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Tuesday, November 7, 2023
Maine faces a perfect storm of challenges in achieving digital equity.
Maine’s remote and rugged terrain makes the state one of the most complex and expensive to reach with digital infrastructure. As the state with the oldest population, many in Maine are not digital natives. Maine’s median household and per capita income lag far behind most other states. A majority of Mainers live in small, rural communities with limited resources. These forces combine to shape the challenging contours of the digital divide in Maine.
With the passage of the IIJA, the State created the Maine Connectivity Authority as a quasi-governmental entity to drive a proactive and nimble approach to achieve universal connectivity. The Maine Connectivity Authority will share our unique approach, focused on Projects, Places, and People and now layering in the values of urgency, universality, and digital equity.
This includes:
- “All In” approach: we put all solutions on the table, weaving together multiple funding sources such as Middle Mile, BEAD, DE, CPF, ARPA, state funding, private fundraising
- One integrated Broadband Action Planning process in early 2023, acknowledging the linkage between BEAD and Digital Equity funding streams and Maine’s history of community-driven broadband solutions.
- Investment in the ecosystem, enabling a broad range of stakeholders and partners in planning and implementation
- Strategies for sustainability, including raising a Digital Equity Fund and proactively identifying infrastructure projects and funding resources.
Building from a strong foundation of community driven infrastructure planning and development in a pre-pandemic era, MCA seeks to foster a healthy ecosystem of organizations to inform and support connectivity solutions to meet the needs of all communities amidst the wave of federal recovery, relief and infrastructure funding. The Get Ready program, Regional and Tribal Broadband Partners program, Digital Equity Task Force, and ACP4 ME are examples of investing in organizational capacity to fuse digital equity and infrastructure development.
Moderator
Tanya Emery serves as the Economic Development Director for the Maine Connectivity Authority. She serves as MCA’s lead for the BEAD program and provides leadership to advance the State’s connectivity and economic development goals. Tanya graduated from Trinity College (CT) with a degree in Political Science with honors and was a President’s Fellow. In the early part of her career, Tanya worked across the US for a start up in the telecom industry. After returning to Maine, she transitioned to work in economic development and then spent more than 20 years as a local and regional development leader.
Panelists
Marijke Visser is Director of Library Development at the Maine State Library (MSL). As Director, Marijke is responsible for the overall vision of the department and the delivery of direct services to libraries of all types, including public, K12 and academic, and special libraries. She leads a team of Specialists who provide professional development opportunities for Maine’s 255 public libraries with an emphasis on ensuring library staff at all levels are equipped with skills to provide equitable services for their communities. Prior to coming to MSL, Marijke spent twelve years at the Public Policy & Advocacy Office of the American Library Association where her portfolio focused on digital equity and inclusion, including broadband access and adoption and the federal E-rate program. Marijke’s work on the E-rate program successfully raised the profile of tribal libraries which led to significant changes to the program and an increased emphasis on addressing barriers to broadband access for those libraries. Marijke also led several national initiatives that explored the role of libraries in promoting innovative approaches to education and informal learning as well as workforce and small business development. She brings her deep knowledge of rural communities, broadband, and digital inclusion to her work in Maine. Marijke serves on the Maine Connectivity Authority Digital Equity Task Force. Most recently she oversees the $2 million “Remote Work through Libraries” initiative to expand the capacity of Maine’s public libraries to provide targeted resources, services and physical space to support remote and hybrid workers across the state. The initiative is made possible through a collaboration with the Department of Economic and Community Development and the Maine Jobs & Recovery Plan.
As Island Institute’s Chief Policy Officer, Nick provides proactive and strategic policy support for work across the organization, providing strategic support to our project teams, and increasing our effectiveness in engaging policy makers.
He helps teams identify and take advantage of opportunities to help set the policy agenda at the state and federal level; identify changes to government policy, funding, or regulations that would be further identified community outcomes and help achieve organizational impact targets; he also helps teams engage in the implementation policy so that it better accounts for the concerns of island and coastal communities.
Nick was the Chair of the ConnectMaine Authority board, the State’s legacy quasi governmental broadband agency and predecessor to the significantly more robust Maine Connectivity Authority. He has long been active in the leadership of the Maine Broadband Coalition is currently its board chair.
Nick has his Juris Doctor from Roger Williams University School of Law, a Masters in Marine Affairs from the University of Rhode Island, and his bachelor’s degree from Colby College. Nick lives with his wife and daughter in Camden.
Maggie Drummond-Bahl serves as the Strategic Partnership Director for the Maine Connectivity Authority, a position she has held since May 2022. In this role, Maggie leads the team focused on building local and regional capacity to support broadband and digital equity, strengthening partnerships with state agencies and policy makers, and working with non profits and funders in the effort to close the digital divide in Maine. Over the course of the past year, Maggie helped lead the outreach and engagement effort for the combined process to develop Maine’s 5-Year Action Plan and Digital Equity Plan. She is the author of Maine’s Digital Equity Plan, which was the first in the nation to be submitted to NTIA. Prior to joining MCA, Maggie led initiatives at the Maine Community Foundation to advance broadband, digital equity, entrepreneurship and innovation. She holds a BA from Colby College.
Kerem Durdag, as executive leader of people and companies bringing out the best of their talents and aspirations, has over 30 years of experience directing world-class teams in the manufacturing and technology sectors. Currently he is Chief Executive Officer of GWI, a leading ISP/telco in Maine. Previously he served as the Entrepreneur-In-Residence for the Maine Technology Institute, a quasi-public loan and venture capital entity. He was the CEO of a start-up (in the sensors market) leading it to growth and eventual acquisition by a public company. Another start-up he led (medical device and advanced materials) was sold in 2016 to a global Chinese company after he failed to sustain the growth trajectory. He has also been the CTO of a large US subsidiary of a public German semiconductor and optical media company and prior was the leader of the engineering department of an electronics company which went public (twice). He is also the Founder and Managing Partner of Indus Fund which provides micro-loans to immigrant business owners. With an inherent strong bias towards action, a long-time advocate for the inclusion of immigrant and refugee voices in societal conversation and extremely passionate about doing his part to close the economic and digital divide, Kerem also serves on several Boards and is a member of the Maine angel investing community.
Jeff Letourneau is the Executive Director of Networkmaine at the University of Maine System where he oversees the operation of Maine’s Research and Education network serving approximately 1,000 K-12 schools, public libraries, higher-education, research, and government institutions along with other non-profit entities in Maine.
Jeff has been involved with and led many network initiatives in Maine. These initiatives have included Maine’s first ever Internet connection in the late 1980s, Maine’s first Cable TV based broadband network in the early 1990s, and the first in the nation all inclusive K-12 school and public library network (MSLN) in the mid-1990s. In 2009 Jeff was the catalyst behind and co-author of the Federal BTOP middle-mile grant proposal that led to the creation of 1,100 miles of middle-mile fiber throughout Maine. In 2017Jeff co-founded a non-profit Internet Exchange, Northern New England Neutral Internet Exchange (NNENIX).
Most recently Jeff assisted the Maine Connectivity Authority in authoring a successful proposal to the NTIA’s Enabling Middle Mile Broadband Infrastructure Program that will create MOOSE (Maine Online Optical Statewide Enabling) Network a new, east-west 531 middle mile fiber optic route that will anchor the State’s strategic goal of providing universal broadband access.
A Series of State Case Study Virtual Workshops
Beginning in March of 2020, access to broadband became a social determinant of health, education, work, and economic security. The world realized that broadband Internet is a utility as essential as electricity and potable water.
While the federal government and many states have made a wise decision to provide billions in capital funding to achieve broadband equity, the tough part will be sustaining and maintaining (and, ideally evolving) these infrastructures over the next 5, 10, or 20 years.
With money going directly to states, territories, and indigenous Tribes, there are now 60 states and territories and 574 Tribal Nations, each organizing their own plan to implement broadband access and adoption in unique cultural, geographic, and demographic areas. This series will help you learn from some of the most progressive.