Carolina is in his mind – and business

When Terrence DeFranco (BA ’89, MBA ’20), chairman and chief executive officer of IotaComm, relocated the company’s headquarters to Chapel Hill in 2025, it read like a business decision on paper. In practice, it is more like a return.

He was coming back to the university town that helped launch his career trajectory and a campus that still shapes how he thinks about innovation, ambition and unfinished business.

DeFranco “graduated” from Innovate Carolina Junction, the UNC-Chapel Hill innovation hub and coworking space in downtown Chapel Hill. Not far away sits IotaComm’s new location, now the headquarters for the digital infrastructure company that applies physical artificial intelligence to smart buildings and smart cities, with an emphasis on healthier buildings, more resilient infrastructure and more efficient operations.

IotaComm’s leadership evaluated several mid-Atlantic markets before selecting North Carolina. So, what tipped the scales?

“We were drawn to the Research Triangle as a major technology, innovation and research hub,” DeFranco says.

“Chapel Hill is a gem of a town that has an amazing vibe,” he says. “We also knew the future of our business was about attracting bright new talent, and UNC’s world-class education prepares students to enter the labor market with extraordinary skills for today’s workforce. Our close proximity to UNC allows us to offer internships to students and try to develop some who remain with us after graduation. So, it is a real blessing for them and us.”

The Triangle offers more than a brand name. It offers density: research capability, entrepreneurial energy and a steady stream of graduates from UNC-Chapel Hill and nearby universities. IotaComm has already leaned into that advantage, hiring undergraduate and MBA interns and collaborating with student consulting teams.

The move to Chapel Hill also tracks with IotaComm’s growth agenda. The company is building a nationwide wireless network for connected devices to help schools, manufacturers, hotels, cities and other large organizations operate assets and facilities more efficiently.

For DeFranco, the decision carried an additional layer. “Coming back gave me a chance to close the loop,” he says. “I wanted to return with more perspective, and to contribute in a way that felt earned.”

Strong ties to UNC Kenan-Flagler

Coming home again also underscored his relationship with UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School.

He returned to his UNC studies during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he enrolled in the online MBA program. “It was a personal goal,” he says. “I didn’t apply to another school.”

He completed his MBA while running IotaComm full time. He describes the experience as immediately practical. “I wasn’t learning in theory and filing it away,” he says. “I was applying it in real time. Our marketing plan, for example, began as coursework and evolved into a blueprint we could execute.”

What else stayed with him? He points to finance and accounting as foundational. Organizational behavior, though, stands out as the biggest shift. “That probably changed me more as a manager than anything else,” DeFranco says.

Long before his return to Chapel Hill, DeFranco was deeply engaged with the Ackerman Center for Excellence in Sustainability (ACES) at UNC Kenan-Flagler. He has spoken in classes and at the annual UNC Cleantech Summit, co-hosted by the UNC Institute for the Environment and ACES.

“Terrence has been an extraordinary member of the ACES family,” says Jeff Mittelstadt, ACES executive director and professor of the practice of strategy and entrepreneurship. “He sits on our advisory Invest for the Future Leadership Council. IotaComm and their nonprofit Center for Sustainable Innovation has sponsored our Accelerate Cleantech event. He speaks in many of my classes and has hired undergraduate interns. And our undergrad Sustainable Business Club’s Impact Consulting Studio worked with him and IotaComm.”

A non-linear career

The former banker’s path to entrepreneurship has been anything but linear. He spent 13 years on Wall Street — starting at UBS and later later serving as head of investment banking for Baird, Patrick & Co. Inc. — before pivoting to building companies. He founded Edentify, a data analytics company focused on helping financial institutions combat fraud and launched IotaComm in 2013.

One of the defining moments in his arc came on Sept. 11, 2001, when DeFranco had an office at the World Trade Center. He describes it as an inflection point that sharpened his view of leadership and what matters when pressure is real.

The experience changed how he leads. Building companies through crises — from market shocks to the pandemic — reinforced a set of operating principles: discipline, candor and clear communication. Those lessons, he says, still shape how IotaComm’s leadership team makes decisions.

Sustainability is central to the company’s mission. In Pennsylvania, for example, IotaComm’s corporate social responsibility initiative, IotaCommUnity and its partner Center for Sustainable Innovation, supported a local school district with their summer internship program for underserved high school students, centered on analyzing air quality data from local schools.

IotaComm continues to operate in Pennsylvania. “We remain committed to our operations there as it is still home to much of our team and the area is one of the fastest growing middle markets in the U.S.,” DeFranco says, pointing to continued investment in education and manufacturing.

The ties to Chapel Hill, however, run deep and continue to evolve. His daughter graduated from UNC in 2025, and he values how the university holds onto its traditions while staying “innovative and relevant.”

With a career that has moved from investment banking to data analytics to wireless infrastructure, his advice is straightforward: Stay adaptable.

“The world is a lot bigger than you think it is as you are growing up,” he says. “You have to approach it with humility.”

Career paths rarely follow straight lines, he says. The enduring differentiator is not a perfectly mapped plan but “the ability to sell ideas and intangibles,” especially when the outcomes are not yet obvious.

From Franklin Street, overlooking campus, DeFranco is betting that the ideas taking shape in Chapel Hill will travel far beyond it.

Read more about DeFranco in Innovate Carolina’s article “IotaComm Opens HQ in Chapel Hill, Pioneering Data-Driven Innovation for Smart Buildings and Cities” and “A new blueprint for smart buildings” in Triangle Business Journal.