Biography

jake Sturtz is a telecommunications expert with 23 years of experience in the field
as a strategic planner, business developer and operational sales engineer at a
national level in the industry.

Jake also has vast operations expertise that lies in the areas of technical site infrastructure, network architecture and engineering.

Jake began his career in telecom with Bell South and later ICG Communications
always taking on increasing responsibility by being advanced to Director of
Operations East. Jake was responsible for the OSP & ISP and Sales support for all
the U.S. states east of the Mississippi river with an annual capital budget in excess
of $100M and a staff of no less than 30 direct reports until his most recent position
prior to serving as the Director of Operations at Zayo/Atlanta Gas & Light networks
where he successfully led the operations team. Who under his leadership handled
several major projects including the Verizon “Build to Suit” project in the Atlanta
market, one of the largest for that organization. He has been responsible for the
management of lying over 12,000 fiber route miles of aerial and underground fiber
optic networks. Also including the turn-up and management of a multitude of carrier,
enterprise and wholesale customers.
Jake has spent 2018 and most of 2019 working with a local NC carrier
upgrading the network in from 10G to 100G capabilities. Thus by increasing the
original backbone footprint by 350 times the original size and installing a series of
telecom huts and 2M cabinets strategically across the region.

Most recently Jake began his next chapter of his career as a Sales Professional at CenturyLink as part of the State/Local/Higher Education team, SLED.

Jake’s expertise goes beyond operations as he is a cross-functional team leader
and mentor with expertise in sales engineering, construction, OSP engineering,
company mergers, site acquisition, and more.

Jake is a graduate of University of Maryland, James Clark School of Engineering
with a Major in Electrical Engineering (ENEE)

Jake is also a veteran who has served in Desert Shield, Desert, Storm, and other
numerous deployments. He has two grown children and lives in Winston-Salem, NC
and is a champion of the growth in Winston-Salem with numerous entrepreneurial
investments adding to the growth of the downtown and Innovation Quarter.