Adis Vila Named Director

          Adis Maria Vila, J.D., MBA, has been named a director of MessageComm. Vila, along with VoIP pioneer Jeff Pulver and Midori Interactive CEO Noah Rafalko, will lead the new messaging trade association.
          MessageComm, which has applied for non-profit status, represents a wide variety of telecom industry participants, from carriers to large enterprises, registries to RESP ORGs. MessageComm is the only organization of its kind that is successfully corralling the combined enthusiasm and expertise of industry participants that have traditionally been in competitive rather than cooperative working relationships.
            Multicultural and multilingual, Vila, a Cuban refugee, came to the U.S. in 1962 at the age of eight. In 1982, she was selected a White House Fellow, the premier leadership program in the U.S. She is the former global head of international business development at Vigoro, a $750M international agri-business company and former head of regulatory policy for the western hemisphere at Nortel Networks, a $22B telecom supplier. She was also former secretary and CEO of the Florida State Department of Administration and former assistant secretary and COO of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 
            An experienced financial executive, Vila qualifies as an audit committee financial expert under SEC and NYSE rules. In 2013, Vila retired from her position as the first chief diversity officer at the U.S. Air Force Academy and founded Vila & Associates, a consultancy focused on helping clients develop strategies to build diverse leadership and foster an inclusive organizational culture. Previously, she was a member of the Board of Directors of the Rural Telephone Bank in Washington D.C. and a member of the Advisory Board of Global Asset Management, a $15 billion mutual fund of Union Bank Suisse (UBS).
            “I am delighted to serve on the board of MessageComm, a trade association that’s ahead of its time,” Vila said. “Companies that would otherwise be competing have joined with mobile operators and regulators to identify and solve key issues facing the quickly evolving yet presently unregulated messaging industry. I hope to bring some of the regulatory experience I gained at Nortel to a group working collaboratively to ensure security in the messaging industry and bring order to the wild west world of messaging.”
            The new association’s goal is to resolve critical issues around messaging and help the industry evolve and change for the better.  MessageComm recently announced that NetNumber, which represents over 100 million individual subscriber numbers, recently joined MessageComm. Other major participants in MessageComm will be announced as they join.
            MessageComm members have been working on several fronts since the inaugural event last April. Last month, 22 representatives from 14 companies attended the  MessageComm meeting held after the Mobile World Congress Americas event in Los Angeles. Participants represented a diverse cross section of messaging innovators and providers, from small to multi-billon dollar industry leaders.Together, MessageComm participants are helping to define better security and communications standards for both existing and future messaging channels.