Powering the CLS with AI: Welcoming Grace Merkler

Investing in the Next Generation of Digital Infrastructure Leaders

NJFX is excited to welcome Grace Merkler to the team as part of the 2026 Summer Internship Program. As NJFX continues to invest in developing the next generation of leaders within digital infrastructure, marketing, and technology, we are proud to provide students with hands-on opportunities to learn, grow, and contribute within a rapidly evolving industry.

Grace joins us at a pivotal moment, as NJFX celebrates its 10th anniversary and continues to expand its role as a carrier-neutral cable landing station at the intersection of subsea connectivity, cloud infrastructure, and AI-era compute. Her curiosity, technical grounding, and drive to build are a welcome addition to the team.

Enabling the Team with Generative and Agentic AI

Since joining NJFX, Grace has been enabling the team by putting generative and agentic AI to work at the highest level, building and refining agents that take on the tedious, repetitive tasks so the team can focus on higher-value work. From researching the right AI tools to designing and testing agents built for NJFX's specific workflows, Grace has made efficiency a hands-on discipline rather than a talking point.

That work extends across the tools the team relies on every day: aligning automation within HubSpot, integrating Microsoft Copilot into daily workflows, and running internal demos that help the whole team put new tools to use with confidence. NJFX holds itself to a high standard as North America's first carrier-neutral Cable Landing Station, and Grace is here to make sure that standard extends to how the team works, building the agents, streamlining the workflows, and testing the tools that keep NJFX as efficient on the inside as it is reliable for the carriers, hyperscalers, and enterprises it connects on the outside.

An Engineer's Mind for Business

Grace is a junior at the University of Richmond, pursuing a Business Administration degree with a concentration in Marketing and a minor in Health Studies. A Monmouth County, NJ resident and a Dean's List student, she balances strong academic performance with hands-on professional experience.

Grace's passion for innovation and technology took root at Trinity Hall, where she spent four years studying engineering, developing a strong foundation in analytical thinking and a genuine curiosity for how technology solves real-world problems. That early exposure shaped how she approaches challenges, and inspired her to become a founder of the HUMM Institute at Trinity Hall, an entrepreneurial program centered on educating young women through experiential learning, using collaboration, design thinking, and a human-centered approach to inspire innovators.

Building AI Agents from the Ground Up

At NJFX, Grace's role spans the full lifecycle of AI agent development: creating, testing, and designing agents that take on tedious, repetitive workloads and free up the team's capacity for higher-value work. Her responsibilities also include implementing immersive technology solutions, working within HubSpot to align automation with existing marketing and CRM operations, and integrating Microsoft Copilot across team workflows.

She also delivers internal demos to drive team-wide adoption of new tools, a responsibility that requires translating complex technology into something the whole team can put to use. Throughout, Grace has stayed committed to keeping up with changing technologies, making sure every project she takes on reflects current, relevant thinking.

What Grace Is Looking to Learn at NJFX

This summer at NJFX, Grace is building toward a career in medical device and general technology sales, combining her interest in health and technology with hands-on experience in sales-adjacent, tech-forward environments. Her work here is giving her direct exposure to applied AI strategy, cross-platform integration, and technical enablement.

• How subsea connectivity, cloud infrastructure, and global networks come together to power the digital economy
• How AI agents can be designed and deployed to reduce repetitive workload and free up teams for higher-value work
• How to translate complex tools like HubSpot and Microsoft Copilot into practical, team-wide adoption
• How immersive technology fits into a corporate marketing and sales strategy

The Start of a Strong Industry Career

Along the way, Grace has developed a working understanding of how subsea cables physically link continents and carry the vast majority of international data traffic, how cloud infrastructure provides scalable computing power, and how global networks keep data moving reliably between providers and end users. That broader view has given her a deeper appreciation for the role companies like NJFX play in keeping the world connected.

We are excited to have Grace join the team this summer and look forward to supporting her professional growth throughout her internship journey at NJFX. As the digital infrastructure industry continues to accelerate, driven by the rise of AI, expanding subsea cable systems, and growing enterprise demand for carrier-neutral interconnection, there has never been a more exciting time to enter the field. We are glad to have Grace at the table for it.