Gail Tate, Founder and Managing Director
Gail founded FUNZANA in 2015, as a way to share her knowledge of technology, earned over 30+ years in telecommunications and technology industries. The goal of FUNZANA is to educate and inform clients of technology changes and advancements. FUNZANA has served as technical consultant to Argonne National Laboratory’s Transportation Research and Analysis Computing Center (TRECC). Prior to FUNZANA, Gail was program manager for a high technology collaboration between National Center for SuperComputing Application and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Gail started her career in technology (1973) with AT&T Bell Laboratories in product development. Achieving position of Director, she managed product realization and project management. In addition, she developed and facilitated workshops on leadership, performance management, career development, creative thinking, and diversity. She earned recognition from the National Technical Association, Computer Engineering Horizons, and numerous awards from AT&T/Lucent. She retired from Lucent Technologies in 2001.
She graduated with a B.A. in Mathematics from North Central College in 1986. An avid RVer, Gail enjoys traveling the country with friends and family. Gail is the mother of two children and “BiBi” to four grandchildren.
Jelani Tate, Technology Consultant
Jelani joined FUNZANA in 2020, after 14 years in the telecommunication industry. He shares the company’s goals of educating others on the benefits of technology. Most recently, Jelani worked at Call One, Inc as product manager of Software Define Networking (SDN) solutions. This allowed him to inform clients of the benefits of managed network switches, client VPN, and software defined wide area networks (SD-WAN).
Jelani entered the telecommunication industry as a product manager with Motorola, working on CDMA and LTE base station hardware for cellular network providers. He also worked with internal teams to improve processes in lifecycle management. He later joined Nokia Networks and worked on LTE and 5G Small Cell solutions.
He graduated from University of Iowa in 2004 with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and a minor in Spanish Language and Culture. Jelani enjoys the outdoors, including biking and golf. Additionally, a movie fan and married, father of four, Jelani is a co-host of a podcast focusing on fatherhood in films.