WSI has a strong Executive Management team in place and operates
out of Huntsville and Anniston in Alabama. The organizational structure
for 2007 is as follows:
Thomas P. (“Pat”) Hardeman,
Ph.D.
Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Pat Hardeman is the President, Chief
Executive Officer and Co-Founder of WSI. He provides strategic
direction to WSI, setting
established goals, objectives and policies. He reports to the Board
of Directors of WSI. Prior to WSI, he was a Manager of Boomhower
Realty (now Prudential) and a Partner in Phelps Hardeman Realtors,
owner of Sarasota Realty Exchange, Inc. Prior to that, he was Chief
Executive Officer of Community Service Foundation in Pinellas County,
Florida, an organization successfully carrying out many government
programs during the 1960’s in the area of literacy, self-help
housing, performing the first Vista training program in the United
States, and co-authoring early guidelines for the National Head
Start Program.
He holds a Masters and Ph.D. degree in Philosophy from the University
of Illinois and is a graduate of Murray State University, Kentucky.
Elysa
Jones
Engineering Program Manager
Elysa Jones holds a Master of Science Degree
in Computer Science from the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
She comes to the emergency management community after over twenty
years providing contractor support to the Army DoD missile defense
program. In that capacity, her work ranged from data reduction
and analysis of phased array sensor data to managing software support
for a large scale computer simulation facility. She was involved
in the early IEEE work that led to the TCP/IP standards. For the
past eight years, Mrs. Jones has been the Engineering Program Manager
for Warning Systems, Inc. in the design, development and deployment
of over 100,000 Tone Alert Radios and numerous software controlled
dissemination systems. In this capacity, she has served as a board
member for the Partnership for Public Warning, works closely with
the Emergency Interoperability Consortium and chairs the OASIS
Emergency Management Technical Committee. This committee developed
the first emergency data standard for communicating warnings, the
Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) as well as the Emergency Data Exchange
Language Distribution Element (EDXL-DE) for defining routing assertions
for any emergency data. In February 2006, she was awarded the first
annual Leadership in Emergency Interoperability Award granted by
the Emergency Interoperability Consortium.
Elysa has a Masters degree in Computer Science specializing in
Engineering Management from the University of Alabama, Huntsville,
Alabama and a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics also from
the University of Alabama.
Victor L. Cestaro, Ph.D.
Chief Engineer
Dr. Vic Cestaro came to WSI with more than 25 years of engineering
experience in the aerospace, broadcast, and digital systems industries.
He holds two patents and has published in several journals. Dr.
Cestaro holds a Bachelor of Science, Master of Arts, and Ph.D.
degrees from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Prior to joining WSI he was a research scientist
for the Department of Defense at Fort McClellan, Alabama where
he examined the use
of non-intrusive methods, such as thermal imaging and speech analysis,
to assess human physiological responses to stress. He also provided
expert witness testimony in this area. During his tenure at DoD
he received two awards for research excellence.
Dr. Cestaro is responsible for new product
design and development and provides ongoing technical assistance
in WSI’s Huntsville
and Anniston, Alabama facilities. He was also involved in the setup
and deployment of more than 30,000 Tone Alert Radios in the Alabama
CSEPP operation before joining WSI full-time.
Mr. Wade Griffin
Operations Manager
Wade Griffin is the Operations Manager of the
Anniston Office and joined WSI in 2003. He manages the CSEPP ToneAlert
Radio installation program. He is responsible for providing technical
guidance for county emergency management agencies in troubleshooting
transmitter equipment, oversight for the programming of TARS prior
to installation, and inventory management for all equipment in
the Company’s warehouse, preparing management reports to
the State of Alabama, county agencies and WSI’s management
and Quality Assurance.
Prior to joining WSI, he was Food Safety Coordinator
of Tyson Foods, Inc. from 1997 to 2000 and prior to that, he was
Employment Interviewer and Employment and Security Representative
for Department of Labor, State of Florida from 1993 to 1997. He
holds a Master of Arts degree in General Studies from Jacksonville
State University, Jacksonville, Alabama. He obtained a Bachelor
of Arts degree in political science from Jacksonville State University,
Jacksonville, Alabama.
Mr. Johnny Maplesden
Accounting Manager
Johnny Maplesden joined WSI in August of 2003 as an Accountant
in the Huntsville Office of WSI.
Prior to joining WSI, Johnny was employed by Intergraph Corporation
in Huntsville, Alabama, as an Accountant. Prior to that, he worked
for Kroger Company in Madison, Alabama as Assistant Customer Service
Manager. He obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting
in 1990 from Athens State College, Athens, Alabama.
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