Howell joins Smithville as vice president of marketing

ELLETTSVILLE, Indiana – Kira Howell has joined Smithville as vice president of marketing, according to Darby McCarty, chairman and CEO of Smithville. Howell comes to Smithville from Blake Consulting in Connecticut and as a former senior marketing executive at Frontier Communications, where she held a number of executive roles in national markets. She will be reporting to Paul Quick, President of Smithville.

“I’m excited to announce the addition of a new company executive to lead Smithville’s marketing efforts,” said Darby McCarty. “Kira’s years of industry experience will allow us to better understand the needs of our customers and develop the products and offerings that will help improve their lives while strengthening our business.”

“We are grateful to have a professional of Kira’s caliber join Smithville,” said Paul Quick. “She is a nationally recognized leader in successful marketing, change management and strategy – we look forward to her helping lead Smithville to the next level as a top Indiana broadband and telecommunications company.”

Howell’s current duties at Smithville include transforming the company’s marketing function to better support residential and commercial growth, and to identify and execute go-to-market and digital marketing strategies for new Smithville products and services, as well as oversee product management and development, and residential customer service and scheduling management.

Since joining Smithville, Howell has directed the launch of a new Cloud Voice service, new security products that now include fire monitoring, and a new Smithville brand strategy.

Before joining Smithville, Howell served for eight years in a variety of vice president-level executive positions at Frontier Communications, including the company’s Transformation Office, where she helped execute Frontier’s Journey Forward Initiative together with Bain and Company, a global management consulting firm.

Her marketing experience at Frontier included leading marketing programs for 29 states for the company’s Centralized Field Marketing Division that included California, Connecticut, Florida, Texas and other markets.

Howell held agency management positions prior to her experience with Frontier in brand development, telemarketing, direct mail, media planning and buying and other marketing roles.

She is a graduate of Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration.

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About Smithville
Nationally recognized for more than a decade as a Top 100 Broadband Company, privately owned Smithville is Indiana’s largest independent telecom company with more than 200 employees. As a fifth-generation, family-owned business, Smithville has been committed to delivering fast and reliable connectivity and legendary service to its customers for nearly a century. The company is well-known as an industry leader and community supporter for rural Indiana.

Since the early 1990s, Smithville has constructed more than 2,800 miles of high-speed, high-capacity fiber across more than 22 Indiana counties, representing private investments totaling upward of a quarter of a billion dollars, including recent completion of a $4.5 million, 100-gigabit fiber ring.

In addition to its residential services, Smithville provides commercial fiber-based connectivity for businesses, university campuses, biotechnology companies, healthcare providers, government offices, residential centers, communities, and other entities, including the WestGate@Crane Technology Park and the Purdue Research Park. The company currently serves about 23,000 businesses and residences in southern and central Indiana. For more information, please visit www.smithville.com.