Ray Steele

President & CEO

Four decades of enterprise IT experience. Fully focused on your small business. 

Ray Steele has spent more than 40 years at the intersection of technology strategy and business outcomes, including advising Fortune 500 companies, building technology ventures from the ground up, and serving as the kind of CIO most small businesses never thought they could access. 

As President and CEO of Lighthouse CIO Group, Ray brings that same caliber of strategic thinking directly to small businesses and startups in Chattanooga and across Tennessee. He's the person you'll meet in your first consultation, and the person guiding your technology strategy throughout the relationship. 

Ray has served as a trusted technology advisor to organizations including The Coca-Cola Company, UPS, and The Florida Legislature. He has held executive leadership roles at companies ranging from Aptos and ECRS to KeHE Distributors, where he served as CIO and Vice President of IT. He founded and led AVA Connect as President, CEO, and CTO — giving him the rare perspective of someone who has built technology organizations from scratch, as well as transformed existing ones. 

What makes Ray different isn't just his resume; it's his approach. He's known for cutting through technical noise to find the root cause of real business problems, and for delivering straightforward, practical recommendations that don't require you to become a technology expert to understand them. 

Education: Master of Science in Decision Sciences; Bachelor of Business Administration in Information Systems and Actuarial Science from Georgia State University

Cassie Holekamp

Director of Operations

The operational backbone that makes every client engagement run seamlessly. 

Cassie Holekamp brings over a decade of operations, account management, and client relationship experience to Lighthouse CIO Group — and she is a significant part of what makes the boutique, personalized service model work in practice. 

As Director of Operations, Cassie oversees all aspects of client engagement management, ensuring that every plan is executed. She's the operational force that keeps projects on track, keeps clients well-informed, and ensures nothing falls through the cracks. 

Before joining Lighthouse CIO, Cassie built her career in international logistics at Steam Logistics, where she managed complex global client accounts, aligned cross-functional teams across sales, marketing, and finance, and consistently grew relationships through responsive, solutions-driven service. A background in coordinating intricate moving parts across multiple stakeholders translates directly into the operational discipline she brings to technology engagements. 

Cassie also continues to work alongside Ray at AVA Connect, where she leads all company operations, giving her a firsthand view of the challenges small business owners face every day.  

If Ray is the strategic mind behind your technology roadmap, Cassie is the reason that roadmap actually gets executed. 

Based in Chattanooga, TN