Consistent leadership, consistent communications

Pinnacle Wireless serves its clients with some of the best experts in their respective fields. These industry veterans have “been there, done that.” Led by a core management group, your project gets personalized attention from the company leadership. This ensures consistent communication every step of the way.

• Michael Hayford, President/CE0
• Tim Walters, VP Operations/Finance
• Chris Love, VP Strategic Initiatives
• Manny Medina, Director System Implementation
• Rich Polulak, VP Business Development
• Todd Brown, VP Technical Services
• John Farrell, VP Transportation Markets
• William P. Fredrickson, VP Energy Markets
• Lee Masoian, VP In-building Wireless
• Dan Howard, Director Engineering
• Steve Ahmed, Communications Engineering Manager- QA
• Chris Cassell, Communications Engineer
• Rich Kropp, Communications Enginner
• Louis Ciarlo, Manager Wireless Systems Engineering

Michael Hayford, President

Mike, a co-founder of Pinnacle, brings more than 20 years' experience in the wireless communications industry. As President of Pinnacle Wireless since its inception in 2001, Mike has led Pinnacle to become one of the industry’s fastest growing organizations and has evolved what began as a Land Mobile Radio reseller into one of the Largest Specialty Wireless Systems Integrator in the United States.

Mike’s technical background has been instrumental in Pinnacle emerging as an organization which embraces the rapidly evolving wireless industry; which has resulted in Pinnacle directly and indirectly supporting the industry’s most advanced technologies in the Land Mobile Radio, Command and Control, In-Building Wireless and Wireless Broadband fields. Over the course of Mike’s career within the wireless industry Mike has held a number of positions ranging from operations, technical services, sales, national account management and General Management.

Tim Walters, Director and CFO

Tim is a co-founder of Pinnacle Wireless. He has more than 18 years' experience in the two-way radio business, and is particularly adept in service excellence and project management. Tim has a track record of building businesses from the ground up into local, regional and national powerhouses. During his tenure with BearCom Wireless, he held executive positions in sales and general management and was a regional director.

He was an instrumental player in putting together a large-scale, integrated dispatch center for Cox Communications in San Diego, and has expertise in system design and wireless technologies.

Chris Love, Vice President Strategic Initiatives

Chris has more than 25 years' experience with large systems integration sales. He was responsible for the electronic modernization of The New York Stock Exchange. During his tenure with Motorola, he designed and sold the largest privately owned paging system in the history of Motorola. He led a system sales team that successfully sold and implemented 10 major systems to the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. He has also designed, engineered and manufactured a Motorola paging interface device for automatic alarm reporting.

Manny Medina, Director System Implementation

Manny has 20 years' experience in the Land Mobile Radio “LMR" industry. Manny’s career began with Motorola and over a 17 year period he supported number of technical roles including both shop and field technical responsibilities. Manny’s extensive experience in large systems integration resulted in Motorola promoting him to support numerous large projects in the greater New York market. Over time Manny established himself as the lead resource to the New York Police Department. In 2006 Manny founded and operated Current Flow Technologies “CFT”, CFT rapidly became the preferred vendor for all NYPD LMR system infrastructure projects. In 2011, following an eighteen month subcontractor relationship with Pinnacle, CFT merged with Pinnacle and Manny joined Pinnacle as its newest principal.

Rich Polulak, Vice President - Director of Business Development

Over the past thirty seven years Rich has gained extensive experience within the wireless communications industry working for Motorola. His Motorola career initially began with internal positions including credit administration, Order Process Management and Chief Accountant. Rich later moved to outside sales serving the Public Safety Marketplace in Northern New Jersey; where he was promoted to sales management within 2 years. Leadership positions progressed from up the ladder and has last position with Motorola was Vice President and Director of Sales for the City of New York.

Rich has always served the Public Safety Marketplace with a focus on business development, strategic account planning, personnel recruitment and development, and the sale of advanced voice and wireless data solutions to these mission critical customers.

Rich is a graduate of Seton Hall University, with a degree in Marketing.

Todd Brown, Vice President - Director of Technical Services

Todd is Pinnacle’s Vice President and Director of Technical Services. Todd’s responsibilities include the strategic development and delivery of Pinnacle’s service products to the premier list of Pinnacle Wireless customers. Todd has in depth knowledge of key supplier business models and maintains strategic relationships within the supplier organizations.

Todd has held various executive operational and customer oriented leadership positions with Motorola, McCaw Cellular\Cellular One, AT&T Wireless and Nextel Communications. He brings more than 18 years of executive leadership, strategic vision, operational management and merger experience to his role. Todd’s recent experience includes Northeast Regional Service Manager for Motorola’s Government & Public Safety Division, Vice President Field Service Operations at Nextel and Sr. Director, National Field Service at AT&T Wireless. Todd has been recognized for his achievements within the Telecommunication and Customer Service industries throughout his career. He is widely respected as one of the industries top strategist and considered to be a thought leader in field service delivery models.

Todd received a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing from Ramapo College of New Jersey in 1988.

John Farrell, Vice President – Director of Transportation Markets

John has nearly 30 years experience in the Highway Transportation sector. He is the driver for Pinnacle’s efforts in highway transportation markets.

John has a multi-disciplined background in telecommunication systems. He has managed highway transportation projects, administration, and staff. John has successfully designed, built and maintained Intelligent Transportation Systems including Variable Message Signs, Traffic Monitor and Surveillance, Land Mobile Radio, Microwave Radio, Structured Cable Premise Wiring, Command and Control Systems/Centers, Telephone Systems including 911, Fleet AVL/GPS systems, Police Mobile Data Computer and Camera’s, and WiMAX.

William P. Fredrickson, Vice President - Director Energy Markets

Bill is a member of the Pinnacle-Wireless executive leadership team with a primary focus on the energy markets. Bill’s charter is to build and expand Pinnacle’s energy business across North America.

Bill is a 30 year veteran of the utility and Land Mobile Radio industries. He has held senior management positions in project management, sales, marketing and general management with Ericsson, General Electric, Black & Veatch and Tait Radio Communications.

His 15 year telecommunications experience at Ericsson and Tait Radio Communications is augmented by an electrical generation, transmission and distribution background garnered at General Electric and Black & Veatch. He has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and a Masters of Business Administration from Duke University.

For more information, check out our Energy Sector microsite.

Dan Howard, Director of Engineering

Dan has spent 25 years working with a range of telecommunications technologies, including analog two-way radio, digital APCO Project 25 systems, E9-1-1/radio dispatch centers, trunked radio systems/SMRs/ESMRs, computer-aided dispatch (CAD), microwave and mobile data. His involvement with these technologies is wide ranging as well, covering system design, proposal, sales, installation, maintenance and testing.

Lee Masoian, Vice President - Director of In-building Wireless

Lee is a renowned Electrical Engineer and visionary in wireless communications design and innovation. Specializing in ‘dead zone’ and in-building systems, Lee has 35 years’ wireless engineering and systems experience, as well as BSEE and MSEE degrees from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute of New York. Lee brings extensive background in RF engineering, system design, product invention, and business development to projects, as well as a 20 year college teaching background, having been an Associate Professor, Lecturer, and Instructor in Electrical Engineering in NY and MD colleges. Throughout his career, Lee has combined hands-on engineering and management roles, serving in both capacities on high profile, large scale communications projects for NJ Transit’s light rail system (2009); World Trade Center 7 (2007); Lincoln, Holland, Brooklyn Battery, and Queens Midtown Tunnels, NY; Mercer and Mount Baker Tunnels, WA; Ted Williams Tunnel, MA; Hampton Roads Tunnel, VA; Colonial Williamsburg, VA; LaGuardia Airport, NY; Harvard Medical School, MA; and various government agencies.

As President and founder of his own companies (25 years with AeroComm, Airorlite, and Communitronics) and division President (Geotel, Joslyn), Lee’s creed has been the same: “The customer comes first so ‘under promise and over deliver’.”

Steve Ahmed - Communications Engineering Manager- QA Manager

Pinnacle Wireless is very pleased Steve Ahmed, former Chief Engineer for the NYPD Communications Division, has joined our team. Steve is a member of our RF and microwave engineering team while also serving as Quality Assurance manager on strategic projects. Steve brings extensive experience in public- safety communications disciplines, advanced technical knowledge, as well as very strong communications and administrative skill sets. His long and proud history within NYPD earned Steve national public safety industry recognition in the design, development, and testing of these highly complex wireless mission critical systems. Steve specializes in a variety of areas such as power generation, transmission, distribution, communications, and systems implementation.

Chris Cassels, Communications Engineer

Christopher has more than 24 years of Engineering and Design experience in the wireless communications industry, including over 6 years specifically supporting NYC public safety agencies such a NYPD, FDNY, NYC DoITT and NYC Transit. His intimate knowledge of the existing UHF Police Radio System (PRS) and the VHF RTO and Transit Bureau systems provides Pinnacle with a uniquely qualified resource for all MTA projects. Chris also has 3 years of additional experience in the design and implementation of in-building and tunnel/subway communications systems for various technologies including Land Mobile Radio systems, PCS CDMA and GSM as part of various projects such as the San Francisco Internal Airport, San Jose Airport, Moscone Center, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) and the SF Muni systems.

Rich Kropp, Communications Engineer

Rich recently retired after 27 years as Senior Staff Systems Engineer at Motorola with a total of 38 years in the public safety communications field working on federal, state and local government systems and has joined our growing team at Pinnacle. During his time at Motorola, Rich has held numerous positions leading up to Service Center Manager of the Motorola Large Systems NY facility and engineering positions leading up to Senior Staff Systems Engineer. Richard’s most recent project was to replace the entire NYPD base station and receiver field inventory in preparation for narrowbanding and P25 capability. This project included several custom designed circuits and PC boards to meet the NYPD’s interfacing requirements and also provided future flexibility which would not have normally been there.

In 2002 Rich was awarded Engineer of the Year for the Northern Division for his work in creating several custom circuits and PC boards to overcome several ongoing project issues in order to meet the customer’s requirements. These projects included the circuit design, PC board design and setting up outside contractor assembly and boxing of each.

Louis Ciarlo, Manager Wireless Systems Engineering

Lou Ciarlo leads the Pinnacle Wireless Engineering team. Lou brings over twenty years of Information Technology experience designing, implementing and supporting LAN, WAN, Wireless and Mobile Data networks, software applications plus network and computer hardware. Lou's exciting back ground, education, and experience qualify him to lead Pinnacles efforts in the following areas: Wireless Broadband Network Engineering, Plan and Design Outdoor Wireless Broadband Networks for Point to Point/Microwave, Point to Multipoint, WiMAX and MESH. Perform Intermodulation Studies for the Planning of Indoor and Subterranean Wireless Networks.