Interview Date: August 19, 2024
Interviewer: Jeff Baumgartner
Abstract
Lisa Hood’s career in telecommunications began unexpectedly after she audited a small independent telecom company early in her accounting career. Originally aspiring to work for a major firm, she pivoted to the private sector when MJD Communications—later known as FairPoint Communications—recruited her to build their accounting team. Over more than two decades, she advanced through leadership roles, helping grow the company from 4,000 to over a million broadband customers. Hood played a key role in M&A activity, including the high-profile acquisition of Verizon access lines in the Northeast. Her experience navigating financial risk, unionized workforces, and infrastructure challenges gave her deep insight into the telecom industry, particularly in the context of rural America and the long-term demands of network maintenance.
After FairPoint’s acquisition by Consolidated Communications, Hood transitioned to the National Content & Technology Cooperative (NCTC) as CFO and later COO. At NCTC, she helped guide the organization through a strategic transformation away from heavy reliance on video programming toward a more diversified service model, including IP transport, managed Wi-Fi, group purchasing, and a recently launched mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) initiative. Hood emphasized operational execution, member value, and financial sustainability, especially for smaller members. She also advocated for female leadership, urging women in telecom to take chances, seek mentors, and recognize their value. Looking ahead, she sees broadband as the industry’s anchor, with operators who provide the best service—regardless of cable or telecom origin—emerging as long-term winners.
Interview Transcript
JEFF BAUMGARTNER: Welcome to this edition of the Hauser Oral History Project, I’m Jeff Baumgartner, and pleased to be joined and honored to have with me Lisa Hood, COO/ CFO of the National Content Technology Cooperative or NCTC. And we are talking here in Nashville on the eve of the 2024 Independent Show. Lisa, it is good to have a chance to have you here.
LISA HOOD: Thank you.
BAUMGARTNER: So I think the easiest thing is to start at the beginning. So coming out of Fort Hays State back in the 80s, a business degree. As you were coming out of there, what were your intentions in business? Was there a career in telecom or cable something that you had in mind, or was it like a lot of us, kind of a happenstance or a fortuitous situation?
HOOD: Definitely the latter. Coming out of Fort Hays State, coming from a small rural community of only 800 people, I wanted to go, at the time, to big eight accounting firms, which are now the big four. Wanted to get out of the small town and go to the city and ultimately ended up marrying a hometown guy and his career was not mobile, so I ended up in a public accounting firm in western Kansas. And ultimately was performing an audit on a small independent telecom company with only 4000 customers. And I was in charge, I was the accounting manager on the job. MJD Communications at the time was getting into acquisitions in the telecom space. I think they were some of the early ones and started buying up the– I guess a lot of them were mom-and-pop’s and families that were ready to sell the company. And they were successful purchasing Sunflower Telephone Company out of western Kansas back in the early 80s, and as a result of having been the auditor on that account, they approached me about coming on board and building an accounting team in Dodge City, Kansas, and support of an acquisition. So MJD Communications purchased Sunflower Telephone Company, and their very next acquisition was to purchase the access lines from GTE, which is an old name in the industry.
BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, it goes back.
HOOD: It goes back a ways, they were spinning off their access lines in Maine and Vermont. MJD was successful as part of a consortium to buy those lines and they were busting them up. And because they only bought the access lines they did not buy any of the infrastructure, so they needed to build an accounting team. So their CEO at the time called me and asked me if considered leaving public accounting and coming private with an understanding that if the acquisition did not close that myself and anyone I hired would be laid off.
BAUMGARTNER: Oh, that’s kind of risky. So what did you think about that at the time? Because I think everyone at that point in their career, wherever you are in your career certainly is a good thing. And here it is with kind of a risky scenario, so how did you think about that at the time? Were you just like, hey, I’m willing to take a risk?
HOOD: I think at that point in time I was with a regional accounting firm and short of becoming partner, would’ve been the next step for me to go and I would’ve been spending my career auditing and doing tax returns out in rural western Kansas. And I viewed it as an opportunity to maybe take a risk on myself. And actually jump ship and do that. And I was fortunate enough to do it at the time, I only had a single child at the time, and my husband’s job was very stable. So it was an opportunity for me to take a leap. And luckily for me the initial hires, I hired seven people to start, and they had faith in the same thing and were willing to take the same bet. Ultimately the acquisition closed and we built an accounting and IT department that over the years grew to about 70 to 80 people in Dodge City, Kansas, which was a huge employer there at the time. So very proud of what we built there and the job opportunities that we gave in a fairly small rural place. I said for years we had big city jobs in rural western Kansas.
BAUMGARTNER: What did you think of telecom back in those days? Because despite taking a calculated risk were you like, “this could be a long-term career path for me” at the time? Or was it like, “hey, this is opportunistic, let’s see where it goes?”
HOOD: I think I absolutely thought it was long-term career path because I was hired in as the controller, and it was with a firm that was doing M&A. So the whole plan was to do acquisitions and grow EBITA so we could flip it to the next buyer and over period of years we did that. I started and we had 4000 access line companies and when I left we had 1,000,007 broadband customers. So we went through a series of a lot of acquisitions over that time.
BAUMGARTNER: Interesting. Now, how do you get into the world of Fairpoint Communications? I was looking through, like 24 years, so how did that kind of into the picture amid all of this activity?
HOOD: Right MJD was a small group of guys that started the company with the purposes of acquiring telecom companies and gaining the synergies of acquiring and growing which we did. And ultimately we had a lot of private equity and venture capitalists invested in us and I was also fortunate enough to be with the company in the controller role when we took the company public. So out of Dodge City, Kansas, went all the way to New York and was able to stand on the New York Stock Exchange and ring the bell when we took the company public. So when we took the company public is was when they changed the name from MJD Communications to Fairpoint Communications. Exactly.
BAUMGARTNER: I have not had the opportunity to ring the bell. Maybe some day down the line for me. That’s pretty special.
HOOD: You know a lot of people don’t know, especially in western Kansas, that I was there twice actually. Rang the bell the first time when we went public. And then ultimately Fairpoint bought the access lines in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire from Verizon Communications and that’s where we really grew. We went back and rang the bell when we did our senior debt offering for that acquisition. That was a really big acquisition at the time. One of the first telecom companies that actually purchased access lines from Verizon, and many of the ones that did, ended up ultimately having huge financial difficulties because of buying these lines from Verizon. Highly unionized workforces, and then the whole due diligence to have to do on buying assets from Verizon were incredible. It was quite a career path to have gone through all of that and done it from western Kansas. Ultimately we did declare bankruptcy, so not only were we one of the first that acquired those lines from Verizon, we also ended up in bankruptcy as a result of it. I think other companies had similar fates from buying access lines from Verizon. And I do remember when I did it, we were up there doing town hall type meetings. One of their union stewards approached me and he told me right then, it was probably three months before we closed the acquisition, he says “your due diligence has not flushed out what kind of shape this operating plant is actually in as a result of just lack of investment.” So that has excited me throughout my career, the amazing amount of money that is required put into these networks to maintain and operate them.
BAUMGARTNER: I think when you even look today, maybe a lot of folks don’t have that realization or understanding when you’re starting to get into government-funded programs for rural areas, where they’re all focused on building. And it’s like, well, what happens after you build it? You need to operate and maintain it and be a business, versus just being in the business of constructing something with the money that’s coming in to subsidize it. But this is history kind of repeating itself a little bit I think in certain scenarios.
HOOD: I think that’s absolutely true. It is an important observation as people are looking at all of this funding. And at that point in time we were buying copper lines and putting money in copper lines and not really having the full realization that eventually all of that would have to come out and be replaced.
BAUMGARTNER: Yeah the fate of copper was pretty finite, exactly.
HOOD: That’s right.
BAUMGARTNER: And during this period, or throughout your career, who do you identify as your mentors or people who you learned very important lessons from?
HOOD: I would say having been on the financial side of things my entire career, most of my mentors were CFOs. I was fortunate in my career for the entire time I was with Fairpoint, and ultimately Consolidated Communications, to have reported to C levels, CFOs and CEOs, so I had the opportunity from the start and throughout my career to have exposure in the boardrooms and with all of those folks. So equally important, I think, from the front-line workers that I was able to supervise and have on my team, to all the accountants that we hired and mentored up and trained them in the industry, but in particular probably the CFOs that I had the opportunity to have worked with. At the time I was definitely a female in a male’s world. Many times I found myself the only female in the room, so I do find it exciting over the years that that has absolutely started to change. We are getting more and more female leadership in the industry. But along the way I had also key female mentors and I think that’s important in particular our General Counsel, because we were doing M&A all the time. She happened to be a female and we spent a lot of time being the only two ladies at the table and we were always able to mentor ourselves each other, I think, a lot.
BAUMGARTNER: I’m going to jump ahead on a question, then, because one thing I want to ask is, what advice do you have for women who are interested in getting into the world of telecom and cable? Because even though there has been progress, you would still argue it’s still a relatively male-dominated industry, but what would you tell somebody who says “yeah, I think I’d like to get into that?”
HOOD: I think for females the key is to seek out those mentors. Whether they are male or female does not really matter, just an advocate for you. And I’ve always prided myself on be willing to put yourself out there, and be willing to take a chance on yourself and your own skill set. I think sometimes women seem to evaluate our skills worse than other people do. I noticed that in my teams. When you ask people to do self-evaluations women across the board will tend to evaluate themselves lower than what I would have evaluated them, and in many cases men counterparts higher. So I think as females we need to be better at advocating for ourselves and being willing to take chances on ourselves. I think the main thing I would tell people that I wish I would have been better at in my career is– I have two daughters, I recently told them this– be willing to go out there and seek those female mentors and peers. Because I do think over the years women have gotten much better at supporting women instead of us viewing just women as our competition. And so I do think that is something that has been evolving over time. I also think that is what is bringing more women into the industry. That’s probably the main thing, is to just have confidence in yourself and be willing to put yourself out there and go after those roles, and realize you are just as critical at the end of the day as your counterparts in the room.
BAUMGARTNER: I do want to talk to you a little bit about the industry culture because Fairpoint was telecom. Would you say it’s a CLEC [competitive local exchange carrier], or was it also a CLEC?
HOOD: It was.
BAUMGARTNER: And then NCTC is “cable.” It is not an operator but they work with hundreds of cable operators. So over the years how did you view the cultures of the two sides differently? Is there something that kind of bubbles up, that one is different from the other? Collegial versus something maybe not as much? Where have you seen the differences?
HOOD: Well of course spent the majority of my years, especially in my operating roles and CFO roles, in the telecom space. So it wasn’t until I came to the NCTC that I had the exposure to cable. I mentioned to you before we sat down that we always called it the “Telecommunications Act” when I was in telecom. Coming over to NCTC learning that they reference it as the “Cable Act” and I did not realize for a while that we were all talking about the same thing so I feel like…
BAUMGARTNER: We are going to put our stamp on it.
HOOD: I find just talking to people in the cable industry, in particular attending all the NCTC shows and other industry shows, I have decided that I think the cable operators have a lot more fun than the telecom operators did for sure. But beyond the fun part, you know we did not really worry about the cable industry that much because as you go back that many years cable did TV and content and we did voice. And then you got the technology replacement that came along with voice. Number one, cell phones were becoming popular. And then, number two, the Telecom Act made it so you could compete in voice and so the cable companies started to get into voice. And it was that point in time that we started talking about in our meeting rooms and in our boardrooms about the cable industry.
BAUMGARTNER: As a scary competitor, or–?
HOOD: Absolutely, as a competitor. From a standpoint, they were able to get into voice, so we will get in the video.
BAUMGARTNER: I remember that because it was during the Jones days when I was over there. They were starting to look into video and how do we prepare for this, it’s like the other way around with them getting video into their markets. Interesting. And then how did you connect with the NCTC from Fairpoint and Consolidated, or what was the path?
HOOD: That’s correct. I was with Fairpoint until Consolidated Communications purchased Fairpoint, and that was in July 2017 when the acquisition closed. I expected to have been laid off by then. Through the career, as we do more acquisitions and I still stayed in Dodge City, many times, I felt like, oh this acquisition will be it and I will be part of the synergies that come along. I was fortunate to avoid all that. And when Consolidated came along I thought for sure that would be it with my career, at least for them. And luckily for me at the time the acquisition closed the treasurer position was open. They had recently lost their treasurer so the CFO decided to keep the position open until we were able to complete the acquisition to determine if there was anybody on the Fairpoint side to step into that role. And I was fortunate enough, for him to have given me the chance. So I came on as the treasurer and handled all the investor relations, and FP&A work for Consolidated Communications. So it was a great time, a lot of different hats that I was able to wear there. Did a lot, all of the FP&A work treasury, investor relations, insurance, claims management and I think I allowed myself to get too thin. So it was actually a cold call from a recruiter that reached out and said, ”hey, have you ever thought of changing positions? There’s this CFO position available at NCTC.” And although I was familiar with NCTC–
BAUMGARTNER: Didn’t know anything about them.
HOOD: Not anything near like I have learned since I went to work there. And we were a big vendor of NCTC’s because we had video programming, so we actually did interact a lot with NCTC. I just didn’t in my role directly. So then I’m back to that fun part of the cable industry. I wish I had figured that out sooner because then I could have been coming to all of the cable events.
BAUMGARTNER: Yes, like the old Western Shows, they were fun.
HOOD: Yes I missed all that. Didn’t even know it was going on.
BAUMGARTNER: We have fewer shows, the Independent Show is still pretty fun.
HOOD: Yes, absolutely agree. So I was able to spend two years there, and when a headhunter called me I was on one of those work-cations when I was trying to be on vacation and I was busy taking care of work. And I said it was a moment of weakness but I am glad that it was because I really do miss my colleagues at Consolidated, but the career change in NCTC has been great. I said I hoped to end my career as at least a CFO and so it kind of checks that box in my career path as well.
BAUMGARTNER: So as you came on board at NCTC at the time, what were the big priorities for the organization and for you as well in those particular days? Because I wasn’t sure where they were on their evolution in terms of putting deals and agreements together for programming or technology for all the members.
HOOD: Right. So when I came on board, and this continues, was really an initiative to transition the co-op with less of a dependency on programming. Because for years that’s what the co-op was, was single threaded with programming. So that transition had already started some, but since I came in 2019 we have launched and grown the IP T&T, transport and transit business, so we are getting great deals for our members in that regard. The group purchasing business continues to grow a lot with a lot of vendor deals. And then also the managed Wi-Fi, and of course all of the video solutions that we still do with all of our strategic partners in relation to how video actually gets delivered in addition to providing the content itself. So really a transition of services, so that as linear continues to decline and our dependency on that declines in that transition. MVNO [Mobile Virtual Network Operator] is our latest task in doing that, and we have launched it, but it’s– you know they say if it was easy anybody can do it, this was proving to be harder than we thought but we’re getting there.
BAUMGARTNER: Just so from your standpoint on the MVNO side, what was the biggest challenge in getting it all together? We were in contact with the co-op for a pretty long period when it was being developed. There are multiple parties, and it’s a completely different business in a way from some of the others that are involved in.
HOOD: Right, I would say the hard part number one right out the gate was picking our network provider. And then once we did that picking the platform on which it was going to run. And probably the hardest parts are integration of those platforms. Then it’s always more difficult for a vendor to understand, with NCTC helping facilitate this, it is a one-to-many relationship versus– these vendors are typically used to just a one-to-one relationship. So the one-to-many makes it– it has both its benefits and detriments I think. The benefits, for sure, is we can negotiate single agreements that benefit all of our members. And I feel very passionate about the fact that many of our agreements are afforded to our smaller members that they otherwise would not be able to have access to some of the services. And some of the stuff we have coming up in relation to artificial intelligence and the way I think NCTC can help with governance and all the things that will go around that I think will be another area that can potentially be very beneficial to the NCTC. Under evaluation right now, I don’t know if it will go anywhere or not. But what we always look for as we transition is, where can we bring a service to the market that there’s a value proposition for the NCTC to be in the middle of it. And we felt like with the MVNO in particular for our members. The larger ones leading the way because we definitely need them in that ecosystem and we are getting them and they’ve been great partners, and structure the agreement in such a way that it will be economically viable for our smaller members to get into and benefit as well. And that I think ultimately just the convergence of mobile with the traffic offload that our members’ networks afford to happen. It’s just a natural convergence of mobile with the fiber networks and the Wi-Fi networks and I think that will continue.
BAUMGARTNER: Yes I think it’s going to be interesting to see how that all evolves because we are in the early days. As we are sitting here, we have some operators that are kind of at the forefront getting in here. I’m going to be curious to see 10 years down the road, does mobile become a must-have for the industry, either as a growth driver or as something that can enable the convergence of the network, and services as well? It’s kind of hard to tell right now, but it feels like we are kind of in the beginning of this new chapter.
HOOD: I absolutely agree with you. It will be fun to see where it goes.
BAUMGARTNER: All right I want to talk a little bit more about your career. So you added the CEO role in 2021.
HOOD: So how did that alter your scope at the NCTC from the day-to-day or strategic side, and what were some of the opportunities and challenges that you have come across over the last four years?
HOOD: Sure. So in June 2021 we hired our new CEO, Lou Borelli, and it was in conjunction with hiring him as CEO that they did promote me to the COO/CFO role. And I think largely because he is a remote CEO and I am local in Kansas City, I think we’ve complemented each other really well and I like to think that Lou would say the thing same thing about me. You’ll have to catch him and ask him that, but I think we work very well. So he is external facing and is really good in those roles and I am more internal facing just from operations and just operationalizing all these new deals. Because we are doing new deals constantly. And we do– one of the things we do at NCTC, I think we do better than anybody, and we bring this benefit to our vendors, is we do all the billing and collecting on the behalf of the majority of our vendors. So that’s a benefit to them because we are the ones sending out invoices, we are the ones handling all the sales and use taxes, and in many cases we are doing the follow-up credit and collections. So I can look at people, we talk about the millions of millions of dollars we bill every single month, we collect almost 100%. Our bad debt is nonexistent. So when I talk to vendors about the value proposition of them doing their transactions through the NCTC, that’s one of the biggest things. We basically become the front office or their back office. They are definitely facing their consumers. We are the back office and handling the billing and collections and remittance of all that.
BAUMGARTNER: Because a lot of them don’t have the resources to do a lot of that.
HOOD: That is exactly right. So one of the main things I ask on a regular basis and probably drive the teams crazy– When we’re first talking to a vendor and doing a deal my first question out the gate is “what’s the value proposition for the vendor to have us in the middle?” And “what’s the value proposition to our members?” Because if we cannot answer those two questions there’s no reason for us to be in the middle of it, right?
BAUMGARTNER: Have there been a lot of instances where you looked at it and like oh, this doesn’t make sense?
HOOD: Yes, there’s plenty. You see them all the time and you just kind of shake your head and it’s like, no, it’s not strategic to us and it’s not strategic really for our members either. We will do marketing deals all the time if they make sense, especially if our members have a need for a certain service. And the marketing agreements just allow them to come to our shows and we promote them but we don’t operate as their back office like I’ve told you in relation to our strategic partners. So I ask those questions on the front end and then as the contract is getting negotiated and signed, the next question is, “how are we going to operationalize this so our systems and platforms can handle it?” So I really enjoy that because you get to deal with really everybody on the team. I have appreciated the chance to be back with a smaller entity, 62 employees. You get to know everybody, and know what everybody’s role is and understand. It makes it much easier to operationalize contracts and deals when the workforce is lean and mean and you know everybody’s role. It’s been a lot of fun.
BAUMGARTNER: Yeah you mentioned Lou Borelli coming on. Soon after he came on board, the organization went through a rebranding in 2022 and Lou called it a pivot. “Cable” and “television” came out of the initials of NCTC to reflect the things that the organization was focused on. So what was it like during those days? Was it a pretty exciting time? Because change can be kind of scary for people. Even if it’s necessary or even if you have to kind of disrupt yourself.
HOOD: I think everybody embraced it actually because of the fact that the writing is really on the wall in relation to the decline of the linear TV. So it was not hard, the rebranding, the culture. They grasped it, all the employees were on board with that. I like to call it a transition instead of a pivot, because we are not pivoting away from linear TV at all. In fact it’s still alive and thriving really well, believe it or not. It’s still in a state of decline and will continue to be so, I think, over time. But it is still a significant part of what we are and what we do and how we serve our members. But no, everybody embraced that. We use our program account managers anytime we want to promote a new product and talk to members about something different we are doing. They are the first ones with their hands up, willing to make those phone calls and help us with that. So I do think one of the biggest things we are challenged with though, is reaching members outside of just the core leadership at the companies that have always known the NCTC and have always known what we’ve done. To get a refresh of our contact list and other people that work at these companies and other ISPs that might not even be members of the NCTC yet, to make sure we are getting the message out to them that we are making a transition and what we can do can and how we can help them. Because we still find so many people that still think that all we do is programming. And so that’s probably the hardest part, is really getting the message to our members that we are more than just a programming organization now.
BAUMGARTNER: That’s interesting you say it’s a transition versus a pivot, and you bring up video. As we sit here there’s going to be a lot of discussion about the new broadband TV offering for the members, kind of an entertainment-focused package. I think that that’s an example of what you said, video – it’s not like it’s going away. It’s just the members need different types of options because they are trying to figure out what the path forward is with the video. Do you transition to streaming, and if you do so, how can you get packages that consumers want?
HOOD: Absolutely.
BAUMGARTNER: So lastly, because we still call it the cable industry even though the word “cable” is coming out a lot of organization names. But where do you think this industry will be 10 years from now? Will it still be cable, still be viewed as collegial or will it become something else? All of the networks are becoming agnostic. All of operators, they’re doing HFC, fiber, fixed wireless mobile, there’s a lot of change going on too.
HOOD: Absolutely. I think ultimately it will all come back to the broadband and the pipe into the home and how it functions in the home. And the entertainment will still be key, and how people source that entertainment will be different, but it’s all going to have to come from the pipe that goes into the home. So when I look around at all our members and the passion that they have for the service territories, and the passion that they have for investing in the plant, and making sure that the services are good, I think the industry will thrive well. NCTC in particular, I think 60% of our members now are telcom and instead of cable. So they are coexisting very well already. And while sometimes they compete against each other, we see that a lot, at the end of the day they are competing and they’re friends and they know that ultimately—I think ultimately the company that provides the best service will ultimately prevail and I think it will absolutely be our membership group.
BAUMGARTNER: Right, because you are providing them with tools and ways that they can implement and try to differentiate or enhance their own position in the market.
HOOD: That’s exactly right.
BAUMGARTNER: Thanks Lisa. I think that’s where we are going to leave it for this one, appreciate your insight, learning a lot more about your career and the path on to NCTC, and look forward to seeing where things go next for you.
HOOD: I appreciate it a lot, thank you.
