The ‘Meet Mobilitie’ blog series explores the career journeys of Mobilitie employees. Mobilitie is a BAI Communications company.
In this part of the series, the featured team member is Paul Gerst, Senior Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, who has been with Mobilitie since 2017. Paul is the ultimate team player, offering legal advice as well as supporting project teams. When he’s not working on Mobilitie’s tower portfolio he can be found starting a new home improvement project.
Get to know more about Paul:
What is your role and responsibilities with Mobilitie?
As Senior Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, I provide legal advice and support to project teams for Mobilitie’s tower portfolio, including both traditional “macro” towers and small cells.
On a day-to-day basis, I answer a wide variety of legal questions such as – rights and obligations, as well as right-of-way access and pole attachment issues impacting our small cell locations.
Additionally, as Chief Compliance Officer, I provide legal support and advice for all regulatory compliance issues at the federal (FCC) and state levels related to development of towers, small cells and DAS venues.
What’s one thing you love about Mobilitie?
Here at Mobilitie, we are not only building networks together, we’re also building a business together. Nearly every day there is a new challenge that needs a solution, and we are able to use both creativity and collaboration to solve it together.
What’s one thing you’re proud of during your time at Mobilitie? Or, what’s been one of your favourite projects/deployments at Mobilitie?
My favourite projects usually include tower build agreements. Each new network build agreement is a plan, just like a set of drawings, and working with all the different Mobilitie departments to take each agreement from plan to completion – from zero to 250 sites for Bug Tussel, or from zero to 9000+ sites for the small cell portfolio – each one is exciting.
In your career, what have you found to be the biggest takeaway that you want others to know?
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. In order to truly accomplish your goal (or even learn that your team isn’t as efficient as it could be with getting a task done), it’s important to understand why things are done a certain way, what problem you’re trying to solve for and ask for clarification when needed. These are also great opportunities to learn something new. In fact, you might be surprised how often those around you have the same question.
Outside of work, what is something you enjoy doing in your free time? Or do you have a particular passion or hobby?
Outside of work I enjoy spending time with my family, whether it’s helping my daughter or son with their homework or just splashing in the pool. And while I wouldn’t consider it a “passion”, I have become quite skilled at repairing my kids’ Xbox controllers and RC race cars.
What would the perfect weekend consist of?
I do enjoy a long weekend home improvement project. Planning, budgeting, and building a DIY project, and then actually having it work and look good at the same time, is awesome. Except for plumbing – always call a plumber for those projects.
The opportunity is open: be the one who makes it possible. Join Mobilitie.
Source: Mobilitie
