Management Team


R. Jens Francis	R. Scott Miller	Karl E. Francis, PhD

R. Jens Francis

The Faultline Group is managed by Jens Francis, a recognized expert in business formation, technology strategy and government affairs primarily in the fields of global technology infrastructure, Internet governance and the development of software as a service. He and the Faultline team have been involved in various development projects including:

Savanna Software: Savanna is a fully on-demand enterprise system for education built in conjunction with a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the winner of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quliaty Award.

Panoptic Solutions: Panoptic developed an on-demand wealth management platform for banks and financial institutinos such as Charles Schwab and Merrill Lynch.

NetGranite: In 1999 Jens and Scott Miller co-founded venture funded NetGranite to develop a next-generation compute cloud platform providing highly scalable infrastructure for the delivery of web applications as a service.

Mr. Francis served as a partner in the Sequoia Strategy Group, a premier management consulting firm focusing on Silicon Valley based technology companies. In this role, Jens provided executive-level consulting services in the areas of technology development, business strategy and M&A to various large technology companies. Prior to joining SSG, Jens spent several years as a senior executive in Silicon Valley.

In 1991, Mr. Francis founded and served as chief executive of SoftArt Research, a network engineering and system design firm serving the Pacific Northwest. Representative projects included program management and large-scale network and system design for companies in the health care, public education and oil and gas industries.

Mr. Francis actively advises various companies in the areas of technology development and government affairs. Among his advisory clients are Verisign, Sybase, NetHope, Global Liquid Markets, ICANN, the Association of Competitive Technology, and the Wilderness Technology Alliance.

Mr. Francis holds degrees in both mathematics and computer science from the University of Alaska.

R. Scott Miller

Scott Miller has over ten years of financial analysis, business formation, business development, market research, and consulting experience.Prior to founding The Faultline Group, Scott was Vice President and Senior Wireless Analyst for C.E. Unterberg Towbin, a technology-focused investment banking firm. At Unterberg, Towbin, Scott was responsible for analyzing the universe of mobile and wireless companies while driving banking and trading revenue.

Prior to that Scott was a co-founder and Vice President for NetGranite, a managed Internet service provider, and Principal Analyst for GartnerGroup/Dataquest covering the desktop and mobile computing sectors.During his five-year tenure at Gartner/Dataquest, Scott formulated Dataquest's position on the global notebook PC, hand-held computer, and Internet appliance markets and vendor positioning within these markets.

Scott is a noted authority in the mobile communications and personal computing markets and is frequently interviewed for his perspective on the computing and wireless industry by publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, New York Times, USA Today and CNBC. Scott has also appeared in numerous trade publications, international newspapers, and on local television, in addition to presenting at major industry conferences and sitting on various expert panels.Scott is a contributor to MobileWeek, a leading publication focusing on the mobile computing and communications industry.

Scott holds a Bachelor of Science in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering and Master of Engineering in Engineering Management degrees from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Karl E. Francis

Karl Francis is a management analyst and planner. He has worked as a field geophysicist, senior manager in the energy industries, university administrator and professor and consulting policy advisor to government and industry on energy, environment and resource issues. Additionally Dr. Francis has extensive expertise as a Congressional strategist and lobbyist. Dr. Francis was also the environmental director for the Arctic Gas pipeline project, at the time, the largest industrial project in history.

Most of this work has been in the Canadian, Danish and Alaskan arctic and sub-arctic and in the southwestern United States. A major objective has been to achieve economic development that protects and enhance the cultural values and advances the interests of the resident people.

Dr. Francis is both a physical and social scientist and has published in the geophysical, biological and social sciences on subjects ranging from the habitat of Barren Ground grizzlies to hydrometeor nuclei, from Inuit land use and occupance to frontier agriculture.

Dr. Francis holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Geomorphology and Climatology. Dissertation: "Terrain Differentiation and Distribution in Arctic Alaska." He also holds an M.S degree from Oregon State University in natural resources. Thesis: "Geographic Factors as Retardants to Alaska's Mineral Industries." and a B.S., from Pennsylvania State University in geology and mineralogy.