Arlene Harris is President and Co-Founder of DYNA, LLC. She has over 35 years of experience as an entrepreneur, board member, and investor in successful wireless-related businesses. Arlene has received numerous awards and recognition, including being named the first female inductee into the Wireless Hall of Fame.
Arlene co-founded GreatCall (the maker of Jitterbug, in partnership with Samsung) in 2006 – the first cellular phone and service platform dedicated to providing a simple and personalized cell phone experience. Prior to GreatCall, she founded emergency phone provider SOS Wireless Communications, and billing CRMS leader Subscriber Computing (later sold to Corsair, now CyberSource). Arlene invented the world’s first over-the-air program controlled cellular application management system. The offering (now known as MVNO) became the first niche cellular reseller in history (1986). She also co-founded Cellular Business Systems, Inc., which became the largest independent billing and customer service systems builder in the early U.S. cellular industry.
At the age of 5, Arlene was first exposed to wireless when she helped operators connect telephone calls on a mobile telephone switchboard at Industrial Communications Systems (ICS), her family’s business in LA. As a key leader and IT systems innovator, Arlene helped ICS become the largest paging company in a single area in the world before it was sold to Metromedia in 1983. Arlene’s team at ICS also developed the first wireless consumer healthcare application in history, called LifePage. She helped extend the program to become a National Program (managed by the Personal Communications Industry Association) which provided pagers to tens of thousands of transplant recipients throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
Arlene holds several issued patents. She participated in early cellular standards development at the Federal Communications Commission and the Telecommunications Industry Association and continues to serve as a contributor to various industry organizations. Arlene is the founder of the Wireless History Foundation and continues to spearhead new innovations and initiatives and to incubate new wireless businesses. See what she is currently working on at wrethink.com.
