Deb Socia says she loved being a middle school math teacher in Boston, but with an entrepreneurial passion she soon moved into leadership roles in education to help empower her fellow teachers and the inner-city students she taught.
“I never planned to be a principal, but I became one because I got tired of people telling me no and I wanted to be a principal who said yes – yes we can try something new,” she recalls. “When people talk about entrepreneurs we forget that educators can be entrepreneurs too and startups are startups regardless of where they are starting.”
Socia, who went on to lead citywide and national programs to promote computer technology and literacy, came to Chattanooga this summer to lead the city’s innovation development agency, The Enterprise Center.
Socia, who succeeded the retiring Ken Hays as head of the city-backed Enterprise Center, is the fourth CEO of the nonprofit agency since former Mayor Bob Corker established the center in 2002 to promote innovation and technology in Chattanooga. The effort was propelled in 2010 when EPB began offering America’s first citywide gigabit-per-second internet service and the center began working to attract Gig users and encourage startups interested in using high-speed broadband.
“People all over the country are jealous of what Chattanooga has,” says Socia, who spent the past five years promoting community efforts to expand high-speed internet access and close the digital divide between broadband users and those unable to get or afford broadband services. “I have always been very impressed with what Chattanooga was able to achieve and that is one of the reasons that I decided to come here.”