Nomad Futurist

In our latest episode, Nabeel Mahmood and Phillip Koblence sit down with John Lee , a professional whose 30-year journey through the digital infrastructure landscape has been nothing short of remarkable. Starting his career in the dynamic world of financial services, John quickly developed a nuanced understanding of the pivotal role digital infrastructure plays in this critical industry. From netw...

This week on the Nomad Futurist Podcast, Nabeel Mahmood and Phillip Koblence welcome Randolph and Michael Borron from Cushman & Wakefield’s Global Data Center Advisory Group . Randolph, a Vice Chairman with 37 years of experience, is a specialist in data center and portfolio optimization, while Michael, an Associate Vice President, brings expertise in office leasing and data center advisory. T...

This week, Isabelle Paradis , President and Founder of HOT TELECOM , joins Nabeel Mahmood and Phillip Koblence on the Nomad Futurist Podcast to jump into her transformative journey in the telecom industry. With an impressive 30 years of global experience, Isabelle is a visionary leader specializing in international and wholesale telecom services. Before founding HOT TELECOM, she earned a bachelor’...

This week, Jeremy Pease , Chief Executive Officer of Colohouse , joins Nabeel Mahmood and Phillip Koblence on the Nomad Futurist Podcast to unpack his illustrious career in the digital infrastructure industry. With over 20 years of experience specializing in data centers and cloud hosting, Jeremy is no stranger to leading high-performing teams. Before taking the helm at Colohouse, he served as the...

This week, Michael Morey , President & CEO at Bluebird Network LLC , joins Nabeel Mahmood and Phillip Koblence on the Nomad Futurist Podcast to discuss his impressive career in the digital infrastructure industry. With more than 37 years of telecommunications experience, Morey has served as President & CEO of Voxitas, Senior Vice President at NuVox, Regional Vice President of Electric Ligh...

In this episode, Nabeel Mahmood and Phillip Koblence are accompanied by Paul Peterson , Senior Director Facilities Manager at JLL overseeing operations at multiple data center locations in the Northeast on the CyrusOne account. In this position, Paul is a major piece in the puzzle to ensure that customers have uptime, availability and connectivity with their data set and data set requirements. Nab...

On this episode, Nabeel and Phil are joined by Lee Smith , Data Center Consultant and Education Ambassador for the Nomad Futurist Foundation. Lee has over 30 years of digital infrastructure industry experience and is an accomplished international data center consultant, covering planning, strategy, design, and operations. During the last 15 years, he's been fully immersed in all matters related to...

On this episode of the Nomad Futurist Podcast, Nabeel and Phillip are joined by Walter Cannon , Vice President, Business Development at ZenFi Networks, a Boldyn Networks company. Walter leverages over 30 years of technology sales and executive management experience in the wireless, wholesale, and enterprise markets to lead sales teams in efficient delivery of network solutions that enable customer...

The Nomad Futurist team has had a lot of great people on the podcast over the last three and a half years, and a few personal experiences along the way as well. In this episode, Nabeel and Phillip take the opportunity to recap the first half of 2023, discuss future goals for the Foundation, and share some insights on the industry.   The duo takes a look back at their journey thus far and disc...

On this episode of the Nomad Futurist Podcast, Phil and Nabeel are joined by  Tesh Durvasula , CEO at  Africa Data Centers . Tesh is an experienced technology and real estate executive with a 25-year track record of successful leadership and value generation in the digital infrastructure sector. He kicks off the episode by giving listeners some insight into the company and its future pla...

This episode, Nabeel and Phil are joined by Director of Platform Networking at Netflix,  Shweta Saraf . At Netflix, Shweta leads Platform Networking teams that are responsible for building various components of the network, like the cloud gateway, the cloud networking stack, network as service platform and service mesh. Growing up in India, Shweta had the American Dream of traveling...

In this episode, Nabeel and Phil are joined by a father-son duo well versed in the world of tech, the Farneys.  Sean Farney  is Executive Director, Data Center Strategy & Innovation at  JLL , responsible for driving strategy and innovation across JLL's global data center business. His son,  Conall Farney , is currently a senior at Purdue University and has an Engineeri...

In this episode, Nabeel and Phil are joined by  Luke Kipfer , Vice President, Data Center Development and Construction at  American Real Estate Partners . Luke is a project management professional with 15+ years of leadership experience providing strategic direction and successful execution within the construction industry.   Luke started working at the young age of 17, fresh out of...

In this episode, Nabeel Mahmood and Phil Koblence sit down with  Adam Knobloch , Global Director, Data Centers at Bisnow. Adam has been with Bisnow for almost six years, where he currently leads the company’s global Data Center & Cloud IT event platform strategy.    You may be familiar with the  Datacenter Investment Conference & Expo (DICE) Series , which is Bisnow’s r...

Nabeel Mahmood and Phil Koblence are joined in this episode by Afonso Salema, CEO of Start Campus. Afonso is responsible for the development of the SINES Project by Start Campus, which aims to create one of the largest sustainable European data centers in Sines, Portugal.   Prior to Start Campus, Afonso spent 15 years in investment banking in London, New York, and Madrid, covering the renewab...

In this episode, Nabeel and Phil are joined by Jim Grice, a lawyer who leads the data center and digital infrastructure team at  Akerman LLP  law firm.  As the Nomad team always says, this is the youngest industry with the most sub-verticals, and being a lawyer is one of them. You can, for example, start as a finance guy, get into real estate, then end up here - and Jim is a perfect...

In this episode, Nabeel Mahmood and Philip Koblence are joined by Mary Stanhope, Chief Commercial Officer of Unitas Global and founder of iMarket2. Mary spent the last 25 years working for start-ups and global enterprises refining the best practices to understand what customers want, to craft clear messaging and winning stories that engage buyers, and to grow businesses and product lines to the ne...

In this episode, Nabeel and Phil are live from Hawaii at PTC’23 with industry veteran Ilissa Miller. Ilissa is CEO and Founder of iMiller Public Relations, an award-winning Public Relations and Marketing consultancy firm supporting the global digital infrastructure industry, and a longtime partner and ambassador of the Nomad Futurist Foundation.   Ilissa comes from a family in the m...

In this episode, Nabeel and Phillip are joined by Chris Downie, an experienced Chief Executive Officer with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. Chris is currently CEO of Flexential but has been in the data center business for 16 years. Prior to that, he was in the emerging technology domain as a CFO. Phillip asks if Chris’s personality is what dro...

In this episode, Nabeel Mahmood and Philip Koblence are joined by Susanna Kass, a computer scientist and thought leader in cloud sustainability with a passion for reaching carbon neutrality.   As a young girl from Hong Kong, living at boarding school in London, Susanna became intrigued by computers and programming. Nabeel inquires what the turning point was that made  her realize sh...

As the year comes to a close, Nomad Futurist Nabel Mahmood and Phil Koblence take time to reflect on the past twelve months; everything 2022 has brought to the Foundation and some predictions for what 2023 has in store.  2022 brought along incredible partnerships, sponsorships and podcast guests, all of which helped Nomad Futurist drive their message forward: “This was very much a year of bui...

Nomad Futurist is delighted to welcome Emma Grace Myers, sales representative for Honeywell Building Technologies in the Data Center Vertical, for a podcast episode focused on navigating the data center industry through the lens of the younger generation. Nomad Futurist had the pleasure of meeting Myers in Texas at a conference, and when we learned her story, we felt it fit in perfectly with what...

Nomad Futurist is delighted to welcome Carrie Goetz, a pioneering woman in technology, data center champion, and advocate for diversity, back for a second podcast episode focused on her timely and exciting new book —  Jumpstart Your Career in Data Centers.  Goetz’ impetus for writing the book maps closely to the reason Nomad Futurist was founded — to address a data center talent shortage...

In this thoughtful Nomad Futurist podcast, we learn how Dave Perez’s unusual background in Hotel and Restaurant Management laid the foundation for his wide-ranging technology career and experience in building construction across a broad set of industries including the critical infrastructure space, renewable energy, manufacturing, microelectronics, and life sciences. Perez grew up in a Cuban house...

Elya McCleave has been taking risks her whole life. In this fascinating Nomad Futurist podcast, McCleave shares her inspiring journey from Uzbekistan to Canada where she is now the Founder of Innovorg, a SaaS company dedicated to helping businesses optimize employee and customer success. McCleave’s journey was fueled by her vision and determination to actualize her potential. She discusses wi...