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Executive Team

Gia McNutt, Chief Executive Officer, co-founder - SOS, Sacramento CAGia McNutt, Chief Executive Officer, co-founder
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  Lawrence McNutt, Chief Technology Officer, co-founder - SOS, Sacramento CALawrence McNutt, Chief Technology Officer, co-founder
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Jeff Palazzo, Director of Sales - SOS, Sacramento CAJeff Palazzo, Director of Sales
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  Rob Thornto, Business Practice Manager, Managed IT Services Business Practice - SOS, Sacramento CARob Thornton, Business Practice Manager, Managed IT Services Business Practice
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Mike Stewart, Business Practice Manager, Cisco Business Practice - SOS, Sacramento CAMike Stewart, Business Practice Manager, Cisco Business Practice
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  Tim Davidson, Business Practice Manager, Interactive Intelligence Business Pratice - SOS, Sacramento CATim Davidson, Business Practice Manager, Interactive Intelligence Business Practice
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Rick Warren, Business Practice Manager, Retail Business Practice - SOS, Sacramento CARick Warren, Business Practice Manager, Retail Business Practice
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  Patrick Wefers, Business Practice Manager, Carrier Services - SOS, Sacramento CAPatrick Wefers, Business Practice Manager, Carrier Services
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Linda Bradley, Human Resources & Operations Manager - SOS, Sacramento CALinda Bradley, Human Resources & Operations Manager
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  Keith Cosick, Director of Project Management - SOS, Sacramento CAKeith Cosick, Director of Project Management
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Gia McNutt, Chief Executive Officer, co-founder Gia McNutt is a expert in technology solutions for business. The company she co-founded in 1992, SOS, helps northern California organizations choose and use advanced communications technology to serve customers better, work smarter, and increase profits. Her staff of 43 serves a roster of 300+ clients, including the largest city travel and tourism web site in the world.

McNutt has served as an invited speaker at dozens of business leadership events. In 2006, she was a regional winner in Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year awards. Cisco Systems awarded SOS its Customer Service Excellence designation again in 2007. The Sacramento Business Journal named SOS one of Sacramento's 100 Fastest Growing Companies again in 2007, and Prosper magazine named one of Sacramento's Top Ten Companies to Watch. Client VEGAS.com recently received a national technology innovation award for an SOS-implemented solution.

Affiliations:
  • Big Brothers Big Sisters, Sacramento chapter - Board of Directors, Chair Elect
  • Sierra College CACT Board - member
  • Northern California Contact Center Group Steering Committee - member
  • American River College Foundation Board - past member
  • VentureTech Advisory Council - past member
  • VAR Business Advisory Board - past member
  • Cisco Commercial Channel Advisory Board - past member

McNutt holds a B.A. from Webster University.

Read about Gia McNutt in Prosper Magazine
Ask Gia McNutt a question about SOS services
Request a comment from Gia McNutt
Invite Gia McNutt to speak
Learn about careers at SOS
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Lawrence McNutt, Chief Technology Officer, co-founder Lawrence McNutt is co-founder and SOS' Chief Technology Officer. McNutt has personally guided 70 companies through deployment of solutions for converging voice, data, and business processes into one system. His teams have designed and implemented more than 200 state of the art advanced communications systems, connecting tens of thousands of users in dozens of states.

Projects have ranged from global IP contact centers to 10-person help desks with multimedia routing, custom IVR's, and CTI integration. His key innovation is development of migration strategies from TDM to IP telephony, which has been fundamental to SOS's success in converged communications. McNutt also has developed a methodology for teaching data engineers the voice business, and for teaching voice engineers the data business -- something not dealt with in schools.

McNutt has served on the Ingram Micro CTI Council, the NEC America VAR Council, and the Interactive Intelligence Advisory Council.

Certifications/Qualifications:
  • Telecommunications administration
  • Certification in Advanced Telecommunications
  • Cisco certified design associate
  • Cisco IP telephony design specialist
  • Enterprise voice-over-data design
  • NEC certified engineer
  • Interactive Intelligence certified systems engineer

McNutt holds a B.S. degree from California Polytechnic State University.

Read about Lawrence McNutt in CONVERGENCE
Ask Lawrence McNutt a question about SOS solutions and service
Listen to the Podcasts: SOS Clients share how Unified Communications works in the real world

 
Jeff Palazzo, Director of Sales Palazzo joined SOS's Sacramento headquarters in 2006. He has 24 years in telecommunications - 14 of them as an engineer. Previously, he was a Cisco Systems channel account manager for five years. Before that, he worked for 3Com - first on the technical side, and then in sales. Palazzo has an associate's degree in computer technology from American River College in Sacramento.

Certifications/Qualifications:
  • Cisco Sales Expert
  • Cisco Advanced IP Communications Sales Specialist
  • Cisco Security Sales Specialist

Read about Jeff Palazzo in CONVERGENCE
Ask Jeff Palazzo a question about SOS solutions and service
Stay up to date with email updates from SOS
Review the SOS IP Communications Checklist - Secrets of the Pros

 
Rob Thornton, Business Practice Manager, Managed IT Services Solutions Business Practice and Business Practice Manager, Microsoft Solutions Practice Rob Thornton, Business Practice Manager for the new SOS Managed Services Practice, knows computers from the inside out. Back in 1992 he went to work for a used-computer retailer, where he learned how to part out and refurbish mainframes and dumb terminals.

Soon his focus expanded to managed services for messaging and financial systems, as well as server and desktop support. That introduced Thornton to the consulting and networking side of the business, and the whole area of teaching business applications.

In 1999, he was hired at SOS. In time, Thornton took over the service manager job at SOS, then moved to heading the Microsoft Business Practice. He became the Cisco Business Practice Manager in 2004. He became head of the new Managed Services Practice in 2007 and continues to oversee the Microsoft Business Practice from Sacramento, CA.

Read about Rob Thornton in CONVERGENCE
Ask Rob Thornton about SOS Managed IT solutions
Ask Rob Thornton about SOS Microsoft solutions

 
Mike Stewart, Business Practice Manager, Cisco Solutions Business Practice Mike Stewart is one of SOS's senior Cisco resources. In 2007, he took over as the Cisco Business Practice Manager in Sacramento, CA. The business practice managers at SOS spend about 70 percent of their time engineering, and 30 percent managing and mentoring the other members of their teams. It's up to the BPM to develop and enforce best practices, and lead by example.

Stewart has been with SOS for six years, but has been in the telecom industry since 1981. In addition to his decades of experience installing PBX and Key telephone systems, he has been the lead engineer on VOIP projects of all sizes.

Certifications/Qualifications:
  • Cisco CIPT 3.0
  • Cisco DQOS
  • Cisco IPCC Express
  • Cisco IPTT
  • CCIE Voice Written

Ask Mike Stewart about SOS Cisco solutions
Generate a free custom network reference design with Cisco's Solution Designer Tool
Review the White Paper: Achieve Security without Breaking Your IT Budget - from SOS and Cisco
Generate a network design with Cisco Solution Designer Tool - from SOS and Cisco

 
Tim Davidson, Business Practice Manager, Interactive Intelligence Solutions Business Practice Tim Davidson is Business Practice Manager of Interactive Intelligence Solutions technology for SOS. He sets standards for how SOS will implement new products, documents those standards and trains the staff on installations to ensure consistency.

Davidson has been working with computers for over two decades - beginning with programming games on a Commodore 64. He earned an A.S. degree in Business Administration with extra course work in accounting, and then worked as an application developer of medical software company Medsoft. He moved on to become a network engineer for the Criminal Information Sharing Alliance and a network consultant for COM-NET Technical Services. He joined SOS's Sacramento headquarters in 2001.

Read about Tim Davidson in CONVERGENCE
Ask Tim Davidson about SOS Interactive Intelligence solutions
Review the Business Brief: Defining the Benefits of IP and Multimedia in the Contact Center - Secrets of the Pros
Review the Whitepaper: How to Evaluate Contact Center Solutions - from SOS and BenchmarkPortal

 
Rick Warren, Business Practice Manager, Retail Business Solutions Practice Rick Warren is Retail Business Practice Manager at SOS. Any issues related to small business or legacy telephone systems are handled by Warren; in addition, he is responsible for staff development, best practice and standards development and implementation. Warren assembled the nationwide network of subcontracting companies that SOS works with to complete national projects such as the one for its client with 250+ groceries across the U.S.

Warren's IT career began in the mid-1990s with a telecommunications integrator. Early on, he worked on NEC legacy telephone systems, but moved into computer-telephony integration when he joined SOS's Sacramento, CA headquarters in 1999. Warren holds an associate's degree in applied sciences.

Read about Rick Warren in CONVERGENCE
Ask Rick Warren about SOS solutions for retailers
Review the SOS IP Communications Checklist - Secrets of the Pros
Review the White Paper: Achieve Security without Breaking Your IT Budget - from SOS and Cisco

 
Patrick Wefers, Business Practice Manager, Carrier Solutions Practice Heading SOS's Carrier Services Division is Patrick Wefers. He brings 15 years of telecommunications experience to the job, starting at AT&T in equipment sales.

After five years he moved over to the carrier side of the industry. He has since worked in sales, engineering, operations and management AT&T, MCI/WorldCom and XO Communications. Through the Carrier Services division at SOS, Wefers helps clients work with their communications service providers, acting as a broker and directly representing SOS clients with more than 30 different carriers.

Read about Patrick Wefers in CONVERGENCE
Ask Patrick Wefers about SOS carrier services

 
Linda Bradley, Human Resources & Operations Manager Linda Bradley manages the logistics of the warehouse and inventory, purchases of all the products used at SOS, payroll, and facilities. In addition, as human relations manager, she acts as liaison between operations and accounting.

Bradley retired from United Airlines in 2005 as the general manager of customer service for the Sacramento metro area, and earlier held several management posts with United in San Francisco. She also spent several years with Creative Touch Interiors, a subsidiary of Home Depot, as the senior operations manager.

Learn about careers at SOS

 
Keith Cosick, Director of Project Management As Director of Project Management, Keith Cosick sets up the processes that make SOS implementations go smoothly. His team validates the scope of time and materials needed and sets up the plan.

Cosick joined SOS in February 2007 after a decade with Intel Corp., most recently as a global account manager. Earlier he had been the channel integration manager for Intel Online Services. Cosick earned his associate's degree in social science from Butte Community College in northern California.

Certifications/Qualifications:
  • Business Continuity Professional by the Disaster Recovery Institute

Read about Keith Cosick in CONVERGENCE
Ask Keith Cosick a question about SOS solutions and services
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