Heidi Picher Dempsey is the Operations & Integration Manager for the GPO. Heidi has been a senior technical manager in communications networking for over 20 years and is a deputy department leader at BBN. She was hardware project manager for BBN’s first commercial IP router and quickly acquired system engineering expertise in planning, executing, and managing design and deployments for IP networks. Heidi was a project manager and engineer on the Terrestrial Wideband Network, the Defense Simulation Internet, the UK FatPipe, and other networks that served both research and government communities. Heidi also has extensive experience in public speaking at industry conferences and Internet standards meetings.

As a Director at Internet service provider Genuity (a BBN spin-off) until 2000, Heidi led development and fielding of new technology. She was responsible for creating multiple advanced services, including Genuity’s first managed VPN service, named best in industry by Network Computing magazine, and managed development from early research through operations and maintenance for deployed firewall and VPN services. Her organization of 150 systems and software engineers, distributed between D.C. and Boston, used prototype Internet voice, video, and security technology to share information and manage their projects. Heidi created the engineering department’s prototyping and quality assurance networked laboratory resources and procedures from scratch, improving product quality in the field, and making customer support easier. She also developed and deployed a trial quality-of-service network for customers such as Intel and Consolidated Edison.

As part of the founding group of engineers at a small civil engineering start-up team applying discrete event simulation modeling to building construction in 2000, Heidi continued to manage projects, support customers, and deploy web-based simulation services to a new industry. She has hands-on experience with all phases of technology development, from initial design through staffing the 24x7 hotline, and brings unique insight into the problems associated with designing, deploying, and supporting experimental systems, protocols, and equipment for large-scale systems that people depend on to do their daily work. She has a demonstrated ability to work effectively with researchers, students, commercial vendors, software developers, government sponsors, and anyone who plans mission-critical network activities. Ms. Dempsey is in demand as a BBN project manager for her ability to anticipate and resolve both technical and logistics issues associated with new network designs and deployments.

Heidi received her BS in Civil Engineering from MIT in 1982 and 1997 completed the MIT Sloan School, Greater Boston Executive Program (a one year program for senior managers).