Freedom CAD: New Leadership Ready for the Future

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Over the past year, Freedom CAD has seen a changing of the guard as many familiar faces retire and hand the reins to the next generation of leaders. At PCB East, I met with Brian White, the new president and CEO, and Geoffrey Hazelett, the business development executive who was hand-picked by the outgoing Scott McCurdy. I asked them to walk us through this shift in leadership and what it means to the company and its customers.

Andy Shaughnessy: Brian and Geoffrey, it’s good to see you both. How are things going?

Brian White: It’s been busy (laughs)!

Shaughnessy: I imagine. Brian, you’ve been in your position since 2023, and Geoffrey was hired about four months ago. Brian, what are some of these changes to executive roles?

White: About four years ago, CEO Eddie Broyles retired. At that time, I was Executive VP and Eddie had been a great mentor to me for years. I've been with Freedom CAD for 20 years, and I’ve worked in every aspect of the business. It was a natural progression for me to move into the position of president and CEO. Scott Miller, previously our COO, has also taken a step back by going part-time as chief customer officer, and that led Pat White to move into the COO position. By promoting from within where we can, we're preparing to go into the future strong without the risk of losing our internal company knowledge.

Scott McCurdy, who's been in this industry for 40-plus years, announced his retirement from his sales position earlier this year. Everyone knows and loves Scott, and we needed someone to fill his role; Geoffrey has been a great fit. 

We’ve also brought on Geron Meeks as CFO. Geron also has a strong technical background that that has allowed us to build internal tools that better support our customers, especially as we grow.

Shaughnessy: Geoffrey, with the “Two Scotts” moving on, how did you end up moving into Scott McCurdy’s position?

Geoffrey Hazelett: I understand that Scott McCurdy announced the news that he was going to be retiring and was looking for someone to replace him. Several people suggested to him that I might be a good culture and skill fit to take over for him.  Of course, there's no way I can fill McCurdy's shoes, he has been a staple in the industry for over 50 years.

I interviewed with Scott, Brian, Doug Smith (VP of business development), and CFO Geron Meeks. At the time, I had some other commitments that I was still following through on. At the start of this year, I started with the team, and it has been great. I've been shadowing and working with Scott since January. For me, it's a little bittersweet that this is his last week working full time. I've gotten used to talking with him for hours each day about what's going on. 

Shaughnessy: You and Scott McCurdy didn’t know each other, right? It's amazing you two had never met.

Hazelett: No, and I'm surprised that we were not already friends. Scott and I were operating in the same circles, but somehow never connected until recently! Just last week, I mentioned an FAE from a board fabricator and Scott said, “Oh yeah, I hired him and brought him into the industry.” Turns out Scott hired both that FAE and his wife at McCurdy Circuits. It is one of those great mysteries of how it took us so long to finally cross paths.

White: In addition, Geoffrey mentioned Doug Smith. Doug and Geoffrey both have EE degrees, so we have a sales team that can help address the engineering concerns of our customers. Scott McCurdy and Scott Miller had 40+ years of experience doing that, and adding Doug and Geoffrey ensures that we continue to offer that level of support to our customers going forward.

Hazelett: It's refreshing working with management that is looking to improve on what they've always done and change some of the things we do to become better. We’re checking regularly: “Let's improve this and do that better, so that we can be more efficient and help our customers succeed.”

White: That's a really good point. We never want to become stagnant. We have to look at the issues now and in the future—two, five, or 10 years from now? How will we come out ahead as we're positioning ourselves to do that? I’m very happy with the team that we have in place. I think we're in the best spot that we've been in for years, and everyone's very confident. 

Hazelett: I'm also really excited about our engineering teams. It's been fascinating to get to know them and their capabilities, and to realize we have powerhouse designers. I've seen their work and how they've interacted with the customers. It's phenomenal.

White: We have a team of over 35 full-time PCB designers. 

Hazelett: Many of them are cross-trained between different tools. We use Cadence, Altium, and Siemens tools. I've heard so much positive feedback from our customers about the quality of the designs; they’re just blown away by our work. A lot of customers are used to needing to run multiple spins, but when they get a design from us, it works the first time.

White: We have to give some props to our Valor QA team, which is headed up by Rich Kluever. He does a phenomenal job of ensuring that our deliverables are of the highest quality, but he also helps coach designers on best practices. He's done an amazing job of putting that all together and ensuring that our outputs are incredibly consistent. 

Shaughnessy: What do you see as the biggest challenge for this segment? 

White: The biggest bottleneck right now for a lot of people is finding highly skilled PCB designers.

Shaughnessy: A lot of design talent is heading for retirement, and the young designers don’t know what they don’t know.

Hazelett: It's hard for the less experienced designers to take on some of these advanced projects, and that's where we continue to see our business grow. Many designers new to the industry aren't experienced with complex designs, so customers come to us because we have that depth of knowledge and experience. They need it to work, and they needed it yesterday: high-speed digital, high-speed RF, complicated board designs, and fitting it all into small real estate with all of these components. And all of this needs to be balanced with technology needs. 

I see us fitting in well in solving some of that for the industry. That's where a lot of our projects reside. We're not doing small projects; we're doing the scary projects where people need expert help just a little bit above that company's current level of technology resources. We come in as an extension of their engineering department, to help them solve those problems successfully. 

Shaughnessy: It sounds like exciting times for you all. Thanks for speaking with me.

White: Thank you, Andy.