Virginia Brailey, VP of marketing and communication
Someone needs to be providing investment advice—it’s just not going to be Virginia Brailey. After completing the first step toward acquiring her investment representative license (the Canadian Securities Course) straight out of university, she realized that it would be more fun working on the marketing side. Today, she has more than 20 years of experience in the field in marketing and product management, and she’s vice president of marketing and communications for Cogeco Data Services (CDS), Cogeco Cable Inc.’s information and communications technology (ICT) arm. Here’s a look at the stats behind her efforts and CDS’s award-winning growth.
2008
Québec-based Cogeco Cable was founded all the way back in 1957, but CDS, the ICT solutions branch of the company, was created after Cogeco Cable acquired Toronto Hydro Telecom on June 13, 2008. Though the arm has expanded over the years, it has always focused on enterprise services, providing businesses with all manner of IT assistance.
Brailey started with Toronto Hydro Telecom seven years ago before the acquisition. She had been recruited from yet another telecom organization, and because Toronto Hydro Telecom was relatively new, Brailey was charged with building up the brand as well as its marketing team. Now her time is spent doing strategic planning and product management with the company and the marketing team.
$1.7 billion
One of the four major organizations within Cogeco, enterprise services (CDS and Peer 1 Hosting are included in this segment) accounts for approximately 15 percent of its parent company’s $1.7 billion in revenue. Whereas the majority of the Cogeco organization is focused on residential and small-business cable services, CDS provides data centres, managed IT, cloud infrastructure, and voice and connectivity services to some of Canada’s largest companies and organizations.