2022 FierceWireless Rising Stars: Dean Zigulich

this week in wireless jeff blum blog

September 29, 2022

Congratulations to Dean Zigulich! As a Program Manager at DISH Wireless, he is among this year’s winners of the 2022 FierceWireless Rising Star Award. The FierceWireless Rising Star Awards are an opportunity to recognize the most impressive, up-and-coming executives in the wireless industry. Despite their notable achievements, these winners are aged 35 years or younger. In this year’s selection, FierceWireless focused on only the top U.S. telecom operators including AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and DISH Wireless. To commemorate those who received a Rising Star Award, FierceWireless will be showcasing their profiles all week in their 2022 Rising Star series. 

 

Dean Zigulich made an impact right away at DISH Wireless. Starting as a project coordinator for messaging software, he helped to finalize the DISH/Mavenir contract within his first six months of employment. After being promoted to project manager, Zigulich took on ownership of the DISH/VMware relationship, which plays a critical role in the network's deployment of Open RAN. Helping to coordinate the deployment of the DISH 5G RAN network infrastructure, Zigulich’s work was directly related to the company’s ability to hit our 20% coverage milestone in June 2022. In his current role as a Program Manager II, Zigulich drives our vRAN infrastructure and RAN automation programs.

 

DISH Wireless executives are no stranger to the Rising Star Awards, and previous winners have proven to excel in the company. Last year, Brian Mengwasser, VP and Head of Marketplace and App Design at DISH Wireless, received the Rising Star Award. In 2020, John Sweringa, now President and COO of DISH Wireless, also took home the award. Dean Zigulich credits his colleagues at DISH for always providing a “teachable moment.” According to Zigulich, “the smartest people in the world in the telecom industry work here.” As DISH Wireless works toward covering 70% of the U.S. population by June 2023, we anticipate Dean’s continued dedication to help us achieve our target.