Richard Lowenberg

Founding Director
1st –Mile Institute

Richard has had over 40 years experience as a nonprofit organizations director, broadband networking planner, environmental designer, architect, rural community planner, media artist + eco-cultural activist. He has focused on rural regional networking since logging onto the ARPAnet and conducting satellite-arts projects with NASA in the 1970s.

He is founding Director of 1st-Mile Institute, home to the New Mexico ‘Broadband for All’ Initiative, and SARC (Scientists/Artists Research Collaborations), 2006- .

He is former Senior Broadband Planner, with Design Nine, Inc., with which he prepared and stewarded the New Mexico Integrated Strategic Broadband Initiative” and ARRA applications.

From 1996-2006, Richard directed the Davis Community Network, Yolo County, CA, and from 1984-1996 was programs director of the Telluride Institute, where he led the InfoZone Program, creating the first rural internet PoP in 1992, and first community wireless WAN in 1995.

Richard was a National Research Council, Broadband Committee Member, 1999-2002, with Broadband: Bringing Home the Bits published in 2002.

He was on the Governing Board, (CATI) Colorado Advanced Technology Institute’s Rural Telecommunications Program, co-organizing/presenting at of the annual Rural Telecom Conferences/Congress, Aspen Institute, 1994-99, and later served on the Board of the RTC.

He has been a consultant/advisor on eco-networked communities and regional initiatives in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Austria (Tyrolian Alps), Corsica, Balearic Islands, Japan and Argentina.