Title: VP of Business Operations
Company: Utelogy
Location: Central Massachusetts
Overtime: Newly engaged, she’s planning a wedding for next spring. She also loves nature photography and has a black belt in Krav Maga.
Why You Need to Know Her: Utelogy’s human Swiss Army Knife has a background in UX design, but now she’s tasked with launching new initiatives and optimizing day-to-day operations at Utelogy.
Nicole Corbin’s career could have gone in a very different direction. She attended a vocational technical high school, where she initially thought she would pursue graphic design.
She quickly realized that working with printing presses was not her calling, so she moved to the business technology program. There, she was tasked with some light web development as well as presentation design. “I found designing on a computer very interesting,” she recalled.
That’s when she gravitated toward building websites that looked nice and were useful, and pursued a degree at Boston University that would allow her to learn both design and development. Corbin graduated early and began her career as a front-end web developer for a major healthcare company, where she worked closely with product teams on several sites.
After a couple of acquisitions, her job responsibilities shifted to building ads and revenue-generating content. That’s when Corbin decided it was time for a new opportunity—and a smaller company. She found the right fit at Utelogy. The California-based company offers intelligent monitoring software that helps organizations manage their AV assets.
Corbin started her Pro AV career in June 2019 as the director of product and user experience at Utelogy. A few days later, with no AV background whatsoever, she was at InfoComm. It was admittedly “very different” from her consumer-facing healthcare work. “I got a really good sense of what we were doing in the industry and who the other players were,” she said. “It was a great experience for me.”
Since that first InfoComm, internal changes in Utelogy have pushed Corbin to grow professionally. “That was to my benefit, taking on a lot of different responsibilities along the way,” she said.
Today, as VP of business operations, she runs Utelligence, the company’s strategic alliance partner program. Working with companies like Barco, Lightware, Logitech, Neat, and Sennheiser, to name a few, Corbin manages everything from marketing efforts to security certifications. Security is an important part of the Utelogy solution, as most of its major customers have strict information security processes for data protection. She’s also involved with “the business” part of the business, including internal processes and procedures.
Pro AV peaked her interest quickly—and after five years, Cobin said she’s still learning about the industry. She has watched first-hand how much has changed in such a short time, and her new knowledge lets her revisit the difficulties of trying to setup and join a corporate HQ videoconference a decade ago through new eyes. “It just feels so funny looking back at that,” she said. “Compared to now, when everything is just so easy, and everyone is trying to streamline the home experience into the work experience.”
One day, Corbin will likely run her own business. In the meantime, she’s been learning as much as possible about every aspect of Utelogy’s business, which is great experience for her and much appreciated by the company. “I’m very fortunate that the people I work for know those are my goals and they are helping me get there,” she said.
