Lester Hightower Email & Phone Number

Jacksonville, FL, US

Fishplate Holdings is an investment company with a focus on technology and innovation investments within surface transportation.

436 Software provides technology tools to freight transportation providers that enrich their customer relationships and market credibility, that propel internal and external efficiencies, and that add tangible value. 436 Software received its early funding Fishplate Holdings.

Dallas, Texas, US

Railspire retrofits customer locomotives for autonomous driving, with an initial focus on yard, near-yard, and industrial environments. Railspire's on-board artificial intelligence and machine learning software obeys human operators, who provide task-based instructions and oversight. Railspire received its early funding from Fishplate Holdings.

Jacksonville, Florida, US

Jacksonville, Florida, US

• Florida East Coast Railway is a storied and strategic Class II railway with a heavy focus on intermodal. It provides domestic door-to-door and ramp-to-door transportation with origin and destination drayage provided by.
• 2012-2013 – separated FECR IT from RailAmerica and G&W; added DR
• 2012-2013 – new business intelligence environment with executive dashboards
• 2013-2014 – introduced CRM and Customer Service ticketing systems
• 2013-2014 – new highly automated ICTF at Port Everglades
• 2014-2015 – aided in RFQ and installation of Wabtec TMDS for RR dispatch

Munich, DE

A newly created role to consolidate various SaaS and back office software systems into a P&L apart from the products business and to pursue opportunities to apply technologies from sister companies (Invensys Controls and Invensys Operations Management) into the North American freight and transit railroad markets. Reported to the President and CEO of.

10East Corp. was a software as a service (SaaS) provider to the North American railroad industry providing services under the RailDOCS brand name. Five of the seven North American Class I railroads are RailDOCS customers, plus many regional and short-line railroads. 10East Corp. was formed in January of 2002 by the private equity firm Three Cities Research.

My role at ABC-NACO (NASDAQ:ABCR) was two-pronged: 1) I served as the Chief Information Officer for ABC-NACO's Rail Systems Division (~350 employees in 11 locations) and 2) I also managed a startup, for-profit subsidiary of ABC-NACO called The AIMS Group, Inc. and served as its Chief Technology Officer until the assets of ABC-NACO were sold to a private.

United Railway Signal Group was an independent signal design contractor to the North American railroad industry. I joined URSG's team in 1995 as the Manager of Information and Communication Systems and ultimately became a Vice President. During this time, the software as a service business that became known as RailDOCS was born. URSG was sold to ABC-NACO.

CIT provided small and mid-sized companies with (mostly) Internet-related consulting and software development services. Most engagements involved doing substantially all of the "inside the wall" work of connecting companies to the Internet for the first time. In this time-frame, that often meant moving LANs from Banyan VINES, LANtastic, Netware IPX, etc..

Tallahassee, FL, US

The Supercomputer Computations Research Institute (SCRI) was a federally funded supercomputer research center that was started during the Ronald Reagan presidency and housed on the campus of the Florida State University. Federal funds were lost during the Bill Clinton presidency and that ultimately led to SCRI's demise, with FSU taking over the facility.