Prayson Pate

Prayson became Adtran’s SVP of solutions marketing and CTO of Edge Cloud in January 2023. An evangelist for network functions virtualization (NFV), he speaks at industry events and writes about NFV and innovation in publications including The Real CTOs of NFV and the Real CTOs of Network Innovation series.

Prayson has contributed to standards bodies such as the MEF and IETF and was the co-editor of the Pseudowire Emulation Edge to Edge (PWE3) requirements and architecture documents (RFCs 3916 and 3985). He co-founded Overture Networks in 2000 after working at Bell Northern Research, Larscom, and FiberLAN. Prayson is credited as the inventor on nine patents and received a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from North Carolina State University and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Duke University.