People who have run the programs they now advise on.

Brian spent much of a 30-year technology career in the private sector, consulting for mid-sized companies, manufacturers, dot-coms and NASCAR teams. In 2010, while helping a small wireless ISP secure $200,000 in Appalachian Regional Commission funding for fixed-wireless broadband in Rutherford County, North Carolina, he was hired by the non-profit e-NC Authority as Technical Assistance Director for 31 western North Carolina counties.

He continued that work statewide in the North Carolina Department of Commerce Broadband Division, where he was a driving force behind North Carolina's open-source broadband map and built its original prototype. When the chance came to contribute to a Broadband Planning Primer and Toolkit for the ARC, he took it, and Broadband Catalysts grew out of that effort.

Deborah has built her career around using technology and research to drive economic and community development: designing, managing and evaluating grant programs, business incubation, technology entrepreneurship, technology transfer and adoption, and program evaluation at the local, state, national and international levels.

From 2001 to 2014 she served as Senior Director of Research and Development for North Carolina's state broadband authority, designing, funding and evaluating national best-practice models for broadband access and use, from business and technology development centers to grassroots connectivity planning and state broadband policy. She is especially interested in pilot programs and inclusive adoption efforts that bring the benefits of broadband to underserved and vulnerable people.

Deborah holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in molecular biology from NC State University and Emory University, an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she also completed all coursework toward a Ph.D. in Operations Management focused on innovation and technology, and has studied at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. She is a certified NC REAL Entrepreneurship and RUPRI Center for Rural Entrepreneurship trainer.

Jane co-founded Broadband Catalysts in 2015 with Brian Rathbone and Deborah Watts, when the three of them carried their North Carolina broadband work into the private sector. She has since retired.

Jeff brings 25 years of legal and public policy experience, including eight years as Director of the North Carolina Broadband Infrastructure Office. He has led collaborations with state broadband leaders and advocates across the country, drafting program guidance, procedures, applications and grant award agreements.

He was recruited to establish the US Treasury's $10 billion Capital Projects Fund, where he oversaw block grants to states for broadband infrastructure. Providing guidance, rules and technical assistance to the states gave him an unusually deep understanding of deployment strategy in almost every state and territory. He developed some of the first digital inclusion programs in the nation.

Jeff holds a B.A. in Journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a J.D. from the Thomas M. Cooley School of Law, where he graduated cum laude and was Assistant Editor of the Law Review.

Julia was a middle-grade school teacher in Crowley, Texas, studying data analytics, when she joined Broadband Catalysts in 2023. She quickly became our lead GIS specialist.

Working under a Tier 4 research license to the FCC's Broadband Serviceable Location Fabric, Julia built an analysis no public source offers: counts of served, underserved and unserved housing units, business units and enterprise units, figures exposed neither in the public Broadband Data Collection nor in the non-public Fabric itself. She completed that work for North Carolina in partnership with the NC Rural Center, and for Texas and New Mexico in partnership with the nonprofit Borderplex Connect.