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."
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
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.”
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 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.
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!)