTS, including automated prescription verification systems, shipping and receiving systems as well as their first e-commerce solution that captured more than 50% of their sales within 2 years. He was also a VP of IT at Progrexion during the company’s explosive 40% year of growth. 

Joe is an avid learner and craves knowledge at large, travelling globally, immersing himself in culture, and exploring new depths in engineering solutions. This has given him the unique ability to be a creative builder and execute at-scale for programmatic growth. Vadakkan  is recognized as a global industry leader and expert in the security products and cloud segment with over 20  years of experience building business units and guiding organizations from fortune 100,  mid-market & SMB organizations, to DoD/Federal, startups and private equity firms globally.

At Lightstream, Joe is an EVP, Engineering & Sales. He leads corporate-wide strategy for network, cloud and security engineering, partner strategy, services and sales organization to solve client needs with transformative solutions.