181 Millennium - Twenty-first Edition SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING Gurden G. “Jerry” Stevens Jr. is an engineer with more than 15 years of experience in broadband and fiber projects. Since 2025, he has been the director of engineering at Essentia Inc., a provider of infrastructure solutions for the telecommunications industry. Mr. Stevens attended Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, before beginning his career, and he emphasizes the importance of his early entrylevel positions in helping him develop as a professional. In 2011, Mr. Stevens joined Awesome Engineering as a project manager, rising to become principal and a lead ISP/OSP project manager in 2014. He left the company in 2016 to become a market operations manager for Genesis Networks Enterprises’ Google Fiber’s Nashville expansion project and went on to accept a position as manager of OSP planning and engineering for United Communications the following year, kicking off his five-year tenure with the company. Mr. Stevens briefly worked as a freelance engineering consultant until being named director of fiber and FTTx at unWired Broadband in 2023, departing to accept his current role with Essentia. As the company’s director of engineering, he focuses on residential fiber hyperscaling projects, including data center and local utilities partnerships to expand its reach and ensure that corporate performance metrics are met. Reflecting on his career, he identifies his work on the Tidewater construction project, which connected more than 860 miles of infrastructure, as his proudest accomplishment. He is passionate about the role of broadband connectivity in accessibility and creating economic opportunities, and he hopes to use his industry position to further expand access. Mr. Stevens attributes his success to the support of his wife and is grateful for the opportunities to travel that the industry has afforded him. In his personal time, Mr. Stevens lives on a farm in his native Tennessee with his wife and enjoys agricultural and technical projects. GURDEN G. “JERRY” STEVENS JR. DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING Essentia Inc. Petersburg, TN
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