OUR TEAM
Albert Boscov, Chairman Emeritus
Eunice Boscov, Chairwoman of the Board
Albert Boscov (1929-2017) and Eunice Boscov have incredible accomplishments in retail, philanthropy, and civic leadership. Albert and Eunice married in 1960 and they built his father’s Reading dry goods store into a successful department store chain with 48 stores and more than $1 billion in annual sales.
When a local data center/energy company headquarters became vacant due to corporate reorganization, Mr. and Mrs. Boscov envisioned it as what became Direct LTx, a technology center providing the infrastructure necessary to attract new high tech jobs to the Reading, Pennsylvania area.
In addition to Direct LTx, they worked tirelessly to bring other civic development projects to fruition, including renovating more than 600 vacant rowhouses for owner-occupied low income housing, redeveloping an abandoned safety goggles factory into the Goggleworks Arts Center, and converting a downtown parking lot into the Reading Doubletree Hotel.
After Albert’s death, Eunice Boscov has continued her leadership role as chairwoman and owner of Direct LTx. She is also a board member of Boscov’s Department stores and active in the Our City Reading non-profit that is responsible for management of the Reading Doubletree Hotel and other residential and economic development projects.
Todd Taylor, Chief Executive Officer
Todd Taylor has served on the Direct LTx Board of Directors since 2010 and became CEO in April 2017. He provides management and oversight for Direct LTx’s 290,000 square foot facility in Reading, Pennsylvania, including 65,000 square feet of active raised floor data center space. He has overseen over $20 million in capital improvement projects at Directl LTx, which have brought state-of the-art cooling, generation, UPS, and security improvements to the former First Energy/Met-Ed regional technology center. He also serves on the Board of Boscovs Department Stores and the Our City Reading non-profit. He has undergraduate and graduate degrees from Northwestern University and the University of Pennsylvania. He holds a variety of accreditations and certifications for IT and project management, including Uptime Institute Data Center Accredited Operations Specialist (No. 159), and AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (Validation ID PB8B3WJC3NBE1D36).
Michael Barbarick, VP-Sales
Michael Barbarick has more than 20 years of strategic, results-driven leadership and consulting experience in the wholesale and retail colocation market. Mike’s has extensive experience designing colocation and hybrid cloud solutions, business continuity and disaster recovery systems, networks, systems integration projects, and telecommunications services. Mike has worked for colocation and cloud industry leaders including Verizon, Internap, Digital Realty, and Vxchnge. Mike’s demonstrated success and experience with crafting customer pleasing integrated solutions is a boon to our team. Mike played six seasons of professional soccer and brings this same championship attitude and work ethic towards all of our customers and prospects.
Dave Herbein, Data Center Manager
Dave Herbein is a 30-year veteran of the data center industry and has been at Direct LTx since 2006. Dave’s responsibilities include managing the 24x7x365 facility security as well as designing and implementing installation plans for customer equipment in Direct LTx’s data centers. His duties include managing/balancing the 3 utility power feeds, 3 physically and electrically separate UPS systems, Fire Suppression Systems, Chiller/CRAH/CRAC architecture, and carrier cross connects. Dave’s experience and attention to detail are rarely noticed by our customers but keeps Direct LTx’s systems running smoothly at 100% uptime.
Garreth Donly, VP Construction and Infrastructure
Garreth has served as Vice President of Construction and Infrastructure for Direct LTx since the very beginning of the company. He has designed and managed nearly all of the capital improvement projects implemented at Direct LTx and has managed growth in our electrical, cooling, and white space capacity to meet our customers’ needs. Garreth has similar responsibilities at Boscovs Department Stores and Our City Reading and has developed retail stores, malls, art centers, single- and multi-tenant residential projects, and the Downtown Reading Doubletree Hotel. Garreth’s ability to plan and manage Direct LTx’s construction projects to meet current and future needs on-time and on-budget has been a key to our successful uptime record and customer retention.
Joe Dufner, VP-Marketing
Joe Dufner is responsible for steering the direction and growth of the company through the implementation of strategic marketing plans and new product development. As a telecom professional, Joe has over 25 years of industry intelligence from his experience leading the sales and marketing efforts of telecommunications carriers and equipment manufacturers, including Windstream, D&E Communications, and GAI-Tronics. Among his peers, Joe is regarded as a change agent skilled in new business development, strategic sales planning, identifying opportunities and business operations. He is a board member of The Pennsylvania Community Development & Finance Corporation (PCDfc) where he supports small business innovation and creative funding options.
Dwayne Oxenreider, Facilities Manager
Dwayne is an 8-year veteran of Direct LTx and has 25 years of experience with facilities supervision and management. He serves as risk and operations manager, managing day-to-day operations at the facility, and is responsible for all functions associated with the operation of our data center including: power, UPS, HVAC cooling, security, fire suppression systems, DCIM as well as supervision of facilities staff on all three shifts.
Dwayne plays a key role in overseeing all company utilities serving Direct LTx’s five data centers including: 7 megawatts of UPS electrical backup systems, 6 chillers, 30 raised floor Leibert cooling units, and 7.2 megawatts of diesel backup generation. Dwayne is responsible training and supervision of all facilities staff and the design and implementation of preventative maintenance plans. His certifications include: Six Sigma certification (green belt); N.T.T. Arc Flash; and Kaizen, Cellularization and 5-S.
Ben Litzenberger, Network and Colocation Technician
Ben is a dedicated, experienced professional who has worked for Direct LTx for nearly 15 years. Ben provides a wide variety of services to our data center customers. He performs hardware and software updates, troubleshoots, and manages helpdesk support to customers. He acts as our customers’ “smart hands” and is ready and willing to take on a variety of installation and maintenance tasks for our customers. In addition, he is responsible for managing installation of circuits and provision of cross-connects for the 9 carriers in Direct LTx’s two telecommunications meet-me rooms. An experienced professional for installation and management of cable, cages, communications and colocation, Ben is our secret weapon: a hard worker who is a delight for our customers to work with.