Horizon Leadership Team Lance Black, President and CEO. As Chief Executive Officer, Lance is responsible for investor relations, strategic relationships as well as the day-to-day operations of the company, including technology, operations, sales and marketing. He has over a decade’s worth of experience leading IT services companies in an executive capacity, having founded the boutique managed hosting and colocation company, Mareechi, in 2000. Mareechi, having produced year over year revenue growth for a decade, was acquired by HDCS in June, 2009. Prior to his promotion to President and CEO, Lance served as Chief Technology Officer of HDCS. Before Lance founded Mareechi, he was a top performing National Accounts Manager at Computer Associates. He holds a BBA in Accounting from Midwestern State University.
David MacGrandle, CFO. As Chief Financial Officer, David MacGrandle leads all of Horizon’s financial activities. David has over 20 years experience with technology service providers. He was most recently Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President of Finance at Fusepoint where he played a significant role in Fusepoint exponential profitable growth eventually leading to it’s $124.5 million acquisition by Savvis. Prior to Fusepoint he was Chief Financial Officer of Masergy Communications. David held executive positions at EDS, CapRock Communications and Excel Communications where he was responsible in various roles for strategic planning, corporate development, business development and controllership. Mr. MacGrandle earned his Certified Public Accountant (CPA) designation in 1993 and his Certified Management Accountant (CMA) designation in 1995. He holds MBA and MSMAS from the University of Texas at Dallas and a BS degree in Applied Mathematical Sciences from Texas A&M University.
Chuck Smith, Founder, CMO & EVP. Chuck is a specialist in business development in the data center industry. Chuck has held positions as Director and Vice-President of sales for various data center organizations. Chuck is responsible for strategic relationships, marketing and sales.
Julie Middleton, Controller. Julie served Mareechi for over seven years as Operations Manager and Controller. She continues her role as Controller for Horizon and leads the Client Services team in its mission to achieve zero client turnover.
Jeff Crawford, Vice-President of Sales. MS Engineering Management. With over 10 years of direct sales and sales management experience in the telecom and data center space, Jeff leads the sales efforts for HDCS. Jeff comes to Horizon with a history of proven sales and sales management success, most recently at Internap, where he attended President’s Club in 2007 and 2008 before leaving in 2009 to join Horizon. Prior to his sales career, Jeff was a Master Training Specialist for the US Navy as part of the Naval Nuclear Power Program.
Jeff Kuerzi, Vice-President of Marketing and Sales Operations, MBA. With over fifteen years of traditional and digital marketing and advertising experience, Jeff leads the demand generation and marketing efforts for Horizon. Jeff has held Director and Vice-President positions with interactive media firms such as Centro, Belo Interactive, Knight-Ridder Digital and The Dallas Morning News.
Richard J. Nordberg, Jr., General Manager, Eastern Region. Richard is a proven leader with 20+ years experience in management, sales, business development, marketing, product development, consulting, and technical sales support. He drove these efforts for MCI WorldCom, VeriSign, InfoRelay and HostVentures. Richard also served as Industrial Engineer and Chief, Industrial Engineering for the US Army and USAF, respectively, over a combined 11 years.
Eric Carter, Managing Director of US Operations and Techology Solutions. Eric is the former Director of IT of Mareechi and leads Horizon Virtual IT and ITO outsourcing operations. Eric has certifications from Cisco and MIcrosoft. He and his team support over 100 managed-services clients.
Jeff Luetzow, Director of Technology. Jeff is a former VPIS of a Fortune 100 company and has spent his entire career of almost three decades servicing and supporting computer systems and their environments for organizations that manufactured computer systems. Starting as a Field Engineer and working his way to Global IT Operations, Jeff is uniquely qualified to manage the technical staff at HDCS.
Clark Huffstetler, Director of Data Center Facilities. Clark has managed or construction-managed over 1 million square feet of data center space in his twenty-five years in the industry. Clark brings Director level experience from EDS, SBC and Atos Origin to his role as data center operations over-seer.
James Mangus, Director of Service Delivery, RCDD, OSP, TPM. Jim has fifteen years of service delivery and program management experience. He is responsible for operations and service delivery for all Horizon data center colocation and managed hosting clients.
Brian Oravetz, Director of Government Services. Brian has fifteen years in the information technology industry, beginning his career as a solutions engineer for Bell South and most recently has worked with Software-As-A-Service product sets within the government and data center sectors.
