Meet Our Leadership Team
Steve Miller
Founder and CEO
Chance Brannen
President
Gabe Miller
CFO
Scott Munger
COO
Josh Gagliardi
CTO
Rich Day
Chief Architect
Mike Padula, Jr.
Senior VP of Global Sales
Jay Moore
VP of Marketing
Jill Brodie
VP of Solutions Engineering
Chris Bray
VP of Product Management
Trey Fisher
General Counsel
Steve Miller
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
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Steve Miller founded Highwinds with the vision of growing it into the global content delivery and multi-platform IP services powerhouse it is today. He established a corporate culture that is rooted in entrepreneurialism and passion for technology and service. He enlisted the industry's top talent. He raised over $165 million in debt and equity financing. He spearheaded and closed five acquisitions. He tapped into Highwinds' software development pedigree to produce an innovative content delivery, network and cloud-based IP services software stack that delivers value. He continues to invest in growth. Today, under Steve's direction, Highwinds owns and operates the world's fastest CDN, delivers games globally across the GDN, boasts a software and solutions portfolio equal to none, and is highly profitable.
Steve's extensive experience in the software industry includes executive posts at Openwave and bCandid, among others. In these previous roles, he led an aggressive penetration into the enterprise IP services software market, driving sales initiatives and winning business with the world's leading telecoms and ISPs. In recent years, Steve has twice been named a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award and has accepted top honors in the SMART Awards. He holds a bachelor's degree in business management from the University of Alabama.
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Gabe Miller
Chief Financial Officer
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Gabe Miller, in his role as chief financial officer, is responsible for Highwinds' overall financial health and the management of all accounting, budgeting, banking, asset administration, tax, payroll, legal and insurance functions. Since 2004, Gabe has successfully directed financial operations for Highwinds from its early days as a startup in the content delivery and network services space to the high-growth phase it has experienced in recent years, navigating the company through five acquisitions and over $200 million in financing along the way, all while achieving positive operating income in each year of the company's existence. In addition to Gabe's financial responsibilities, he also directs all human resources functions, and during his tenure as CFO, Highwinds' headcount has grown by 1200% and now spans three continents. Gabe possesses a keen business sense, solid negotiation skills and a sharp eye for profitability.
Previously, as a business analyst for Rotech Healthcare, he played a lead role in the integration of an acquired company with $20 million in annual sales into a parent organization with $650 million in annual sales. He also worked as a senior consultant with Nephron Pharmaceuticals and has extensive experience with world-class international billing platforms. Gabe holds bachelor's and master's degrees in business administration from the University of Florida.
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Scott Munger
Chief Operating Officer
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Scott Munger oversees all operational aspects of Highwinds' content delivery network and hosted IP services, including the design, deployment and operations of large scale application and network services. His expertise – from hands-on integration to industry thought leadership – is instrumental in ensuring smooth-running operations and positive customer experiences, particularly as Highwinds continues along its high-growth trajectory. Scott's operational proficiency is central to successfully integrating acquired network and technology companies, casting nets over emergent markets with new international points of presence, boosting network performance and unleashing new solutions. His specialties include managing a network with more a terabit per second of sustained traffic and overseeing operations in a 24x7x365 environment.
Scott's lengthy career has included high-profile technical leadership roles throughout the Highwinds organization where he has worked for ten years. Prior to joining Highwinds, he held posts at One Realm, bCandid and University of Colorado at Boulder UnixOps. Scott earned a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
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Rich Day
Chief Architect
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Rich Day is a technology solutions visionary with 15 years of industry experience. He has a well-trained eye for devising ways to use technology to solve complex business problems, improve operations and boost profitability. As chief architect, he taps into his extensive knowledge base and many years of hands-on experience to continually extend the technological advantages of Highwinds' suite of content delivery, network services and IP software products. Rich's role is vital to Highwinds' product strategy and technical architecture, and he's passionate about achieving total customer satisfaction. He is both a technical prodigy and a personable, down-to-earth leader.
Rich is no stranger to CDN architecture and operations, having previously served in both strategic and customer-facing executive roles at Speedera and Akamai, and Panther Express and CDNetworks. He assisted in the sale of Speedera (where he was the founding chief technology officer and architect) to Akamai and then Panther Express (where he was the vice president of strategy) to CDNetworks. Following each of these acquisitions, he became responsible for integrating the merged companies' networks and solutions portfolios. His name is listed as an inventor on 35 CDN-related patents to date. Rich attended New York University before completing his bachelor's degree in Product Design at Parsons School of Design.
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Josh Gagliardi
Chief Technology Officer
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Josh Gagliardi has been scaling, tuning and extending Internet services as a software engineer since his start as a summer intern in the Distributed Systems group at BBN in 1992. His specialty is designing and building systems capable of long uptimes in the unpredictable environment that is the public Internet - suited for varying client demands and capable of leveraging constant hardware evolution to drive costs down.
Josh is a passionate leader focused on the creation and evolution of quality products through novel architectures, produced in a collaborative environment where craftsmanship and constant learning is the norm. His team's products collect, store, index, serve, bill and analyze an ever-changing collection of billions of records comprising petabytes of data for infrastructure customers worldwide.
In addition to his work at Highwinds, Josh has served in technical roles at Openwave Systems, Software.com, Language Engineering Corporation and BBN. He earned a Bachelor's degree in computer science from MIT and holds several patents.
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Mike Padula, Jr.
Senior Vice President of Global Sales
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Mike Padula, Jr. is the driving force behind Highwinds' content delivery and network services sales organization. He recruits, motivates and mentors an ever-growing sales team, which today spans four continents. He embraces the dynamics of the content delivery ecosystem and works closely with Highwinds' channel partners. He is an expert at listening to the needs of customers and matching those needs to innovative solutions. And he has a keen eye for managing profit and loss and strategic initiatives for large sales organizations.
Mike has nearly two decades of senior management experience in the technology space. He came to Highwinds from Atlantix Global Systems where he served as senior vice president of global sales for the company's enterprise-class networking hardware, telecom equipment and IT services business. He also spent ten years at Level 3, where he held a number of senior management positions within the sales organization, including senior vice president of both the business markets group and the wholesale markets group. Earlier in his career, Mike held sales posts at AT&T and BellSouth. He received a bachelor's degree from Florida State University.
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Chris Bray
Vice President of Product Management
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Chris Bray has moved up the ranks in Highwinds' product development group since joining the company in 2007. Along the way, he has earned recognition for Highwinds' award-winning StrikeTracker console and has continually broken the barriers of possibility with true real-time analytics. Today, as vice president of product management, Chris provides direction to a team of highly talented software engineers and is responsible for innovating and expanding Highwinds' portfolio of content delivery, storage and analytics products. Chris also works closely with the sales team to ensure that long-term product roadmaps are balanced with short-term objectives and are perfectly aligned with customer requirements. He has a passion for great product design, highly engaging customer experiences and products that solve real business problems.
Chris has managed technology product development and deployment projects since 1996. Prior to Highwinds, he spent ten years as a defense contractor for multiple U.S. Department of Defense projects in the wargaming space. During this time, he developed a deep understanding of large networks, real-time global command and control systems, simple human-usable interfaces, and the collection and visualization of accurate, actionable data. Chris holds a bachelor's degree in management information systems from the University of Central Florida and an MBA from Rollins College's Crummer Graduate School of Business.
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Jay Moore
Vice President of Marketing
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Jay Moore is a creative professional with over 15 years of marketing accomplishments at Internet technologies, sports, media and entertainment companies. As vice president of marketing for Highwinds, he owns the responsibility of promoting the fastest CDN on the planet. He does this by seamlessly integrating all aspects of marketing, communications, public relations and social media to raise awareness, attract customers and promote the Highwinds brand. Jay joined Highwinds in 2007, the year the CDN was launched, and as such, he has played a key role in breathing life into Highwinds' marketing arm and in the CDN's continued success in the market.
Jay previously served in high-ranking marketing roles for XOS Technologies, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Orlando Magic – where his hard work, steady flow of ideas and proven track record of implementing innovative marketing solutions created a buzz and generated revenue for these organizations. Over the years, he has leveraged and further honed his skills in product marketing, advertising, public relations, web site architecture, search engine optimization, event marketing, brand management, social media and business development. Jay holds a bachelor's degree in communication studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a master's degree in sports administration from Florida State University.
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Trey Fisher
General Counsel
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Joseph Fisher III (Trey) is General Counsel for Highwinds. Trey oversees all legal and regulatory matters for Highwinds' operations worldwide. His responsibilities include directing the company's intellectual property, transactional, litigation, government relations and compliance matters. He brings years of experience in litigation, technology advocacy, negotiations and strategic planning.
Previously, Trey worked for Oracle after graduating from law school. Prior to joining Highwinds, Trey worked as a lead litigator for the nationally recognized law firm of Leventhal & Slaughter. At Leventhal & Slaughter, Trey handled all aspects of complex trials from jury selection through verdict. His cases included criminal copyright infringement, corporate investigations, money laundering and theft of trade secrets.
Trey earned his bachelor's from the College of Charleston, completed the Transnational Law Program through Duke University Law School and his JD from New York Law School.
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Chance Brannen
President
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Chance Brannen, as president, is responsible for the success of Highwinds' global sales and marketing organizations. He oversees and inspires two global sales teams, focusing on both the business and retail sides of the content delivery spectrum and the company's entire diversified solutions portfolio. These teams include direct, channel and affiliate sales and marketing experts that regularly roll out new products and tap into new markets as the company grows. Chance also works closely with the heads of development and operations to ensure that all customers enjoy the high-performance content delivery products and services and the exceptional customer care for which the Highwinds name is synonymous.
Prior to joining Highwinds in 2003, Chance served as a vice president for BLR Capital Management and a senior sales executive for Indigo Investment Systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in management from Florida State University.
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Jill Brodie
Vice President of Solutions Engineering and Customer Success
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Jill Brodie, vice president of solutions engineering and customer success, is responsible for the global customer-facing technical teams that manage pre-sales architecture and post-sales implementation on Highwinds CDN. She also oversees account management for the CDN's top accounts. Jill is an advocate for all Highwinds CDN customers and has evangelized for customer focus as a path to revenue growth since joining Highwinds in 2008. Jill's teams collaborate with all internal departments - from development and operations to finance and marketing - to align the entire organization toward customer-focused methodologies and, ultimately, to ensure that every CDN customer has a great experience working with Highwinds.
Before Highwinds, Jill had repeat success growing strong customer-facing technical teams in fast-paced startup environments. She has a bachelor's degree with honors in computer science and engineering from Arizona State University.
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The Highwinds Board of Directors
Steve Miller, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Highwinds
Frank Bergen, Chief Executive Officer, Xerocole, Inc.
Don Padgett, Certified Public Accountant
Albert A. Prast, Chief Information Officer, Connextions, Inc.
Neil Sequeira, Managing Director, General Catalyst Partners
Tim Dibble, Managing General Partner, Alta Communications
