Adam Waite

The first question I ever couldn't let go of was deceptively simple: how does energy leave one place and cause something to happen somewhere else, with nothing carrying it in between? I was a kid in Neenah with a CB radio, trying to understand the mechanism — not just that it worked, but why it worked.

RC cars deepened the obsession. Not because I liked driving them, but because the speed controller on my Big Brute Monster Truck was a mechanical marvel: a servo with a linkage attached to a disk of copper plates of different lengths, each connected differently to step up power to the motor in stages. I needed to understand every part of that chain. That compulsion — hold the thing, find the mechanism, understand it completely — has been the through-line of everything since.

I graduated Neenah High School in 1994 and enlisted in the Marine Corps on January 3, 1995. Three-plus years with 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines at Camp Pendleton — Field Radio Operator, eventually Sergeant and Platoon NCO. I ended up in the COC (Combat Operations Center) rather than carrying the radio in the field largely because I was one of the few people in my unit who could type. It was 1996. That wasn't common.

I used the advantage. I ran platoon records — PFT scores, rifle and pistol qualifications, swim quals, daily accountability reports from morning formation. I was the HAZMAT NCO, responsible for battery inventory and disposal. I managed the logistics and embarkation of all communications equipment, including sensitive crypto gear, for field exercises, training operations, and overseas deployments. I made sure the radios were working when they needed to be. EAS December 1998.

The Corps didn't give me my interest in radio communications — I walked in the door with that already. What it gave me was the discipline to be accountable for things that matter, and the understanding that reliability isn't an accident.

From Camp Pendleton I drove back to Wisconsin and walked straight into civilian wireless. Einstein PCS first — technically a NOCC technician, though there was no real NOCC, so it was whatever needed doing. I left as Senior Switch Tech, managing two switching centers. Then Alamosa PCS, a Sprint affiliate, where I helped build a CDMA network from the ground up — constructing the switch, bringing the first cell sites on air. That's when I understood I wasn't just fixing systems anymore. I was building the infrastructure.

I earned a Telecommunications Specialist Certificate from Fox Valley Technical College during those years, formalizing what I was learning on the job while the industry was still being invented. What followed was the consolidation wave that defined 2000s telecom in miniature: Alamosa PCS, Nextel Partners, Sprint Nextel, Sprint, Ericsson, Sprint again, T-Mobile. The names changed with every acquisition. The work — understand the signal, find why it's not where it should be, fix it — stayed the same.

The most interesting chapter was the Ericsson years after 2016, when I moved into the Engineering Excellence team rather than follow the engineering function back to Sprint. The work was process improvement: applying Six Sigma methodology to the cell site on-air workflow, solving operational problems for one customer and engineering the solution to scale across others. It was a different kind of problem than RF — more organizational than physical — and I'm glad I stayed for it.

I'm now at T-Mobile, where I came over through the Sprint acquisition in 2020. The focus is 5G New Radio — designing, testing, and optimizing network infrastructure, with particular attention to electromagnetic interference. The physics hasn't changed. The frequencies and the protocols have.

In 2019, my friend Eric Brehm and I co-founded Cre8lab in Neenah — the Fox Valley's only nonprofit makerspace. We built out the physical space ourselves, built the classroom, and started running STEM workshops: soldering circuits, woodworking, CNC, electronics, robotics. The idea was simple: give kids in the Fox Valley a tangible way to experience science and technology — not as abstract classroom material but as a thing you can hold, break, and fix. I hoped to spark the same kind of curiosity that a CB radio sparked in me.

We started two weeks before COVID shut everything down. We managed through it, donated 28,000 ear savers to frontline workers while we were at it, and kept running for five years. We ran it well enough that the demand eventually outgrew what two people with demanding careers and families could carry without additional help — and after COVID, that help never fully materialized. We made the decision to close rather than run it poorly.

I'm proud of every kid who came through that door. I'm proud of what Eric and I built from nothing, and I'm proud of the decision to stop on our terms.