Exceptional Team, Exceptional Results

Since 1989 Mighty Ant has been partnering with clients to grow and launch businesses. Whether doubling staff productivity, creating new products, or increasing efficiency, we bring brand new capabilities to organizations.

Leadership Team

Decades of academic research show the single most important factor for software project success is the quality of the people doing the work. At Mighty Ant we keep a close eye on dozens of factors to ensure software development success — but, when starting a project, we suggest you focus on the first one.

Glenn Smith

President & Chief Software Architect

Glenn Smith is a graduate of the California Institute of Technology where he studied Computer Science. While at Caltech, he and two classmates entered a national software development contest co-sponsored by Apple Computer and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. to create ground breaking museum display software. Glenn and his two teammates won first prize, thousands of dollars of computer hardware (each) — and an entire Macintosh lab for Caltech. Glenn’s software was put on display in the Smithsonian for 17 years — being put there at the beginning of his career — not at the end like most folks! The software also became Glenn’s company’s first product, being resold to museums around the world for a dozen years after.

Glenn has been programming computers since he was 12 years old. He has designed software for space probes, intellectual property management systems, trouble ticket systems, online image databases, web publishing systems, and much more, for non-profits and enterprises around the world, both large and small. He knows an almost foolishly large number of computer programming languages, but these days works with clients to get to the heart of business issues. "How can we best apply technology to grow?" is a question he asks then answers over and over in our work with clients.

Praise for Glenn

"Glenn Smith is the finest IT professional I have ever worked with on a regular basis. Glenn and I worked together for a decade - I was the user, he was the IT support for the system I depended upon to do my job. Glenn listens to the users. He understands the systems. Any decent IT person will do those two tasks. What Glenn does is help the user "get" the system, too. He builds systems that work the way the user works and then thinks of how to make it even better than the user imagined. For ten years - daily - I worked on a system developed and managed by Glenn. In those years, I never saw another system in my industry that could do what his system does. Without Glenn’s genius, I would not have been as successful in my daily job. With Glenn’s kindness, patience, and support, I was able to do more work and to make major successes happen in my job. The difference in all of it was working with Glenn. When I am in a position to hire Glenn to do work, I will not hesitate."

Image of Samantha Westcott LinkedIn icon for Samantha Westcott
Samantha Westcott
Sponsored Research Manager, Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy
Eric and his son about to build a raft.  Eric loves to build things.  (The video of it in action was awesome.)

Eric Powers

Software Development Lead

Eric lead the transformation of Walt Disney Feature Animation from a traditional hand-animated studio to a completely digital 3-D studio as Technical Supervisor of development personnel across production and technology. The production pipeline he envisioned and realized comprised hundreds of man years of development and has been deployed on every motion picture produced there since 2000.

Eric is also a multiple startup veteran, including co-founding an early adopter embedded Linux operating system company, ONChannel Inc. (Acquired by Coollogic Inc.). At Coollogic he lead development of their consumer-grade embedded Linux set-top box platform.

Eric has proven expertise in creative and technical leadership, executive team collaboration, project management, information technology and software architecture, artistic and technical team integration, research and development projects, startup venture capital, and merger/acquisition activities.

Thomas Dale LinkedIn icon for Thomas Dale

Design Lead

For over a decade, Thomas has done digital and marketing design for top consumer brands such as Adidas, Converse, Ford, Gatorade, the American Heart Association, Ogilvy PR, and many others. Working with Mighty Ant clients he specializes in front-end development, responsive builds, and user experience. Thomas works across multiple media types and doesn’t just do "pretty." His designs get attention, cut to the heart of content, and get business results.

Outside of work, he keeps busy helping his wife chase two young kids around and providing tech support for his parents — sometimes in Danish. We omit a photo of him as a child break dancing on the street in Denmark (in body paint) to keep this all highly professional — but if he ever goes rogue, we know where the photo is.

Praise for Thomas

“I honestly can’t say enough great things about working with Thomas. He is a true professional, highly talented and creative, consistently provides impeccable work, never fails to go above and beyond to produce a remarkable product, and all at a good value -- which is every client’s dream! His timeliness and responsiveness on projects is beyond measure, always meeting every deadline and giving his best effort to maximize the results. He’s such a pleasure to work with and someone I can undoubtedly trust and rely on to give me great counsel along the way. In fact, I’ve enjoyed working with him so much that I’ve continued to follow and work with him throughout his career path and will continue to remain a loyal client and champion for his excellent services.”

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Kendra Dorsey
Director of National Health Campaigns at AMGA
When Jaymie first met Glenn she said to herself, "Ok, why not. I’ll go on one polite date with the geeky boy." And then...

Jaymie Smith

Head of Special Projects

Jaymie, Head of Special projects, and double black belt in Microsoft Excel, speaks four languages (and reads and writes a fifth), has lived in Europe and West Africa, and used to run a seven million dollar international AIDS research program at UCLA. Before that she ran the West African arm of an NGO doing humanitarian service work for street children in Mauritania.

Jaymie likes to run things. She’s good at it. Formerly our Head of Operations, she spearheaded hiring our first staff beyond our founder, got Mighty Ant’s first advertising out the door, herded the Mighty Ants through two main office moves, and did the initial work of putting together benefits and other legal structures for the company.

In 2014, with the arrival of her twin girls Rachel and Rebecca, she moved to part time — sort of an unstoppable part time — as a few months later her experience as a twin mom had uncovered a hole in the market for a new product for twin moms. So she launched into product development with her own small team of consultants and designers — because, like, what else does she have to do, right? Jaymie spends a lot of time tired, but also happy, productive, and surrounded with love.

Cindy has granted us permission to refer to her as "Khaleesi of all tasks."

Cindy Suderberg

Office Manager

When Jaymie was interviewing to replace some of her functions as she dropped down to part time, one of Cindy’s former employers described her as "the best hire I ever made." We’ve learned what he meant! Cindy makes the trains run on time. We don’t even want to think of all the HR, accounting, contracting, benefits, regulatory, or other topics she juggles seemingly effortlessly on a daily basis — and that’s good, because with Cindy we don’t have to!

Cindy has granted us permission to refer to her as "Khaleesi of all tasks." Note to evildoers: When thinking of perpetrating your craft, Cindy maintains her red hair was fair warning.

Left: R&R meet to discuss cross-functional training across all cuteness operations.  Right: The girls de-bug a log.

Rebecca and Rachel

Chief Cuteness Officers

Rachel and Rebecca have served as Mighty Ant DataWorks chief cuteness officers for over two years now. Before that they honed their cross-functional cuteness skills on a purely amateur basis.

Rachel and Rebecca remind us that life is too short to do work you don’t love, or to work with clients you don’t respect (or who don’t respect you.) When not encouraging staff toward prioritizing R&R, they help their mom out developing a new product Jaymie is designing for twin moms (the need for which she got a crash course in a few years ago!)

Glenn Smith

President & Chief
Software Architect

Caltech computer science grad. National award winning software developer. Created software for NASA. Advised eHarmony at startup. His work on display in the Smithsonian for 17 years. Glenn has been programming since he was 12 years old and has partnered with clients to grow and launch businesses since 1989.

Eric Powers

Software Development Lead

Eric designed and led development of Walt Disney Feature Animation’s digital animation pipeline moving them from hand drawn to a 3D digital studio, and providing the technology base for all of their animated films since 2000. He is a startup veteran, multidisciplinary technology team lead, and an almost absurdly nice guy.

Thomas Dale

Design Lead

For over a decade, Thomas has done digital and marketing design for top consumer brands such as the American Heart Association and Gatorade. He is a seasoned web and graphic design professional, working across multiple media types. Thomas doesn’t just do "pretty." His designs get attention, cut to the heart of content, and get business results.

Jaymie Smith

Head of Special Projects

Jaymie, double black belt in Microsoft Excel, speaks four languages (and reads and writes a fifth), has lived in Europe and West Africa, and used to run a seven million dollar international AIDS research program at UCLA before joining Mighty Ant. Before that she ran the West African arm of an NGO doing humanitarian service work for street children in Mauritania. Formerly head of operations she is now our part time head of special projects.

Cindy Suderberg

Officer Manager

When Jaymie was interviewing to replace some of her functions as she dropped down to part time, one of Cindy’s former employers described her as "the best hire I ever made." We’ve learned what he meant! Cindy makes the trains run on time. We don’t even want to think of all the HR, accounting, contracting, benefits, regulatory, or other topics she juggles seemingly effortlessly on a daily basis — and that’s good, because with Cindy we don’t have to!

Rebecca & Rachel

Chief Cuteness Officers

Rachel and Rebecca have served as Mighty Ant DataWorks chief cuteness officers for over two years now. Rachel and Rebecca remind us that life is too short to do work you don’t love, or to work with clients you don’t respect (or who don’t respect you.) When not encouraging staff toward prioritizing R&R, they help their mom out developing a new product Jaymie is designing for twin moms (the need for which she got a crash course in a few years ago!)

The differences are not minor – they are rather like the differences between Salieri and Mozart. Study after study shows that the very best designers produce structures that are faster, smaller, simpler, clearer, and produced with less effort.

Frederick P. Brooks, No Silver Bullet

Development Team

Hard Working, Diverse, Occasionally Quirky

Mighty Ant DataWorks team members are driven, creative, and don’t stop thinking about software when they go home at night. It’s not that our people don’t value a work-life balance (they do!) they just can’t stop themselves from creating and doing. One of our developers makes computer games and software art projects as a hobby after hours, using completely different tools and technologies than he uses at work during the day. Another developer is a singer-songwriter. When not creating databases you can sometimes find him playing clubs in L.A.

As a team, we love working with people. It’s one of the things that sets us apart. Whether it’s working with fellow teammates, our contractors, our users, or the central Information Technology people of large enterprises we work with, our people are friendly, helpful, and polite. Not everyone, at all times in human history, has always described their IT people as "friendly, helpful, and polite" — but at Mighty Ant DataWorks, that’s literally the only type of person we hire.

Contractor Relationships

We use a lot of tools at Mighty Ant DataWorks, but we don’t do everything. For best in class software specification, system design, user interfaces, system support, additions, and more, we have you covered with our internal staff. But how about fine art illustrations for your interactive children’s book database. We don’t have oil paint wielding artists on staff, but we do know one we can call (he drew the ant in our logo.) Need Python, Django, FileMaker, Javascript, ColdFusion, PHP, or Ruby work? We can do that and more. But what if part of your project requires answering some tricky questions about inner workings of Apple’s venerable web development platform Web Objects? We haven’t developed with that technology, but we know a guy we can call.

We have experience working with software developers, evaluating the quality of their work, and we can speak to them in their own language. If a portion of a project requires contractor help, we seamlessly manage any contractors for you. You just turn on your computer and use your new software.

Let’s Talk

Contact us to speak to a software designer for a free initial assessment.

We talk through your project needs and explore whether working with Mighty Ant DataWorks might be a fit for your organization.

Email Us:

info@MightyAnt.com

Call Us:

(800) 216-8182 (U.S. Eastern Standard Time business hours)

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We’ll get back to you, normally within 24 hours.