Bridging the digital divide

Kelley Dunne

Position: Chief executive officer of One Economy, a D.C.-based global nonprofit that delivers technology and information to low-income people.

Career highlights: Co-founder, chairman and chief executive, DigitalBridge Communications; executive vice president of operations, Verizon Avenue; vice president, One Point Communications.

Age: 45

Education: BS, Communications Systems Management, Ohio University; MS, Information and Communications Sciences, Ball State University.

Personal: Lives in Leesburg with his wife and three daughters.

As I started my career, I decided that if I was going to participate in society, I wanted to first do something to serve others. I joined the Army, where I was involved in rolling out some of the first digital wireless communication systems.

My experience in the Army became the foundation of all the success I enjoyed in my career. Being a lieutenant in the Army taught me accountability, leadership and teamwork.

I eventually joined a very small company that was delivering DSL technology to apartment communities across the country. We grew rapidly. I brought vision, leadership and execution and the ability to build a scalable business.

In 2000, when we sold it to Verizon, it became Verizon Avenue.

I began to see that as the world evolved more into a wireless one, we could create different business models to serve areas that were harder to reach.

I came up with a plan to do this and pitched it to Verizon. We began to take new technologies and apply them to a lot of underserved areas of the country such as Native American reservations, rural communities and inner-city low-income housing.

I had a woman in Idaho tell me that her options for employment went from one job to hundreds because of her ability to work from home after receiving broadband. It was a very powerful moment to know you had a small part to play in changing the economic opportunities of one household.

I decided to start my own company, DigitalBridge. We deployed new technologies in more than 14 markets in the past four years. We worked in cooperation with other partners in the industry to help figure out how to serve different parts of the country.

I've always been an admirer of One Economy. I love their approach to the market. I love the way they ran it like a business, created very collaborative public-private partnerships and focused on the holistic solution - not just access but content training and sustainability.

Here was an opportunity to bring wireless to underserved communities on a bigger scale with a very well-respected organization that has a long track record and is poised to do some fantastic things both domestically and globally.

I want to leverage my experience to bridge the digital divide. I have this fundamental philosophy of saying, "but for the grace of God, there go I." Just because I'm fortunate enough to live in a place that does have broadband, I'm very focused on areas that don't.

- Interview with Vanessa Mizell