Mr. Gates is a QSI partner and currently serves as Senior Vice President, managing some of QSI's largest clients. Before joining QSI, Mr. Gates held key management positions over a 15-year period with MCI, Inc.'s Law and Public Policy Group. Mr. Gates has focused on telecommunications issues ranging from costing, pricing, alternative forms of regulation, local entry, and universal service to strategic planning, legislation, and merger and network issues over a telecommunications career spanning 20 years. He has extensive experience working with attorneys, analysts, external consultants, regulators, lobbyists, and company executives on issues associated with the convergence of competition, technologies, services, and companies. Mr. Gates has developed policy positions and advocated those positions before regulatory commissions and legislatures across the nation. During his tenure with MCI, Mr. Gates managed its many external consultants and the associated budget. He has testified in more than 200 proceedings in 44 states and before the FCC and the Department of Justice. Mr. Gates is widely recognized in the telecommunications industry as one of the most talented witnesses and witness trainers.

Before joining MCI, Mr. Gates was employed by the Texas Public Utility Commission as a Telephone Rate Analyst in the Telecommunications Division's Engineering Department. Prior to joining the Texas staff, Mr. Gates was employed by the Oregon Public Utility Commission as an Economic Analyst in the Telecommunications Division. Mr. Gates also has experience in the energy industry, having worked with the Bonneville Power Administration (United States Department of Energy), where he was employed as a Financial Analyst. Mr. Gates also spent 10 years in the forest industry in the Northwest, where he held numerous positions of increasing responsibility for International Paper, Weyerhaeuser and the Oregon Department of Forestry.

Mr. Gates holds a Masters of Management Degree with an emphasis in finance and quantitative methods from the Atkinson Graduate School of Management at Willamette University. He also holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Forest Management from Oregon State University.