Q&A with ChoiceLight CEO Regina Emberton
Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
After almost a decade building and leading the South Bend-Elkhart Regional Partnership, Regina Emberton was tapped to lead ChoiceLight Inc., a nonprofit providing access to an extensive dark fiber optic network across Elkhart, Marshall, and St. Joseph counties.
With a mission to promote and foster technology-based economic development in her role as CEO, Emberton provides strategic direction to ensure companies in the region have the requisite broadband access to stay and grow locally. The organization also works with local governments to provide equitable and accessible connectivity.
Emberton spoke with Inside INdiana Business on the role ChoiceLight plays in the region’s economic development, her background in real estate and the importance of regional collaboration.
This article has been edited for brevity and clarity.
How did you get to this point in your career?
I was a student at Indiana University South Bend, got my masters of public affairs, focused on community and economic development. I was fortunate to have a grant through HUD for women and minorities that were pursuing community development. As part of that grant, we had to do internships. So every semester I was out with a different nonprofit, and I was exposed to working for the city of Mishawaka, the City of South Bend, and Downtown South Bend’s predecessor. One of my internships was with a company called CB Richard Ellis Bradley, now called Bradley Co. here in town. I stayed on as an employee there, and worked my way up the ranks. I started in market research, grew to brokerage, and was there for 14 years. I ended up being the vice president of brokerage and administrative services, which was a great exposure to commercial real estate.
The private sector wasn’t where I thought I would be for my career, but it was a wonderful experience. I learned so much and was able to get involved in a lot of things. In 2013 I was approached about a new organization. It was called Michiana Partnership, now referred to as the South Bend-Elkhart Regional Partnership. It was an opportunity for me to grow something from the ground up and work with our local economic development organizations to market as a region. We started off just as a marketing organization, trying to recruit businesses to any of the counties within the region. I was there for nine years, and it was just a phenomenal experience of collaboration and bringing together the public and private sector.
About three years ago, I had been serving on ChoiceLight’s board of directors and Mary Jan Hedman, the CEO since inception, was retiring and this opportunity became available. I had seen how many companies and educational institutions were relying on their digital infrastructure in order to be able to create their products or adopt new, innovative processes. So this was just a great opportunity to be able to focus on and expand that technology-led economic development.
What’s the vision behind the work that ChoiceLight does?
ChoiceLight is very unique. Especially when you think about the fact that it was founded in the mid-2000s. At that point, there were not a lot of dark fiber networks or community organized broadband companies or entities. So the group that came together was very forward-thinking, and that was led by our economic development team, as well as some institutions here that were looking at leaving the area. We had companies looking at moving to Chicago, because there was no high speed internet available for a competitive price in the South Bend area at that point.
A group of capital contributors, including the University of Notre Dame, St. Joseph Health, Beacon Health, some financial institutions like Everwise, Schurz Communications and the South Bend Medical Foundation, came together and they prepaid for 10 years of internet service in order to have the capital to build out an underground fiber optic network around downtown South Bend that connected those entities back to the Union Station data center. Our region is extremely fortunate to have a data center that’s been in existence since Kevin Smith had the vision for it all that time ago.
We had fiber optic cables coming all the way from the East Coast to the West Coast, and they bunched down under the Lake Michigan area here in South Bend. So we had this robust amount of fiber coming through, but there was no off-ramp. With Union Station, we created this off ramp where we could actually get internet service into the community, and then ChoiceLight was able to take that out to those users.
Through the years, the organization just expanded and continually built out fiber networks through partnerships with cities and counties in the area. We are able to take off some of that burden of having to manage their fiber system from the government. We manage that, and in exchange, we’re able to use their conduits that are in the right of ways and be able to put that network down. We probably have over 300 customers now that are subscribed through our dark fiber network.
How has it been partnering with local governments on your projects?
It’s been a more sustainable and efficient model, because dark fiber means that any service provider can lease our fiber and use it to connect their customers, and so you have less entities that are over-building each other and having to go through the permitting process to construct fiber networks. They can actually just come in very easily to our market. We’re hand-in-hand in managing those fiber systems, which are increasingly important for the cities, when you think about digital connectivity for their own operations, but also our fire and emergency systems, the police systems. So it’s been really fun to be able to be a part of supporting them.
When you think about economic development in the region, how has ChoiceLight impacted that and do you see the company continuing to impact the growth in the region?
I think one of the areas that we’ll be able to have the biggest impact going forward is supporting our legacy manufacturers, who are now pivoting and adopting all of these new technologies. There are so many emerging innovations that are able to make manufacturing processes very efficient, and this region is really at the forefront of that. Those manufacturers are able to get unlimited broadband connectivity and implement those technologies where they might not be able to in any other scenario.
That’s one of the great things about a dark fiber network, unlimited broadband. It’s completely reliable and redundant and so very little, if any, downtime is going to occur. Organizations that need to be up 100% of the time benefit greatly from having a resource like ChoiceLight. From a manufacturing standpoint as well as healthcare and government services, we play a role in supporting the momentum and the economic development that’s happening here.
Emberton speaks on the impact ChoiceLight has had on the region’s growth and resurgence.
What exactly is dark fiber and why might it be a better solution for businesses or institutions, as opposed to just ordinary WiFi?
Dark fiber is different from WiFi. Dark fiber refers to the cables that have been installed underground and they’re ready to be used. The fiber is dark, which means that it has not been lit yet. So a company or an internet service provider will add equipment on either side of the fiber, at the company, and then also at the data center. When they send those pulses of light through the dark fiber, that’s basically what creates the WiFi. So they can add as robust of equipment as needed or as little and they can be completely flexible and change that at any time. It really just gives the most robust ability to have high bandwidth and be very flexible to change that at any given time.
Dark fiber is really the way of the future. We have a whole set of internet service providers that are here locally in our region, so it’s a plus for economic development. Whenever we have a commercial entity reach out about connectivity, we’re able to get quotes from any of those service providers. It keeps the costs competitive and allows those companies a choice of what service providers to use. It’s all on the commercial side of things, businesses, manufacturers, healthcare, entities like that, as opposed to residential service. On the residential side, it might be overkill for what you need in a residential setting. Even if you had an internet service provider that wanted to connect a neighborhood, they might lease our fiber backbone, and then they’ll build whatever’s needed for the residents there.
Some of the larger carriers have a model where they like to build and own their own fiber, but our goal is to be available for any service provider, large or small, to use the ChoiceLight network. We think it’s more sustainable, it creates more efficiencies, and more cost effectiveness.
Is the company working on any expansions currently?
In 2022, we expanded into Elkhart County. The county itself was operating a dark fiber network that had been built out. So they engaged ChoiceLight to manage that, which has been a great partnership. Now ChoiceLight’s network expands throughout St. Joseph, Elkhart and Marshall counties. We’re able to get companies that have locations in all of those three counties connected. We continue to add to our network, but primarily it’s through areas within those three counties and expanding out to reach additional areas that are seeing economic development.
A good example of that would be out in the New Carlisle area. Several years ago, we secured a federal grant, and we were able to build an extension out to New Carlisle. All of the development that’s happening out there with AWS and GM and so many other businesses that are now coming in. They’re all able to have that opportunity to connect to a direct dark fiber connection to the Union Station data center or to Aunalytics’ data center.
Has the organization faced any challenges in recent times with regards to the operation of the business, market share or whatnot?
ChoiceLight has a very unique model, because we’re a nonprofit organization. We’re basically a self-funding nonprofit organization. It was founded to reduce the burdens of government and to support economic development. Over the years, we created a for-profit subsidiary so we could service more businesses. However, all of the funding and revenue that comes in from those subscriptions goes directly to the nonprofit. There’s no shareholders like you would have in a traditional broadband business, so market share hasn’t really been a challenge. We’re able to just be here and be a resource for those internet service providers and direct customers.
Because we’re mission-based, we have a unique opportunity to support digital equity, and to work with different communities in providing better access. We’ve done some really unique partnerships, for example, with the city of South Bend. We were able to provide a grant for fiber, then partner with enFocus and some others who broadcast WiFi out. Students were able to get WiFi at their homes at no cost. Those are the kind of partnerships that’s really exciting to be a part of.
Another program that I love for any 501c(3) nonprofits here in the region, we’re able to provide a 50% discount for their fiber infrastructure lease. We work with enCloud, which is part of enFocus. It’s really helping these nonprofit organizations get the type of robust connectivity that private sector entities often have, but nonprofits struggle to afford sometimes. Those are the types of things we’re trying to expand, being able to support more community businesses.
What’s the long-term vision for ChoiceLight in the South Bend-Elkhart region?
We want to continue to be a convener of different entities. So the cities, the counties, the private sector, the healthcare sector, manufacturers. As they come together, we really want to understand what the community needs and be able to provide that. So as we have transitions here in the local market, for example, one of the data centers was recently acquired by an out of town entity. So we need to understand how that impacts the businesses in our region, how we can make sure that our region continues to be competitive and how we can have the best broadband connectivity access for our companies and institutions.
What would you say your leadership style is?
I would say my leadership style is more of the servant-based leadership. I went through the leadership program here in South Bend-Mishawaka, and that’s one of the things they tout in that mode. It’s really just trying to figure out how we can consider different perspectives, and still move forward, and make a difference. My time with the Regional Partnership really opened my eyes to the value of collaboration, especially on a regional basis. That really just instilled in me the need to collaborate and make sure that people are working together. I think that we can all move a lot farther and faster if we do that, as opposed to working in silos.