Maria Popo

Maria Popo, President Americas, of Ubee Interactive, Inc. a global provider of wired and wireless broadband solutions.

Ms. Popo is known as a highly motivated leader who thrives on contributing to the bottom line. She began her career at Dorran Photonics, a fiber optic connector start-up acquired by 3M Telecom.  She had various technical and non-technical roles including customer service, technical operations, product management and sales. Maria later joined 3Com Corporation where she held senior sales and marketing leadership roles and helped bring to market the first generation of cable modems.

Through perseverance, savvy, and authenticity, Ms. Popo built a business that continues to grow today, even in this turbulent economic environment, first as VP of Ambit Microsystems/North America, then as President of Ubee Interactive/Americas. She has consistently flourished where others failed, creating one of the leading suppliers of broadband CPE from the ground, up.

Maria has led Ubee to drive important industry achievements such as:

  • DOCSIS 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0 cable modems
  • The industry’s first wireless cable modems & wireless voice modems
  • DOCSIS 3.0 solutions
  • PacketCable 2.0
  • Advanced home networking devices
  • Video gateways

Today, Ubee has shipped over 35 million broadband access devices globally. Ubee Americas was ranked 8 of the 2012 “Top 50 Fastest Growing Women-Led Companies” sponsored by WPO and American Express as noted in the Wall Street Journal April 2012 edition.

In terms of other demonstrable accomplishments, Maria has created programs to develop future leaders. For example, she single-handedly incubated the Broadband Generation Leadership Program at Ubee — a unique internship plan designed to give back to the cable industry some of the rewards Maria reaped along the way.  More recently, she launched a grassroots effort in executive engineering education to further develop the talent pool in the technology sector while providing individuals advanced career opportunities.

In 2011, Ms. Popo was a WICT Rocky Mountain Woman of the Year. She is a member of WICT, SCTE and Colorado’s WiseWomen Council. Maria serves as a Supporting Advisory Board member of Rocky Mountain SCTE. She has contributed as a mentor to both Philadelphia and Rocky Mountain WICT Chapters.  She is trained in Software Engineering and IT from Colorado Technical in Colorado Springs. Maria is married with two children and lives in Denver. In her spare time, she likes to run through the trails of Colorado.