NRTC Adds ‘Demystifying’ Depth to Funding Services Team

Teresa Ferguson, an executive with 30 years of experience dealing with broadband policy, joins NRTC as senior director, Broadband and Infrastructure Funding. Building rural broadband networks to unserved and underserved areas has become an important government objective in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ferguson’s joining with NRTC is an important step in the recently announced plan to expand NRTC Funding Services.

Ferguson says her goal is “to advance successful member engagement in state and federal funding programs, supporting member’s deployment of smart grid and broadband infrastructures throughout the communities they serve.”

She comes to NRTC after serving as director of Federal Broadband Engagement for the Colorado Broadband Office since 2019. In that position, she promoted public/private partnerships and helped rural providers find state and federal broadband funding opportunities. Her role there was “to demystify federal and state broadband funding programs, giving Colorado stakeholders the tools needed to successfully apply for and secure broadband funding.”

Ferguson worked on policy initiatives including the state universal service fund as senior telecom analyst for the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. During this period, she held national leadership positions, engaging with the FCC, Universal Service Administrative Co. and National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, advocating on behalf of Colorado’s interests.

Earlier in her career, during 15 years at BNI Solutions in Atlanta, she was involved in the design and installation of broadband networks and was an in-house expert on E-Rate federal universal service policies.

She is a graduate of Missouri State University in Springfield with a degree in accounting. Married with two sons, she will work from Colorado, where the family spends their weekends hiking, camping, fishing or remodeling a 95-year-old mountain cabin.