EMC - 2007<>2013

When I made up my mind about changing from a comfortable job at MCI (who later became Verizon Business, and later FirstSource) to whatever was out there, my driver was the CCNA course and lack of experience in networking. I had been reading about it for a while now and was about to take the certification exam without actual hands-on experience.

I got a call from a recruiter and coordinated the interview for a Wednesday. It went well, since I got a call from the recruiter on Thursday and headed towards Emerging Markets Communications (EMC) on Friday, around midday. I had a meeting with Carlos Bottcher, who was leading the Ops and Engineering team and conducted the interview. He looked at my resume, we talked about MCI/Verizon/FirstSource and what I was doing, and why I wanted to change jobs. I remember taking a pause, and bluntly saying “I just want to break stuff”. I was about to complete the certification exam, but I never had the opportunity to practice in a real work environment. He stuck to the first part and asked me again, do you want to break stuff? I insisted. He replied, you are in the right place. We talked about the compensation package and 15 days later, my journey began. I'm grateful for the opportunity.

I was nervous since I literally knew nothing about satellite communications, and all I knew on IP, was just theory and lab practice, and I was also super-confident that I'd warned everyone that I wanted to break stuff, so they knew what was coming.

Damian Broy, was leading the provisioning department and there were 3 of us. Dario Infurna, Damian Orsilli and myself. Our first job consisted in completing the satellite migration of about 30 UNHCR from an alternative provider on to EMC. We had a collective spreadsheet that contained all the IPs, the voice prefixes and used active working sites to generate the templates, that later on were to be installed “hands-on” by field engineers, somewhere in Africa. This was rocket-science to me. A United Nations agency was using a phone over a satellite link to contact a different UN office that was located in a different country in Africa, and I was part of making it happen. To me it looked like magic. I was from the physical world. There is a cable, there are copper wires inside, there are 2 computers at the end of the cable and these talk to each other, but now they were talking over the air, off to a satellite in the sky (that you can’t see), and then back to earth into a different country, that you can't see either. Looking back, I now realize that this part of my life was the sponge time. I was constantly absorbing knowledge, theory, practice, countries, cities, procedures, processes and comprehending what it looked like magic at first.

After 4 months of IP provisioning, Federico Rossi asked Damian Orsili and myself to meet him in a private room where he offered us both a trip to NY and Washington to act as field engineers for the African Union. Damial Orsilli, spoke first, and without hesitation, he suggested that I was the right candidate for the trip and opted out of it immediately. I took the trip and this single event ignited my traveling spirit and my customer-facing passion. Damian and I joined EMC almost at the same time, worked at the same position, on the very same projects, and he had far more technical background and experience than myself, so this humble selfless gesture generated a profound admiration and a long lasting friendship.

The trip itself contained lots of challenges and working experiences that helped me for what came immediately after. Once I was back, Federico Rossi again offered me the 3-month training window in Raisting, Germany that was the key to help me absorb and understand how the satellite world worked. Instead of reading about it, I was able to witness, see, touch and better understand how the magic worked.

Special thanks to Luis Portatadino and wife, for being my family for those 3 months. I’ve learned from him to be consistent, dedicated, tidy, meticulous and always use the right amount of spiciness. His work ethic was marvelous, investing numerous hours at the teleport during full weeks making it run smoothly and at full speed during the biggest growth of the company. He was reluctant at first, because I was from the IP world, and not from the RF one, but my perseverance and hunger for knowledge (as well as german pork and beer) made him change his mind and eventually shared most of his teleport tricks.

Mariano Boragno was in Raisting at that time, and managed to squeeze the Teleport transition protocol in just 4 days before heading off to the UK, to supervise a different teleport station where EMC hosted services. Mariano Boragno and Marcos Villegas were part of the Satellite Provisioning team in Buenos Aires, and they both invested countless hours showing me theory, math and how Satellite technology works. Mariano was persistent, patient and encouraging for me to keep absorbing… “magic”. I’m forever grateful.

While in Germany, I was privileged to meet Peter and Melanie Roth who are by far, the warmest Germans I’ve ever come across. They’ve offered not only technical knowledge on antennas and satellite experience, but also their home and hearts. I take from Peter the “german approach” of how to do things right. Bob Scully was also there, and he used to hold the most amazing teleport tours, fully loaded with years of experience and wisdom, sharing stories from how it all started back in the good old days when he was in Vietnam. Bob was king at storytelling, and I wish I could someday be as good as him.

Dario Dotti spent some time while I was in Raisting too, and he later became my manager for some time when we were both back in Buenos Aires. He taught me to keep an open view on every single situation. Always 2 steps ahead of what was going to happen and trying to understand the reason behind.

While in Raisting, Federico Fawzi asked me to hand-carry a couple of routers to London and test these at Equinix data-center. It was a 3 day trip and I managed to get my soon-to-be wife to travel along and enjoy the town while I was working. I’m grateful for the opportunity.

Once I was back in Argentina, the IP/RF provisioning team had grown into a group of 10, and I was the only one with both IP and RF know-how. Dario Dotti was managing the group and I became supervisor of the team while shuffling the workload, shifts, rotation scenarios, etc. This was my first leadership experience and I’m grateful for the opportunity Dario gave me, and also to the team I managed, since they’ve supported my learning curve first-hand. The supervisor role then transformed into the Service Delivery Manager during the upcoming years, adding multiple trips to Africa, Germany, UAE and the US. The constant learning and challenge intensity remained intact for over 5 years and my sponge brain was shaping into a solid experienced professional.

Having briefed part of my journey from the initial years, I would now like to mention other key individuals that widen up my brain and contributed to my foundations:

Guillermo Miravalles, a wonderful curious individual who wouldn’t take no for an answer and get things done with his own two hands, just making sure his theory worked. Most of the amazing challenges we had at EMC, had his signature stamp right from the kick-off. He is fun to work with, relentless and 

Lucas Gallito, Ezequiel Salerno, Jose Gayoso and Ricardo Ayala, were the leading Project Managers from every single deployment we made, taught me order, discipline and that visibility matters. They were all very competitive, fun to work with, collaborative and comprehensive to work with challenges on the ground.

I want to thank Gustavo Mircoli as well as Alejandro Alegri who were essential to the fast growth of EMC when it comes to logistics and distribution. I learnt from him that there is always another way to get from A to B, you just need to keep looking and trying.

Mariano Spini was a silent leader who clearly understood people dynamics better than anyone else in the room. I wish I have shared more time with him when I was younger, now that I’m older.

Miriam Cunningham (yes, she was at MCI at first) later joined the company and she taught about HR. Her strong and old-school approach was confronting, mixed with spiced behaviour that strive nothing more than personal growth. She supported my transformation into leadership, and provided key tools I currently use.

Marcelo Garcia Tunon spent countless hours dedicated to training, teaching and sharing knowledge with stories and years of experience. I take from him the dedication, effort and selfless kindness to share every bit of information he had in his brain, to make you a better individual.

Jose Luis Beltramone, who was a key supporter of my performance while I was working at UNICEF HQ in NY during the migration deployment. His vote of confidence made it easier to cope with the challenge, being remote for over 1 month.

Jeff Kietzman, who back then was managing the NOC, and although we didn't have direct interaction, I take from him to put in the hours and the hard work but mostly, he opened the wonderful doors of WHISKEY and spirits while he was deployed in UAE, and I was just visiting while providing training on the road.

Arturo Perez was head of the NOC at that time, and his quality and control ethic made the entire Service Delivery team work harder and better and consequently, securing in return a better end-customer service. I also thank the entire NOC colleagues that used Arturo’s thrive for excellence, and became prime professionals back then.

The entire pre-sales engineering team, including Christian Mejias, Pablo Francisco Diaz, Pablo German Diaz, Martin Mazzoni and others, who were directly responsible to make sure the magic worked, as remote as possible. The thought about the field engineer tool-box, the solution components, the possible miscellaneous that could be purchased locally, and also handle the teleport supply, one single solution at the time. I take from them their comradeship and team-spirit, always supporting what’s about to be deployed.

I can't talk about pre-sales without mentioning the one and only, Abel Avellan. He was EMC's CEO. His life-story is amazing and his drive to put in practice his ideas is just mind-blowing. I got the chance to spent few moments during this 6 year ride, but they stick to my memory. He knew what he was talking about, he always had a different way to solve the issue, he collaborated and re-designed projects to make ends meet. I take from him the passionate spirit and perseverance.

Special thanks to Andrea Estevez, who was leading the project managers and continuously pushing for early deliveries and meeting and exceeding profitable targets. We systematically  confronted over resources, extra hours, processes and how to get it done. I’m forever grateful for her integrity, down to earth ethic as well as constant strive for optimization.

Payam Herischi, who had an aggressive leadership style that bumped heads with pretty much everyone in the company, but personally, he made the most interesting question back in 2012, on a sunny summer day on a green field while in Raisting, Germany. He said “Where do you see yourself in 3-5 years?” I didn’t know what I was going to eat for lunch that day, and I was used to living my life that way, every single day. He gave me perspective at a very young age, and I’m grateful for that. Later on it was Payam who helped me take the decision to depart EMC, which felt uncertain at the time, but was by far the best decision at that time.

I wanted to also thank the teams I lead and trained along the way. Everyone had a different impact on my behavior. Every challenge, every difficult scenario is now part of what I am today, so I’m especially grateful to the initial Parana Team, with Veronica Garcia Chevraz, Diego Dupleich, Alejandro Braun and Maximiliano Castrogiovanni, along with Mark Ramirez (yes, same as in MCI), Facundo Piedra, Adrian Klinger, and Diego Fornes, Alejandro Arcushin, Ovais Tahir, Umesh Pathak, James Arroyo and Phillip Santos, just to name a few.

I also remember the African teams with Samuel Kibunyi Ruguru, Tom Chumo, Wilson Onyuka, Alex Ngatia, Eric Bossou and Steve Mbuvi just to mention a few, spreading joy and enthusiasm, as well as hard work under critical circumstances, who always showed up and represented the company in the front line. Sergei Soloviev as well as Vitaly Mofa were key to the eastern Europe and Asian activities, both with superior work ethic as well as uncompromised will to get the job done. Fernando Aguedo was my partner in crime when running training sessions in Raisting, and I’ve learnt too much from his extensive experience.

I’m grateful to all of the customers I came across, who were always seeking premium service for every dollar spent. I welcome the variety, from the UN to the Oil & Gas, from US Government to Wholesale African Carriers. This allowed me to listen first, adjust the message and adapt to the audience.

Thank you!