FCW Insider: D'Agata, Murray move on from Sprint-Nextel

By Christopher J. Dorobek

| March 30, 2008

Last week, I had the opportunity to go to the retirement festivities celebrating the retirement of Tony D'Agata, the head of Sprint-Nextel's federal division. D'Agata is one of the class acts in this community -- a person who has been in the telecom market for his entire careerIn the Feb. 1 issue of Washington Technology, Michael Hardy reported about the from the head of Sprint-Nextel's federal division.It has been a rough period for Sprint-Nextel. The Sprint and Nextel merger has been... well, how does one say this... . The company did not win a place on . Company leaders have tried to put the , but... All of that spurred us to put the company on , and that has certainly proven to be true.And... all of that has nothing to do with Murray, who has been with Sprint for some 16 years. (She actually worked for Sprint earlier in her career. This was something of a second tour of duty.) Murry is a tireless worker, is remarkably connected... and she is a class act. She is one of the remarkable people in this community who really loves the work they do -- and that is infectious. I have no doubt she will land someplace... right?Congratulations to D'Agata... and we will be keeping our ear to the ground to hear where both D'Agata and Murry end up.

departure of Tony D'Agata

When Tony D’Agata, the vice president of federal sales at Sprint, leaves the company, the federal telecom market will feel the absence, according to industry watchers.

“Tony was a real gentleman,” said Warren Suss, president at Suss Consulting Inc. “Tony had a calm disposition and always treated people in the industry with great dignity and respect. I think it’s the tone we’ll remember as much as anything. He treats people well and that’s going to be remembered in an industry that’s often a dogfight.”

D’Agata plans to retire from the company at the end of March, although he has not specified a precise date. For the next few weeks he and his colleagues will be reassigning many of his duties – some of which were beyond the federal business – to make the transition as smooth as possible.

At the D'Agata retirement festivities, D'Agata announced something that had been rumored: Deirdre. K. Murray, who has been a fixture at Sprint-Nextel for some 13 years, is also leaving the company. In fact, her last day was on Friday.

Murray was her normal classy self -- she didn't want anything taking away from D'Agata's retirement festivities.

No word on her future plans. And, frankly, D'Agata also said that he would not be going straight into retirement. He said he will probably do some consulting work.

tough GSA's big Networx contract best face on the Networx loss FCW's "10 organizations worth watching" list in September

NEXT STORY: Download and Table of Contents

Next-Generation Computing

Space Tech