Meet our Executive Vice President - Atley Deer

Get to know our Executive Vice President, Atley Deer.

Atley began his career at ECI in April of 2015 as a Project Manager for Transmission Vegetation Capital Projects for Duke Energy Indiana. He came from Indianapolis Power and Light, where he was a NERC Reliability Operator working in their Transmission control center and a Lineman working on both Transmission and Distribution systems. In his first role with ECI as a Project Manager, he created a team to manage capital projects for the utility. In this role, he bridged a communication gap between the vegetation team and Project Management groups which led to projects being completed on schedule and within budget. ?The Project Manager role was a great fit, although he has yet to say no to an opportunity. In the fall of 2016, he joined the Business Development (BD) team within ECI. In this role, he was responsible for the Duke Energy account. The team supporting Duke Energy had not been supported from a leadership perspective for many years, and he knew he had his work cut out. In his first year in the BD role, Atley focused on meeting every employee and utility manager ECI supported. While this seemed like a seemingly easy task, the Duke Energy account went from 55 employees to nearly 100 employees in the first year. This primarily led to expanding the services and programs we supported.?

During his time as a BD manager for the Duke Energy account, ECI implemented Account Managers and, subsequently, week one training as a program. These additions to ECI have been instrumental in enabling the BD team to grow and support our clients across the country. He was the Business Development Manager for about 18 months, then moved to a Director of Business Development role to support the BD team across the country. The Director role led to his current position as Executive Vice President, with duties of running the ECI day-to-day business since Chuck Anderson's promotion to Sponsor with our parent company.?

A key driver of developing into his current role has never been stepping away from a challenge, never saying no, and being willing to “break things” so ECI can grow. Processes must be challenged in the right way. It has never been acceptable to him to do something because that is how ECI has always done it. His leadership journey has constantly challenged the "norm" of why we do things in a particular way. We might have done things for a specific reason, but our available knowledge, technology, and general capabilities are likely different than they were in the past.?

Atley resides in Indiana with his wife of 17 years, Tiffany.?They have three children; two biological boys, and they were fortunate enough to adopt a daughter when she was 18 months old from South Korea. They live in the house Atley grew up in, on an operational beef cattle farm. They have two dogs: ?a Rottweiler (Luna Mable), German Shepard (Mina Opal), and three cats: two Oriental Short Hairs (Mango Marmalade, Finn Beaman), and a Sphynx (Flick Rapunzel). ?

He enjoys coaching the boys’ Travel Soccer team in the Fall and Spring, and watching his daughter’s favorite hobby, competitive cheer competitions!?When Atley has some down time, he enjoys spending it by remodeling his farmhouse.?Atley received his bachelor’s degree in Business Management from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business and has graduate degrees in Accounting and Human Resources from Indiana Wesleyan University.??