Asim S. Raza | Vice-President & General Counsel

Asim S. Raza joined Arcadian Infracom, Inc. in 2022 and currently serves as the company’s Vice-President & General Counsel. In his role, Mr. Raza’s responsibilities include overseeing all legal matters of the company and its various subsidiaries, serving as the company’s corporate secretary, and also managing its governmental affairs.

Mr. Raza earned his B.A./M.S. in Criminal Justice from The American University in Washington, D.C., his J.D. from DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois and his M.B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Mr. Raza serves on the Board of Directors for the Missouri Chamber of Commerce, Whitfield High School, the Churchill Center & School and the St. Louis Civic Pride Foundation.

On a more personal note, Mr. Raza also serves as a freelancer for Fox Sports, ESPN and CBS Sports working on various broadcast teams for the XFL, College Football, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League.

Jon Bremer | Assistant General Counsel

Jon has nearly a decade of experience solving high-stakes legal problems for a variety of clients, including national telecommunications providers and other Fortune 500 companies.

He spent six years practicing complex corporate litigation at Thompson Coburn, an Am Law 200 law firm. At Thompson Coburn, Jon handled cases of all shapes and sizes involving commercial contracting, business tort, telecommunications, financial services, construction, and intellectual property, among other things. In the two years before joining Arcadian, Jon was listed in Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch for Commercial Litigation in St. Louis.

Jon has substantial public sector experience as well. He served in the Missouri Attorney General’s Office as an Assistant Deputy Attorney General. There he represented Missouri in many of its most sensitive and high dollar value cases, working alongside elected officials, department general counsel, and the state’s Solicitor General to achieve positive outcomes for all Missourians. Jon also clerked at the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, drafting memos and published opinions about a variety of legal topics.

Prior to his career as a lawyer, Jon completed the Coro Fellows Program in St. Louis, a rigorous experiential leadership and business training program. Jon earned his B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and his J.D. from the University of Missouri, Columbia.

Rick Waterman | Field Construction Manager

Rick has 28 years of experience in fiber network operations, installation, design, provisioning, and project management related to OSP/ISP. Rick most recently worked for CenturyLink through the acquisition of Qwest Communications. At CenturyLink he was a GIS Engineer responsibility for database inventory of all the fiber routes, conduit, manholes/handholes, and fiber panels in CenturyLink's GIS System. Prior to GIS Engineering, Rick was a Fiber Analysis Engineer responsible for analyzing fiber traces on all new and existing fiber builds.  

Rick joined Qwest in 2001, where he was the Lead OSP/ISP Technician, managing numerous high priority customer projects, protecting more than 70 miles of route with 13 sites. Rick has deep experience with many different transport systems including Ciena, Infinera, Cisco, and Fujitsu, and has worked closely with the Federal Government on systems and monitoring. 

During his time with Qwest, he was promoted to management in Arizona, managing a crew of 38 with responsibility for installation and maintenance of all circuit, splice, and construction crews. Rick managed day-to-day operations, including supervision, training, company safety procedures, as well as the design and installation of fiber and cabling systems and system networks. 

Prior to Qwest, Rick founded a telecommunications company under Rod Jackson & Associates. Rick started the company with two employees and grew it to a Team of 22 within six months. He was responsible for the technical build out the 5th floor at Hope Street in Los Angeles for MCI/WorldCom.

Denise Villa | Business Development & Partnering

A skier, hiker and mountain biker, Denise has over 20 years of experience in the telecommunications and technology industries holding various positions in sales and leadership for Sprint, AT&T, Level 3 and CenturyLink. As a tenured sales leader with a demonstrated history of driving high-performance, Denise has centered her career around bringing resources closer to the customer, exceptional customer experience and leading teams to drive profitable revenue while being an active member of the business community.

Denise started at Sprint in the early 90s in New York City. She later moved on to Account Management for global data networking clients in New York and New Jersey.

While working in leadership for AT&T in Utah, she was a member of the Utah Broadband Economic Development Council, Vice-President for the Ambassador Board of Ballet West and a member of National Charity League. As a member of the Utah Broadband Development Council, she focused on driving services to rural communities. She worked closely with regional business to bring solutions to the marketplace. During her tenure at National Charity League, she and her daughter volunteered at organizations like the Road-home, Utah Food Bank, and The Sharing Place.

As Regional Director within Level 3, she led teams in Utah, Nevada and Arizona providing services like dark fiber and IP based services while opening the Utah enterprise market.

As Director for CenturyLink, she led teams in Idaho, Nevada and Utah helping drive business within hyper-scalers, content-providers, software company and data centers. She worked closely with organizations like Silicon Slopes in promoting Utah’s thriving business community to help startups garnish the resources needed to succeed.

Most recently, she worked as a Business Development Director for a blockchain software company, BanQu, which brings transparency in a global supply chain and helps every person within the chain to have an economic identity. During her time, she assisted in marketing, sales, contract negotiations and customer retention. The company now leads the way for tracking Covid-19 supplies and vaccines throughout the Middle East and Africa.

Scott Terrill | Business Development & Partnering

Scott brings 20+ years of diverse business development, sales, and marketing experience from large service providers and start-ups alike in the telecommunications industry. Throughout his career, Scott’s primary roles have centered on strategic partnerships, go-to-market deployment of new technology, and third party reseller development.

While at CenturyLink, Scott was responsible for leading product partnerships for wireless, video, IoT, hardware, and cybersecurity with key partners including AT&T, Verizon, DirecTV, Norton, and McAfee. He also led a 50+ person team responsible for the P&L and management of more than 1,000 reps in CenturyLink’s third party reseller ecosystem for digital, retail, big-box, and direct sales.

At Comcast, Scott led a marketing, intelligence, and communications team for Xfinity’s largest region, where he was responsible for contract negotiations and program management of NFL, MLB, NHL, and NCAA partnerships throughout the southeast.

He also has a genuine passion for reaching underserved populations with viable broadband solutions as illustrated through his role as SVP of Development at Pulse Broadband (now part of the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative). Scott headed up business development partnering with municipal and utility providers seeking fiber solutions in their efforts to build vital infrastructure and enable broadband services for residents/businesses in their underserved communities.

Scott earned his B.S. in Marketing from Missouri State University.

Tiffanny Hale | Project Manager

Tiffanny has 25 years of experience in telecommunications through CenturyLink and the affiliate companies acquired by CenturyLink. The majority of her experience has been dedicated to the national network side of the CenturyLink business, although she has experience in both the regulated Local Exchange Carrier and unregulated National.

Prior to joining Arcadian, Tiffanny spent 10 years in Network Project Management at CenturyLink / Qwest, with an emphasis on deployment of DWDM networks. While working as a PM, she accumulated the requisite project hours and training needed for Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, passing the exam in 2009.

In the preceding ten years, Tiffanny was an Engineering & Planning manager for Qwest / US WEST. In this role, Tiffanny managed a diverse team of employees with responsibility for metrics, budgeting, process development and program management. Tiffanny also worked closely with Wholesale Product Management and Regulatory to develop new processes that would ensure compliance with FCC Communications Act Section 271 interconnection for US WEST.

Tiffanny’s early years in the CenturyLink affiliate family began in Customer Service, moving to Network Database Administration and Complex Translations while at SP Telecom / Qwest. She left Qwest to work for US WEST prior to the Qwest/US WEST merger, working three years in the US WEST Network Reliability Center focused on Section 271 readiness.

Tiffanny has a BS in Advertising from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and an MA in Telecommunications Management from Webster University.

Patricia Fry | Controller

Patty is an experienced financial professional with over 25 years working with a variety of industries including for profit and not-for-profit businesses.  She has an extensive financial and managerial background in accounting, education, financial and tax reporting, strategic planning and budgeting, cash management and team building. 

Prior to joining Arcadian, Patty started her career as a CPA with a regional accounting firm in central Illinois where she spent several years in the tax department working with personal and business tax clients.  In moving to the St. Louis area, she worked with a local CPA firm as a manager in both the tax and audit departments providing advisement to a wide range of industry clients. 

For the last 12 years, Patty moved from public accounting into private industry as a Corporate Controller.  As a Controller, Patty has played a key role on executive management teams. She has served as a treasurer for her church and for a not-for-profit organization on a volunteer basis.   Patty is a strategic thinker with excellent analytical and communication skills with a focus on continuous process improvement initiatives and team development.

Patty earned her B.S. in Accounting and her M.S. in Accountancy from Illinois State University.  She is a licensed CPA in the state of Missouri.

Jennine Schmidt | HR / Legal & Executive Support

Jennine has over 25 years of experience providing human resource, legal, logistics, financial operations and event planning support for executive teams. Jennine has worked in the global industrial materials, communication infrastructure, telecom service provider and financial services industries.

Just prior to joining Arcadian Infracom, Jennine was the executive and sales assistant to the EVP of sales for a global carbon fiber manufacturer. Prior to that time, while at CenturyLink Jennine was the sole executive and logistics support resource for a 25-member legal team supporting its $3B wholesale sales operations and the CenturyLink global network operations teams. While at Commerce Bank, a financial service provider with $52B in assets under management, Jennine held positions as Senior Human Resources Assistant as well as Compensation Analyst.

John Pignatelli | Business Development & Partnering

John has 40 years of Sales experience from hardware to software, including Datacenter, Telecom, and Government Sales.

John retired at the end of 2016 from Zayo after a 9-year career with both Zayo and formerly Abovenet, where he last served as Account Director for hyperscale and Fortune X customers. During this time, John was responsible for growing the dark fiber and high capacity wavelength services with technology leaders such as Facebook and NetFlix.

Prior to Zayo, John worked at Savvis by way of acquisition of Cable & Wireless and Exodus. At Savvis John was responsible for the developing major accounts including Placeware (Acquired by Microsoft), Gap, and Macromedia.

Before Savvis, John was instrumental in developing the Federal sales division at NetManage, where he helped grow the division from inception to over $5m annualized revenue.

Earlier in his career, John spent 10 years in Sales at Digital Equipment Corp. where he won numerous Sales achievement awards.

John earned his B.S. degree in Accounting from Bentley University in Waltham, MA.

Matthew Rantanen | Business Development & Partnering

Matt is an expert in Native American policy and community relations. He is the Director of Technology for the Southern California Tribal Chairmen's Association (SCTCA) and Director of the Tribal Digital Village (TDVNet) Network/Initiative supporting the tribal communities of Southern California.

Matthew works with the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) and is currently the Co-Chair of the Technology and Telecom Subcommittee and Co-Chair of their Technology Task Force. He was twice named to the FCC Native Nations Broadband Task Force. Matthew serves on the board of directors for Native Public Media, where he has previously served twice as Chairman. He also serves on the inaugural board of the American Indian Policy Institute (AIPI) at Arizona State University as well as on the board of International advisors to GlobalMindEd and their national conference. Additionally, he is on the Tribal Advisory Group which advises the California First Responders Network (CalFRN), California Office of Emergency Services (CalOES) and the Broadband Council to the Governor.

During the Obama administration, Matthew was called upon by the White House to work with the CTO and staff to identify and solve connectivity issues in the national technology deserts.

Matthew received his undergraduate degree at Washington State University. He is of Cree Indian and Scandinavian descent.