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Linda Manchester, a twenty-five-year executive veteran and manager who has worked at some of the industry's most prestigious and influential companies, saw the evolution of telecom technology firsthand. Now she's the founder and so far sole employee of Essential Solutions, LLC (Belle Mead, NJ), helping businesses optimize the latest in communications, software and hardware technologies. "I always dreamed of having my own business," she says.
The constantly changing field of telecommunications inspired her decision. "I asked myself, 'Do I want to keep on doing what I'm doing for one large company after another, or do I want to start something new?'"
Development and engineering
Essential Solutions, which Manchester launched late last year, offers development and engineering solutions for telecom companies across the U.S. and Canada. She helps companies simplify their operations and move up to next-generation systems and processes to reduce their operating expenses. Her services include solution engineering, product lifecycle management, program management, simplified network ops and technology migration support; she's had managerial experience in all these areas over her career.
It all began when a former boss who is now co-owner of Tekmark Global Solutions, LLC (Edison, NJ), a privately held provider of IT, communications and consulting services, asked her to start a company of this type. Tekmark is now a minority shareholder in Essential Solutions and also offers Manchester strategic support.
Focused on telecom
Manchester's entire career has been focused on telecom. When she was a high school senior in Connecticut, her school acquired its first computer. "I saw it coming out of the box but I never got to use it," she says. She did get to do a lot of math and science, and her dad was an ME.
At college, "I picked a CS major because it sounded interesting," she says. "I didn't knowing anything about computers; I lucked into it."
She got her 1982 BSCS from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Worcester, MA) and her MSCS from the University of Southern California in 1983.
Research at AT&T
Then she joined the tech staff of AT&T Bell Labs in Holmdel, NJ, starting with a nine-month research internship in image display technology. Her group was developing a picture archive and communication system for hospitals.
"I was the developer who did the display technology. It was cool, debugging my code. It was neat and fun to work in that environment," Manchester says.
Manchester moved on to lead systems engineer, architect and software developer. From 1986 to 1988 she managed a team of developers responsible for the first release of CommView, a medical imaging system which Lucent later sold to Phillips.
Interested in AT&T's core business, she accepted the post of tech manager for mechanized loop test systems, working in Liberty Corner, NJ. These were test systems for offsite phone-line diagnostics, "not as snazzy as medical equipment" but still interesting. She tailored the system for the Asian market, and it won a contract in China with Wuhan Telecom.
In 1994 Manchester became business manager for AT&T's Advanced Technologies Systems Group (San Ramon, CA).
Taking off with DSL
Next she moved to business management and strategy director for Access Networks (Whippany, NJ), a Lucent business, and led Lucent's initial exploration of DSL broadband. Access was involved with standard voice traffic. She was sure that DSL would take off, "but I did not understand how quickly, and how much it would change day-to-day lives."
Her job was in global product management, the first tier after the sales force to speak with customers and resolve their issues.
She became VP of cross-product marketing and support in 2000, with a fifty-member team of tech pros who managed and resolved field quality issues and provided tech sales support.
She took an interesting trip that year: to Hollywood to join a panel discussion on the future of DSL for The Next Wave, a TV series about emerging technologies hosted by Leonard Nimoy, aka Mr Spock of Star Trek fame. "He was a nice MC, and I had my twenty minutes of fame," Manchester recalls with a laugh.
More businesses
From 2001 to 2002 Manchester was VP/GM of Lucent's universal gateway business (Whippany, NJ). The company had acquired Ascend, a business which handled remote access servers: modem pools used to gain access to the Internet. Manchester, with a team of about 300, had complete responsibility for R&D, product management, testing and support.
From 2002 to 2004 she was sales VP of Lucent's network operations software business (Murray Hill, NJ).
From there Manchester moved to global product management VP for Lucent's Access business, which had grown to a half-billion dollar company. She managed the financial objectives of the business and set tech priorities for broadband DSL, IP line access gateway and the next-gen multi-services access platform.
And then she started Essential Solutions, LLC.
Manchester has enjoyed her role of pioneering leader in DSL technology, and she's looking forward to building Essential Solutions. "I am happy with my career track," she says.
"It has been a great experience to be involved in so many things!"
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