March is National Reading Month, so we took a little detour from our normal coverage to ask 10 leaders in the broadband industry about their favorite nonfiction and fiction books.
Our book recommenders represent a mix of industry associations, state broadband offices, and private companies.
Here’s what they said, in alphabetical order by their first names.
Brian Newby
Newby is the state broadband program director of North Dakota and has shared his perspectives from the state level with Telecompetitor on multiple occasions.
Nonfiction: Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad, Competing for the Future. Newby told us the story of how the book changed his life during his early days in broadband. “Way back before same-day delivery, I ordered that book, and it happened to arrive at my house the night before major layoffs were going to be announced at Sprint. I wasn’t able to go to sleep, and I read that entire book that night. The next day, most of the wholesale division staff was part of the layoff and those of us left felt like it was a matter of time before Sprint exited the wholesale business. That book provided inspiration for all of us to demonstrate to the industry that Sprint was committed to the reseller market despite the unrest. That uprising was the start of the business trending up from about $550 million in 1995 to more than $1.5 billion annually in 2000.”
Fiction: Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time. Newby said he doesn’t read a lot of fiction these days, but A Wrinkle in Time is one of his favorites.
Chris Lovell
Lovell is the chief growth officer at CLtel in Clear Lake, Iowa. He is also the co-founder of Operation IFAST, which encourages and equips broadband providers to fight sex trafficking.
Nonfiction: Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning. “This is one of the most powerful books I’ve ever read,” Lovell said. “I read it during my daughter’s battle with cancer, and Frankl’s perspective as a Holocaust survivor helped frame that entire experience for me. As he quotes Nietzsche: ‘He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.’”
Fiction: C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Lovell says Aslan “may be my favorite fictional character of all time,” and said Aslan’s sacrifice and return is particularly powerful, “knowing the deeper allegory Lewis intended.”
David Zumwalt
Zumwalt is the president and CEO of WISPA–Broadband Without Boundaries, which promotes and supports the wireless broadband industry.
Nonfiction: Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West. Powell recognized that, because of water scarcity, the American West couldn’t be settled with the same methods as the American East. “Local conditions must dictate local solutions,” Zumwalt said, relating the book to the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program: “It took a change in administration to reimagine how broadband deployment could be solved in shorter time, for less money, with all technologies at the table.”
Fiction: Tony Hillerman, the Leaphorn and Chee series. Zumwalt said these books showed him that “no monolithic approach can solve for every situation.”
Derrick Owens
Owens is the senior vice president of government and industry affairs at WTA, an association representing the interests of rural broadband providers.
Nonfiction: The Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World. “The two talk about how they found joy even through the hardships and struggles they experienced throughout their lives,” Owens said, adding that he has given the book to many friends over the years.
Fiction: John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath. “This book is a classic,” Owens noted. “The Joad family lose their farm as a result of the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression. They travel west in search of a better life and opportunity, all the while enduring tremendous hardships and hostilities along the way. Ultimately, they find community and persevere.”
Garret Yoshimi
Yoshimi is the vice president for information technology and CIO at the University of Hawaii. In that role, he oversees the administration of Hawaii’s BEAD Program funds.
Nonfiction: Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs. Yoshimi said Isaacson’s biography is “balanced, given all the polarized opinions on Steve Jobs, including his personal drive for excellence before everyone fully recognized his genius.”
Fiction: Pat Lencioni’s series including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, The Ideal Team Player, The 6 Types of Working Genius, and The Advantage. Yoshimi said that, while these books are technically fiction — presented by Lencioni as “business fables” — they are “true to life, sometimes painfully so.”
Gary Bolton
Bolton is the president and CEO of the Fiber Broadband Association.
Nonfiction: Ray Dalio, Principles, The Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fall, and How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle. “I read everything Ray Dalio writes,” Bolton said.
Fiction: Amor Towles, Rules of Civility. Bolton said he enjoys anything written by Towles and also loves Ken Follett’s trilogies.
Joan Engebretson
Joan is the former managing editor and current editor-at-large of Telecompetitor. (Thank you, Joan!)
Nonfiction: Landon Jones, Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation. Joan told us, “Written in 1982 when Baby Boomers were still young, it delves into demographic statistics to explain all sorts of phenomena related to that high-birth-rate generation — from the crime wave of the 1970s to a drop in SAT scores.”
Fiction: Anything in William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor series. “Cork is a part-white, part-Ojibwe detective in rural Minnesota,” Joan said. “Great cast of characters, including his wise mentor who lives on the nearby reservation. If you like Dark Winds, you’ll like this.”
Mike Romano
Romano is the new CEO of NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association as of March 15. Shortly after he was named the next CEO of NTCA, Romano joined Telecompetitor for an interview on how he’ll approach the broadband industry’s challenges. He shared his favorite books a few weeks later.
Nonfiction: Stephen Ambrose, Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America’s Western Wilderness.
Fiction: Stephen King, The Stand. “I’m a sci-fi nerd at heart,” Romano admitted.
Shirley Bloomfield
Bloomfield stepped down from her role as CEO of NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association on March 15, but we got her book recommendations before she left.
Nonfiction: Doris Kearns Godwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Bloomfield said this one was an easy choice.
Fiction: Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See. Bloomfield said this choice was tougher, but it’s “the last one that touched me.”
Tim Bryan
Bryan is the CEO of NRTC, which provides advanced technology solutions to rural broadband providers. NRTC is also the parent company of Pivot, which publishes Telecompetitor. Bryan will step down as CEO of NRTC later this year.
Nonfiction: Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. Bryan said he also enjoys Lewis’ books Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game and Liar’s Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street. Bryan’s honorable mention is Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
Fiction: Any of John Grisham’s novels. “I feel a little sheepish because these are all beach reads,” Bryan said. “But so be it! They were all fun and easy to read.”
