Tami Erwin has worked at many companies without ever leaving the one where she started.

She began her career at US West as a customer-service rep in 1987 and had a prime seat for the telecom-industry merger frenzy of the ’90s as US West became AirTouch, which joined with Vodafone to become Vodafone AirTouch, which hooked up with Bell Atlantic and GTE to becomeVerizon Wireless.

Just over a year into her role as CMO, she still keeps customer service as a guiding principle as the industry faces “incredible competition from traditional and nontraditional competitors.”

Her down-home attitude and her love of community began on the farm where she grew up in rural Skagit County, Wash., about two hours north of Seattle. Her father was a family physician and she was an avid 4-H'er. Ms. Erwin has strong roots in the area -- her great grandparents owned a yard where telephone poles were made. A “somewhat ironic ... and an entirely different world of telecommunications/technology I am now involved with,” she said.

Twitter:
@wirelessmom4

Home:  
Peapack-Gladstone, N.J.

First job?
Picking strawberries.

Did you know? 
As a child she lived in Benghazi, Libya