Over his 23+ years career, Earl Kennedy has served multiple technical roles and worked in multiple market segments in the optical transport sector. During his tenure at Alcatel, Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Earl has spent significant time in engineering and leadership positions in manufacturing, product design and failure analysis. He also functioned in the Product Marketing team before assuming his current role as a Business Development and Consulting Engineering Manager. For the past 10 years, Earl’s primary customer focus has been on the Service Provider sector where he has earned the role of trusted consultant to his customers and advocate/liaison into the Nokia Product Team. Most recently he has narrowed his focus to optical transport hardware, software, and network trends around Access Backhaul and Middle Mile in support of the American Broadband Initiative (ABI) and Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD).