Ayme Pointer - President and Director of Strategic Planning
As a Senior Decision Support Analyst consultant in the US Defense Space Intelligence and reconnasissance industry, Ms. Pointer holds a degree in Industrial Psychology from Longwood University and an international certification in Facilitation from the International Association of Facilitators. She has served on the FCAC Board of Directors (BOD) since 2006 in the capacity of Director, Secretary, Director for Strategic Planning, and Chairman of the Board. Through gracious collaborative participation from FPA staff, members, and BOD leadership, Ms. Pointer delivered the approved FPA strategic plan and has been instrumental in helping to organize the strategic implementation process. Ms. Pointer aspires for the FPA Board of Directors to: be recognized as an entity that responds to, serves, and supports its members and employees; be the alliance members and employees seek, admire, and trust; provide FPA with the tools to be successful; and to serve transparently and productively.
Outside of FPA, Ms. Pointer is an active volunteer firefighter, produces the 21st Century Leadership and iCook television programs, teaches at George Mason University Volgenau School of Engineering, and is a Toastmasters International District 29 Area Governor. Ms. Pointer owns a successful mediation company in Virginia, Mediation Made Easy, serves on Revolution Rock Music School's Advisory Board, is an extreme sports photographer for Snappy Street Photography, and a publisher of The Desktop Encyclopedia for Faciliation - ISBN 978-0-9817040-0-5.
Jim Housel - Vice President & Director of Internal Affairs
James Housel, Vice President, is an intellectual property attorney with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Jim joined FPA with his son in 2004, and is certified as in all areas of television production. He has volunteered on a number of television programs, including both taped and live. He was appointed to the Board in 2005, and served two years as a Director, the last of which he served also as the Secretary. In 2007, Jim was again appointed to the Board and was then elected Vice President. As Vice President, Jim is in charge of Internal Affairs, working as liaison between the Board and FPA management. In addition, Jim chairs FPA’s Operations Committee, which makes monthly equipment purchase decisions to support station operations. In addition to Jim’s service to FPA, he is Secretary to the Board of the Foundation for the Children of Vietnam, an international children’s charity, where he also served as co-founder and President. In addition, prior to that service, Jim was the Director of International Relief for the Latin American Parent’s Association. Jim holds a BS degree in Chemical Engineering, an MS in Systems Engineering, a law degree from the George Washington University School of Law, and is licensed to practice in Virginia.
Bob Giarrusso - Secretary and Director of Membership
Bob Giarrusso has been co-host of a weekly series on Channel 10 since 2006, and joined the FCAC Board of Director in 2007. He brings more than twelve years of experience as an attorney to help ensure that FPA observes relevant contracts and agreements that govern FPA's obligations to the community, its members, and its supporters to provide high quality programming and to improve FPA's outreach and diversity. Mr. Giarrusso is a graduate of the Catholic University's Columbus School of Law, and has a background in communications law, as well as experience working directly with the Federal Communications Commission and NTIA in examining public service, law enforcement, and emergency communications policy. He is currently serving as the Director of Membership, and hopes to enhance the communications within our organization to heighten FPA's transparency and responsiveness to the needs of the staff, members, and community of interests whom we serve in Northern Virginia.
Steve Mullen – Treasurer and Chairman of the Finance Committee
As a Certified Internal Auditor and Certified Cost Analyst, Mr. Mullen serves the FPA Board of Directors as its Treasurer and Chairman of the Finance Committee. Steve has a MS in Industrial Management and a BS in Accounting, and is a Senior Systems Analyst for Coleman Research Corporation. He served as an officer in the Air Force Officer for over 22 years, principally in financial management, program management, budget, cost analysis, and audit. Steve previously served on the Board of Directors for a Non-Profit in Illinois, with the last 3 Years as Chairman. His experience with FPA Channel 10 includes contributing to "Sports Scope" (starting in 1997), initially on audio and camera, then as Co-Host and Assistant Producer, Editor, and Occasional Director. He also worked on "Fantasy Football Review" as Director and Editor; "Non-Profit Network" as Editor; and assisted in numerous other Studio and Field Production Shoots at Channel 10 in earlier years. He has worked at radio and television stations in Colorado and Illinois with sportscaster play-by-play experience in football, basketball, baseball and ice hockey at both high school and college level. He also worked as sports director and sportscaster with Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS).
Georgia Bridgman Graves– Director and Immediate Past President
Georgia Graves is proud to serve as President and CEO of Bridgman Communications, Inc. a company which she started and is celebrating its 25th year of business excellence. The firm has consistently delivered superior 24 hour 7 day a week service to the business community in the Washington Metropolitan Area by selling, installing, and maintaining business telephone systems, voice mail systems and related products.
Bridgman Communications delivers the newest IP Technology products that link corporate business centers to remote users and offices seamlessly as though they were all under one roof.
The company has over 2,000 customers with product sales, support and service for Mitel-Inter-Tel, Samsung, and Allworx. Bridgman Communications has successfully supported over the years such products as Avaya, Nortel, NEC, 3Com, and Toshiba. The firm maintains an extensive inventory to support older products in the marketplace and has developed and supplier network to keep customer discontinued systems fully functional.
Over the last 25 years, the company’s community affiliations have included support of many nonprofit organizations by providing community resources, sponsorships, donations, and employee man-hours to groups like: The Council for the Arts of Herndon, Gabriel Homes, Alhambra House, Herndon Community Television-Channel 23, Fairfax Public Access Channel 10, 30 and 37 and projects for the Washington Dulles International Airport Rotary.
Key participation has been provided on many levels to: Committee for Dulles, The Greater Reston Chamber of Commerce, The Herndon and Dulles Regional Chambers of Commerce, The Fairfax Chamber of Commerce and the Loudoun Chamber of Commerce.
Georgia Graves, a graduate of Leadership Fairfax, the Class of 1995, has committed her corporate and personal time as well to these organizations and has been proud to have held the key position in several of these organizations over the years including Chairman of The Greater Reston Chamber of Commerce (1997-98), President Committee for Dulles (1998-2000), President of the Washington Dulles International Airport Rotary (2007-08), and she is honored to serve as the President of Fairfax Public Access (2007-08).
Georgia hobbies include marching with her husband and daughter in one of the finest patriotic organizations in our country, the American Originals Fife & Drum Corps as the group’s Drum Major. She also works a few hours a week with a Junior Fife and Drum Corps at Linton Hall School.
Georgia is married to married to Mike Graves, and her daughter Anneliese is a junior at George Mason University; they live in Herndon.
Jim Southworth - Director of Technology Development
James B. Southworth – CTO, East by North Inc, Jim has been the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of East by North working many diverse and worldwide consulting projects for private industry, government agencies, including the law enforcement/security sectors, VC, and the broadband industry with “Hands-On” technical experience not just management.
In his almost forty years in the all forms of the telecommunications and computing industries, Jim has held technology management and technologist positions with such key established industry players as Concentric Network/XO Communications where he held the formal title of Sr. Director Advanced Networks Services and Technologies. His professional experience spans everything from operating system software and computer security to high-speed digital transmission facilities for the telephony network, digital video and the data world.
Jim is recognized internationally as an industry expert in various Internet access technologies such as TVoIP, VoIP, DSL, two-way satellite and wireless, as well as in leading edge security and enterprise applications. He has also been in several senior high security consultative roles including to US federal law-enforcement in the Washington, DC area as well as for Interpol in Lyon, France, both involving Internet security and anti-terrorist technologies and the Virtual Private Networks that support them.
Jim advises some of the most innovative and leading-edge entrepreneurial ventures in the industry today, serving on various Board of Directors and Advisory Boards interfacing with management and Venture Capital firms. He is also active in International not-for-profit industry standards setting including serving on the Board of Directors of the DSL Forum for four years. He is a frequent chairman, speaker or moderator at tradeshows, conferences, and summits. A respected Internet technologist in all the emerging technologies such as VoIP (Voice and Video over IP), he is known for his visionary technology leadership and strategy and has been recognized in EE Times as one of the twenty-one key “architects of the next generation of the Internet” in the world at that time.
Jim has also served on the board of directors and as an officer of numerous community and civic associations and corporations. His strong visionary leadership, management, and diverse cutting edge creative technical skills have won him several awards and honors locally and nation-wide. He was the very first recipient of the Broadband Forum “Circle of Excellence” award for his international work in deploying “High-Speed” internet world-wide.
Paul Porzio - Director of Public Relations
Paul Porzio has been serving as a Senior Management Consultant at BAE Systems, Inc. for the past six years. He has been responsible for supporting the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Integrated Document Production (IDP) Program Office, of the Department of Homeland Security in the production of the Permanent Resident Card (PRC) and the Employment Authorization Document (EAD) card. He has advised and assisted government staff on technology and production issues relative to these secure identification cards and credentials. He developed the initial program plan for the implementation of the new Card Personalization System Technology Refreshment System (CPSTR) to produce a new and improved PRC that was launched on May 10th, 2010. He developed and coordinated the CPSTR User Acceptance Test Plan for evaluation of the new system, conducted a number of the test cases during actual testing and prepared the test report.
Additionally Mr. Porzio has seventeen years of experience in NASA and DOD space program management including technology development, project management, process analysis, and launch range operations and technology planning. In the position of Advanced Developments Program Manager at NASA Headquarters he directed advanced development projects across five NASA centers. During this tenure he was NASA Headquarters lead manager for the project approval and management of the first US on-orbit demonstration of refueling a satellite from the Space Shuttle (Shuttle mission STS-41G). He also managed satellite on-orbit servicing technology developments and studies and advanced space suit developments. He was the NASA Headquarters manager (in then Code MT) for Pathfinder Demonstrations, a program of low cost flight demonstrations of improved Space Shuttle capabilities.
As Cape Canaveral Eastern Range Plans & Programs Chief he directed planning for range operations support (Radar, telemetry, optics, voice and data communications) for space launches from the Eastern Range, including Lead Range support of the Space Shuttle network.
As a USAF Systems Command HQ Systems Officer he coordinated satellite program acquisition activities, including obtaining Congressional approval for a multi-year procurement of DoD weather satellites.
Additionally he has ten years of experience in Federal and DOD acquisition policy analysis, program support, training development, and instruction. He was Professor of Systems Acquisition Management at Defense Systems Management College (USAF), and then went on to teach courses in Federal acquisition reform implementation across the United States.
Mr. Porzio is the producer of the “Eclectic Hours” radio show heard Sundays at 10 am on FPA’s Channel 10 (Radio Fairfax) and is co-producer of the syndicated public radio show “FM Odyssey” heard on 30 public stations across the country.
EDUCATION:
M.S.; Central Michigan University; 1989; Administration
B.E.; Stevens Institute of Technology; 1977; Mechanical Engineering
Air Command and Staff College (in residence), 1989 – 1990
As a member of the FCAC Board of Directors, Mr. Selim is serving as Secretary and as Parliamentarian. He served as Assistant to the Dean and Budgeting Assistant at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He also performed multiple roles for the Airways Engineering Corporation in Saudi Arabia. He served as the Cheif Administrator of Jeddah International Airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and the Assistant to the Project Director in Washington, D.C. Mr. Selim is currently in his second term as a member of the Board of Directors of Fairfax Public Access. He is also a member and past President of the Rotary Club of Falls Church, Vice President of the Greenway Downs Civic Association, and Commissioner of the Fairfax County Human Rights Commission (2008/2010). Mr. Selim is also the producer of the tv program Rotary Times which is a public service program about Rotary International and how it helps local, national, and world communities. This program has been on Channel 10 for over 18 years.
