New at the Top: Dave Rennyson

Position: President of Angel.com, a McLean-based provider of on-demand voice applications.

Career Highlights: Vice president of sales, Angel.com; vice president of sales and of marketing and partnership, Spirent Communications; director of complex services staff, Bell Atlantic.

Age: 39

Education: BA, economics and history, James Madison University; MSc, College of Engineering and CS, University College London; MBA, Duke University Fuqua School of Business.

Personal: Lives in Centreville with hi s wife, Lisa, and their three children: Katelyn, Callie and Jay.

How did you get to where you are?

I remember one of the folks I delivered papers to told me years later, "I knew you would be successful one day when you actually came to my door to find out where we wanted our papers to be placed."

In college, an administrator pushed me to the technology area and helped me get an internship with a telecommunications company. An internship at Bell Atlantic allowed me to grow quickly. The company put me on trial assignments and gave me leadership and culture-based training to immerse me in its technology and operations. Then it put me in a leadership assignment where I had to supervise people with only one year of experience. Fortunately, I ended up being hired.

When Bell Atlantic moved its headquarters to New York, it became clear that to advance, I would have to move there. With my family and I already established, I didn't want to make that move. I began searching for a new position in the tech arena that was interesting and high-growth.

I got the bug, like a lot of folks at that time, and jumped to a start-up. We brought in top tech teams and grew at a pretty extraordinary pace, but when the telecom bubble burst, we sold the company off. I learned how to keep one eye on the finances as you grow a company.

I went to work for Spirent, another telecom. I was given many opportunities like designing solutions and account strategies for large telecom carriers. I learned how to build strong teams to achieve good results, which would translate greatly when I moved after six years to Angel.

Angel was the first job in a long time where I had unlimited possibilities. The product was Web-based and useful to people in more than 15 industries. Coming to this position with a marketing, sales, operations and engineering, telecommunications and technical background made it a perfect assignment.

-- Vanessa Mizell

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