Linda C. Manchester is President and Founder of Essential Solutions, LLC, an offer development and consulting firm that helps business and organizations optimize technology for operational excellence and expense reduction. Prior to founding Essential Solutions, Ms. Manchester was a member of Lucent’s Senior Leadership Team, one that defined and successfully implemented the turn-around to profitability in a struggling industry and market. Most recently, she was the Global Product Management Vice President of Lucent’s $400M Access Business. In this position her responsibilities encompassed managing the financial objectives of the business, setting the technical priority and strategic direction for each of the three product portfolios comprising the Access Business: Broadband DSL, IP Line Access Gateway, and the Next Generation Multi-Services Access Platform, and establishing strong executive relationships with Lucent’s key customers.

For the two years prior, Ms. Manchester was a Sales Vice President at Lucent leading Global Sales for the $250M Network Operations Software (NOS) Business and corresponding services geared towards optimizing the operational performance of both service providers and enterprise. Before leading NOS Sales, she was the Vice President and General Manager of Lucent's $300M Universal Gateway business with leadership accountability for both the hardware and software R&D, and the product management and marketing of Lucent’s remote access servers and Voice-Over IP gateways worldwide. In 1996, Ms. Manchester joined Lucent’s Access Business Unit as its Business Management and Strategy Director. It was in this role that she led Lucent’s initial exploration into the DSL broadband market, prior to the acquisition of Ascend. Ms. Manchester has held a wide array of R&D, product management, marketing, and business management positions, having joined Bell Labs in 1983.

Ms. Manchester received a BS in Computer Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, a MS in Computer Science from the University of Southern California, and completed Advanced Studies in Executive Business Management at Columbia University in New York.