Eric W. Brackett

Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder for Great America Networks Conferencing, LLC.

An entrepreneur at the early age of 20, Eric W. Brackett founded Brackett Telecommunications Inc., in August 1985. At that time, the telecommunications industry had just completed its most tumultuous evolution when the FCC anti-trust legislation resulted in the restructuring of AT&T. AT&T previously had an actual monopoly on all business and residential telecommunications.

While Brackett was completing his Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., he identified that small- and medium-sized businesses would be faced with their largest challenge in sorting out the explosion of new telecommunications choices and players. Once he had successfully graduated from Northwestern, he founded his company with the simple vision to be the best telecommunications provider to small- and medium-sized businesses within the Chicago Metropolitan Area. While at Northwestern, he qualified for membership to the Phi Beta Kappa Honors Society.

Brackett’s academic record was extended when he graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago Kent College of Law with a Juris Doctorate degree in 1991.

In 1992, Eric Brackett transformed his company from Brackett Telecommunications, Inc., into BTI Communications Group, Ltd., to better meet the telecommunication needs of small- and medium-sized businesses. Although BTI represented a fresh start with additional shareholders, Brackett’s vision, customer base, employees and vendors were unchanged during the transition.

Today, he serves as Chief Executive Officer of BTI Communications Group, Ltd., and Great America Networks, Inc., as well as Great America Networks Conferencing LLC, with offices in both Chicago and Los Angeles, and a service territory covering the U.S., Europe and Asia.

In 1993, Brackett succeeded in lobbying Ameritech (now SBC) to extending an invitation of Authorized Distributor Program to BTI. This program was closed, but Brackett would not compromise on his vision of BTI becoming a single-source provider of communication solutions to its small- and medium-size businesses, and Ameritech was still the only local game in town. Ameritech extended its invitation into this exclusive group of communications providers on a conditional basis. That basis involved that BTI would succeed in achieving the top level of sales performance in its first three months to be able to continue to represent Ameritech’s voice and data network services. Brackett was up for the challenge and spearheaded BTI’s training, sales and provisioning for BTI to be named Ameritech’s newest 5-Star Authorized Distributor based on 1993’s fourth-quarter performance.

In 1994, Brackett single-handedly equipped BTI to introduce to the Chicago Metropolitan Area the revolutionary new software-enabled and Digital Signal Processors-powered Axxess^(TM) PBX System by Inter-Tel (NASDAQ SYMBOL: INTL).

Brackett’s dedication and innovation was evident in 1998, when he led the design and implementation for the Inforte Corporation a pioneering networked Voice over Internet Protocol system in Chicago, Dallas and Irvine, Calif.

In 2000, Brackett realized another facet of his vision – to provide BTI customers with the benefits of technology on a fixed-rental basis that incorporates levels of service and eliminates the financial and technological burdens associated with maintaining the ownership of other technology platforms.

The new Flexi-Tel^(TM) program was adopted, which allowed BTI to provide technology solutions to small- and medium-sized businesses without the worries of later technology obsolescence or future business applications being restricted. Additionally, it ensures that ongoing training and support are provided to all of BTI’s customers so that utilization of technology was always at optimum delivery levels. This achievement would later serve as the foundation for Eric Brackett’s vision of the ProfitSolutions^(TM) approach.

Brackett’s dedication to his company, with a results-driven attitude, made BTI’s exponential growth possible year after year from 1992 through 2000.

Throughout the dot.com meltdown of 2000, and the financial downfalls of the telecommunications industry in 2001 and 2002, BTI has continued to grow including the opening its Los Angeles facility just after September 11, 2001 as well as its expansion to such new markets as Southern California, Texas and New York.

In 2002, Brackett founded a second corporation, Great America Networks, Inc., which replaced BTI’s use of SBC – Ameritech’s services. Great America Networks, a voice and data service provider allows for BTI to provide improved customer service and satisfaction with improved ability to control quality of service and costs for customers’ network services.

Today, Great America Networks, Inc., is a licensed public utility in Illinois, California, New York, Texas, Nevada and Washington with status pending in the balance of the country. Great America Networks' products assist BTI as well as other systems integrators like BTI in providing stable, full service telecommunications solutions, which seamlessly integrate with their clients' voice and data equipment and software applications.

In 2002, Brackett was instrumental in BTI being named a founding member of the Inter-Tel Exclusive Business Partner Program and rolled out its ProfitSolutions(TM) approach to manage customer communications infrastructures.

In January of 2004 during its annual Business Partner Conference, Inter-Tel named BTI as its 2003 Exclusive Business Partner of the Year and a 2003 Top 10 Dealer and honored Brackett with trips to Mexico and Alaska accompanied by Inter-Tel’s top executive officers.

Over the past 20 years, the way society communicates, the technology and the business concerns have evolved and changed. While Brackett has been opportunistic about market opportunities, BTI’s principal policy has not wavered. As Brackett says, policy number one is “We always deliver what we say we will deliver.” Since 1985 this has remained the same for all of his customers.

President & Co-Founder For Great America Networks Conferencing, LLC.

CHICAGO - Reno Provine, of Plainfield Illinois leads the day to day operations of the organization as President.  He oversees the IT, Operations and financial aspects of the company, and was the primary architect behind the technical infrastructure and the overall layout in a fully redundant co-located facility in a carrier class hotel structure.

Provine’s background includes more than 13 years of combined IT, networking, conferencing, and telecommunications experience. As Director of IT and Network Operations for Citizens Conferencing, a subsidiary of Citizens Communications, he oversaw the entire IT, Networking and telecommunications staff with an annual Capex Budget of $3.5 million.

Additional career highlights include:

• Telecommunications Manager for Utilipro in charge of telecommunications staff, equipment and circuits in excess of $1 million, and additionally served as a call center consultant responsible for design and installation of up to 500 seats including infrastructure, software, engineering, and reporting/programming applications.
• Voice Communications Specialist with Worldspan where he served as senior voice expert on support team for 3,000-employee enterprise.
• Telecommunications and Call Center consultant to Anderson Consulting for various for engineering projects including PBX installation, engineering and programming, call center setup and design and UNIX backup and programming.
• PBX Engineer for Precision Response Corporation responsible for telecommunications administration of PBX, voicemail, call center setup, routing and vectoring, circuit management and facilitation.
• Senior Voice Consultant with Litton-PRC responsible for vendor selection, contract administration, voice engineering, circuit management and facilitation for the US Department of Defense agency, United States Marine Forces, Pacific Command (USMARFORPAC).
• Assistant Telecommunications Chief for the United States Marine Forces Pacific responsible for the communications infrastructure, contracts, circuits, and more for the entire force which comprised of three complete bases at the time, and previous to that served as the Information Systems Coordinator for the Battalion which consisted of LAN/WAN Administration, Software Administration, Engineering, Support, Cabling and Network Infrastructure, E-mail, Hardware installation and maintenance for entire battalion.

“Reno’s successful launch in 2005 of our Conferencing Company is just one small component of where he can, and will take our BTI Family of Companies,” says Brackett. “His vast experience, continued dedication, and tireless focus are a perfect fit for BTI’s plans for global expansion.”

Provine, a native of Honolulu, Hawaii, has attended studies at several Universities such as Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu; Central Texas University and Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. He also received management certification through Loyola University Chicago’s Mini-MBA Management Certificate Program.

He has numerous IT and telecommunications certifications including Lucent, Avaya, and AT&T for Definity PBX Administration, World Class Routing, Vectoring Administration, CentreVu Supervisor, Intuity Administration, Expert Agent Selection, and MCU. Additionally, he has received various certifications for Inter-Tel platforms and applications.

“I have every intention of making Great America Networks Conferencing a household name in the markets that we do business by providing such high levels of products and services that our customers refer us at a rate that greatly exceeds that of our competitors,” says Provine. “We will accomplish this goal by continuing to be experts in our industry and by employing the highest level of talent available. When a customer becomes a member of the Great America Networks family, they will feel that the rewards and results of this partnership greatly exceed any costs associated with doing business with us, and they tell not only us, but everyone that they speak to about our Profit Solutions approach and the fact that we stand behind our products and services 110 percent all day, every day.”