The integration space has long been considered an “old boys’ network,” but as you can see by the accompanying list capturing 40 of the best and brightest young talents in the industry, it’s certainly refreshing to know the next generation of leaders — and perhaps the one after that — has already emerged.
We’re sure this list — like most compilations of this kind — will generate debate, discussion and disagreement about who’s on it and who’s not. We decided to focus on integrators, consultants and programmers as well as a few others whose influence on the industry is undeniable, if not a little unorthodox.
That’s why you don’t see anyone from your favorite manufacturer included, for example. Also, this is not a ranking, but rather an alphabetical list of the honorees.
Click here to meet the Top 40 CI Influencers Under 40!
We may have fudged the “under 40” thing a tad to make sure a couple of folks whose effects on the world of integration can’t be denied were included. That said, we set the cutoff at turning 40 for during 2014.
Finally, we grouped co-workers together in a few cases, so there are technically a few more than 40 individuals on the list. With so many worthy nominees (including many who were new to us, which was perhaps the most pleasant surprise of the nomination process), we didn’t want to have to pick one over another.
We hope you enjoy our selections — and let us know who we missed so we can get to know them. Let the debate begin!
Top 40 CI Influencers Under 40 of 2014:
- Tim Albright, founder and president of AV Nation
- Debra Alexander, Ben Dandola-Grubb, and Mark Mogila of Verrex Corporation
- Brian Baril, manager of business administration at Red Thread
- Mike Brandes, media specialist at Palm Beach Atlantic University
- Phillip “Hi Phi” Cordell, M3 Technology Group and AV Rapper
- Jak Daragjati, president of JD Systems
- Jeremy Elsesser, COO and CIO at Level 3 Audio Visual
- Gary Farmer, manager of marketing & midwest sales for Trinity Video Communications
- Pepper Fernandez, CEO at Solutionz Conferencing, Inc.
- Will Flavin, lighting programmer at Flavin Lighting Design
- Chima Gale and Abiose Gale, president and vice president at 360 Media Innovations
- Kevin Goldsmith, director of digital media operations at Ping HD
- Bryan Gorog, president of BCG Concepts Inc.
- Kourtney Govro and Scott Lord of All Systems
- Shawn Hansson, CEO and founder at Logic Integration
- Nick Hlas, director of member services at NSCA
- Collin Hogan and Chris Neto of AV Helpdesk Inc.
- Joshua Hoffert, director of professional services at Alpha Video & Audio, Inc.
- Tory Holmwood and Amrit Sidhu of Advanced AV
- Joseph A. Legato IV, VP of operations at USIS AudioVisual
- Aaron and Jay McArdle of Zdi
- Chris Mascatello, executive VP of technology sales & services at ANC Sports Enterprises
- Daniel Newman, founder/president of Broadsuite Consulting
- Bill McIntosh and Joe Sala of Synergy Media Group
- Dawn Meade of Net-AV and Kelly Perkins of AVI Systems
- Bryan Meszaros, managing partner and founder of OpenEye Global
- Sumanth Rayancha, CTO at PepperDash
- Micha Risling, chairman of the HDBaseT Alliance marketing committee
- Matt Scott, president of Omega Audio Video
- Josh Shanahan, president of Sport View Technologies (SVT)
- Nathan Schneider, system designer at Image Stream Medical
- Michael Shinn, operations manager at IMS Technology Services
- Matt Slack, president and founder of AV Solutions
- Josh Srago, manager of audio visual engineering at ICS Integration
- Joshua Stackhouse, low voltage systems professional at Systems Plus of Wisconsin
- Wes Stewart, national director of technical operations, Whitlock
- Rachel Volk, marketing manager at USAV Group
- David Weatherhead, co-president of Advanced
- Jennifer Willard, supervising AV systems technical analyst at Judicial Council of California
- Brooks Wood, CIO and VP of sales, Beacon Communications
