Howard Lowe
President - send an email

Howard Lowe is the Director of Economic Development at SUNY Plattsburgh, where he has headed the Technical Assistance Center (TAC), since June 2002. Mr. Lowe oversees TAC’s service areas, which include applied research for the northern New York tourism industry, consulting for local government on shared municipal services, and broadband infrastructure development. Mr. Lowe is a member of the CBN Connect Partnership Advisory Board.

Economic development is Mr. Lowe’s second career. He spent 30 years in the commercial and public broadcasting industry, and served as a senior manager with public television and radio stations in Sacramento, Long Island, Omaha, and Plattsburgh, New York, where he was president of the PBS station. He produced award-winning, nationally distributed public television and radio programs. He created one of the Internet’s first community portals, which received a national award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 1995.

Mr. Lowe sits on the boards of Adirondack Architectural Heritage, Adirondack North Country Association, and Lakes to Locks Passage. He holds a BA from Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, IL, an MS from Syracuse University in Television-Radio-Film, and an Executive MBA from the University of Nebraska at Omaha in International Marketing.

Julie West
Executive Director - send an email

Ms. West is the Executive Director and COO of CBN Connect, responsible for all day to day activities and planning for the corporation. This role includes technical development and oversight, tariffs, customer relations and marketing, partnership development, regulatory requirements, engineering management, and financial management. In this role, she works closely with communities, regional telecom service providers, telecom vendors, and CBN Connect consultants.

Prior to her role with CBN Connect, Ms. West t joined the staff at the Technical Assistance Center at SUNY Plattsburgh in November, 2006 in the role of Project Coordinator for CBN Connect. Over the prior 15 years she has held IT and telecommunications senior management positions on the local, national and international levels. Her local work included management positions at SUNY Plattsburgh and CVPH Medical Center. In 1998, following six and a half years at CVPH during which she worked as the Manager of Customer Support and Manager of Technology and Telecommunications, she left healthcare for a position in manufacturing at Bombardier Transportation. Ms. West was the IT Manager for the US which included 26 sites throughout the country. Due to her expertise in telecommunications, Ms. West was asked to assume a global role to select an outsourcing partner to take over all IT operational responsibility for the company. She managed the telecommunications portion of the outsourcing process. Ms. West was promoted to Global Director of Telecommunications for the entire company with responsibility for all voice (land line, cellular, audio and video conferencing), LANS, WANS, B2B solutions, and wireless. In this role, Ms. West was responsible for the Bombardier WAN which connected 330 sites in 42 countries. Ms. West expertise in contract negotiations and cost reduction brought her to her final position with Bombardier as Global Director of IS Contracts and Licensure in which she was responsible for all IT vendor management for Microsoft, Dell, IBM, SAP, Oracle, HP, ATT, Verizon Business, British Telecom, T-Systems and many other international contracts as well as management of several million Euros in software licensure.

In addition to her role with CBN Connect, she is on the Board of Trustees of Mountain Lake PBS, serves on the US Broadband Coalition Implementation Committee, served on the New York State Broadband Council infrastructure action team, is a member of the New York State Wireless Association regulatory committee and is an active volunteer and club reporter for the Skating Club of Lake Placid.

Ms. West holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from SUNY Plattsburgh and is in the process of earning a MBA in Technology Management with the University of Phoenix.