As a broadband consulting manager for ECC Technologies, Chris Utesch works with elected officials, government entities, community leaders and private businesses to identify community needs and develop solutions for increasing the availability, deployment, and adoption of digital infrastructure in communities across the country.As a key member of ECC Technologies’ consulting organization, Chris uses his unique blend of technical, operational, and organizational expertise to deliver solutions that expand quality broadband access. Chris evaluates opportunities, recommends strategies, and advises on funding options for digital infrastructure expansion. To support these efforts, he helps with network design, the establishment and management of ISP operations and the develops partnerships to advance sustainable technology availability.

Pilot Management helps organizations grow and improve. Our team provides marketing strategy and support to help organizations identify, refine and reach their audience. In addition to these services, Pilot Management acquires, operates and grows small businesses.

Developing marketing and deployment strategies for an ecosystem of products targeting the DeFi and Web3.0 industries. ValidEntry helps applications and users prevent identity theft, streamline compliance processes, and improve the onboarding experience for new users.HireVise helps recruiters, development projects and small businesses to streamline their hiring processes and build private employment databases while integrating with the large recruiting sites and tools.

Grant Administration responsibilities; submittion of over $250M of broadband projects, successfully awarded over $30M in projects with $18M in supporting grant funds.Community Relations oversight, cross trained team on efforts in new markets, supporting FWA and FTTP deployments in rural communities.Assumed Expansion Sales oversight. Trained sales team on commercial expansion markets, passing on responsibilities. Established department and trained customer service team to support residential installation scheduling, customer service, and Tier 1 technical support.Key contributor for implementation of new BOSS system, FiberSmith Vision, to support both FWA and FTTP networks.

My position allows me the opportunity to build relationships necessary to clearly identify the challenges in accessing quality internet in rural areas, so that we can develop and deploy innovative solutions to address those needs. In this role I am directly responsible for establishing the relationships with corporate and government leaders to create partnerships to bring quality internet access to those who do not have it. I developed and managed our grant writing efforts and have been successful in being awarded funding to support our projects across rural North Carolina.In 2019 we were awarded $1.48M in state grants and in 2020 we were awarded $6.26M through a combination of state grants and county RFPs. In 2020 we successfully submitted grant applications and RFP responses for $23.9M in broadband infrastructure projects.

My primary responsibility is to build relationships with client partners the greater Wilmington area, that would like to improve their business technology solution and overall business performance. CloudWyze is a Wilmington, NC based Managed Services Provider that gives businesses the respect and creative problem solving that they deserve, by delivering outstanding Internet, Phone, Cloud Services, and Technology Support Services. Our goal is to allow our client partners to do what they do best and focus on their core business.

As a project coordinator, I support my team by ensuring that our pricing is competitive and our margins are maintained while working with vendors, contractors and internal employees, and coordinating the activity of multiple simultaneous projects from quoting to completion.In my first year as a project coordinator I assisted my team in growing revenue from approximately $1 million in 2016 to just under $3 million in 2017 and we are currently on pace for $4.5 million for 2018. We delivered these results by streamlining our pricing/proposals process, developing/improving internal best practices and providing excellent service to our builders. In addition to these improvements, we were able to streamline our quoting and ordering, allowing us to take on more work and be more efficient on day to day activities.I have also been called upon on to and train new employees in UFACTORY, our new enterprise software system. While this is outside of my scope of work, my understanding of the system and my ability to train and develop team members makes me a great fit for the additional workload.

Many small businesses have big business challenges but they lack the necessary know how or budget to solve for these issues. Via Outsourced Ingenuity, I am able to help existing small business grow and improve, in addition to assisting various side projects/concepts come into reality.Support from Outsourced Ingenuity comes in a variety of forms from execution coaching and marketing strategy to researching opportunities for expansion into new channels and creating/monitoring marketing plans via social media and web traffic. I would love to discuss with you the ways we can help you streamline your business and processes.

As an Account Executive at WWAY, I managed existing and developed new account relationships to provide solutions that helped them to grow their business through advertising and branding. Building on prior experience in digital advertising, this role gave me new insight into the ways broadcast media could be still used effectively in a digital marketing age, both alongside digital campaigns and standalone campaigns for branding and customer acquisition.

As a Sales District Leader at Frito Lay, I served as the front line manager for my teams. My primary responsibility was to support my team in their roles of day to day sales activities, while I ensured we hit our period and yearly Sales, Service and Unsellables goals.Through my various district teams, I was able to consistently hit or exceed sales and expense control goals. This was achieved by understanding my teams on both a professional and personal level. Serving as the primary HR, Safety, & Operations contact for my direct reports enabled me to be able to be able to provide support rapidly and effectively to positively impact their performance and earning potential.My ambitious drive and can do attitude enabled me to assist with various Presidential and Regional market tours. My project management experience, along with communication and conflict resolution skills helped me be effective during change management initiatives like D.R.I.V.E., the GES roll out in Western Tennessee, the DOT fleet conversion, and the Re-Trip program during my tenure.

As a Management Trainee, my focus was on the daily tasks of renting cars and ensuring complete satisfaction of our customers in branches throughout our Market with branch fleets ranging from 40 to 400 cars and 1 to 15 employees.I took an early interest in the Corporate Accounts Manager role, which led me to open and develop accounts at several of my branches, and ultimately working closely with major film productions and studios in Wilmington.

Worked with small team to enter an emerging market and stimulate growth of the industryUtilized experience to establish and develop the LocalSkim brand imageWebsite development via WordPress from concept to go-live to updatingResearched competition to find areas of opportunity within industry

At Kelly I worked at the regional office in Myrtle Beach, SC supporting Regional Director and underwent training to open the Wilmington, NC branch. I then had the opportunity to work on site at PPD, Inc as a buyer in the purchasing department. At PPD, I worked with various study teams and internal departments during the conversion process from the previous departmental budgeting to a centralized purchasing process.

Pilot Promotions was Wilmington, NC based firm that I started to connect bands and musicians in Wilmington venues and to bring in national talent/acts to the Wilmington area. My responsibilities included developing relationships with venues to set and achieve win-win results, recruiting and developing talent, and creating marketing campaigns for events, talent and venues.While still attending UNCW, I was able to take what I was learning in the classroom and implement and test the concepts in the real world. In doing so, I managed hundreds of projects and events from idea to completion, overseeing event preparations, ensuring satisfaction and soliciting business sponsors for events.

I served as the UNCW Campus Captain for Belltower books for 4 'seasons', which occurred at the end of each semester during end of semester exams. The Belltower model was buying back textbooks, offering prices typically substantially higher than both the campus bookstores. I my role included establishing publicity and marketing campaigns leading up to the exam seasons, in order to increase awareness and interest for our service. I was responsible to recruit, hire, train and support my team, in addition to serving my own client base. This role provided great experiences in time management as well as conflict resolution. My experiences from this role that have helped me in training and developing direct reports and finding solutions during stressful situations.

As a Porter I was contracted to assist during 'Turn' at the ACC off campus housing locations in Wilmington. I was contracted for this job for 2 years while in college. Duties included leading a team of peers to update and refit apartments for the next school year. the 'turning' of 200-300 units occurred in a 21 day time frame. In this role I was able to hone my skills in trouble shooting and problem solving to find solutions for all the various challenges that arose.

As Facebook was growing in popularity, SEI contracted me to develop best practices for establishing Facebook and Twitter pages for SEI and their clients, to establish and increase SEO and brand recognition.

In my college internship with UNCW Campus Dining I was responsible for a variety of tasks which helped provide context to what I was learning in class. These tasks included managing the website and online menus and social media presence, administering marketing promotional giveaways, and implementing local marketing at various dining locations on campus.My greatest experience was planning and conducting as well as analyzing and presenting the data from the 'Informal Student Survey' program, where I conducted in person market research in order to understand what the students wanted for campus dining options. I then was able to meet with the heads of the UNCW Campus Dining and ARAMARK to provide them feedback and recommendations for the next Campus Dining location to be constructed.

Over the two summers when I worked with TCS, I completed a wide variety of tasks. My responsibilities included: answering the phone, adding content to the website, coming up with lists of potential clients in the Greater Greensboro area, making cold and warm calls to clients and businesses that used to be clients, developing a 5-piece system of mailers to go out to potential clients in a wide range of fields and communicating with sales, management and outside marketing firms on the website and the 5-piece mailer, to insure common understanding and agreement.