Michael E. Carter is a South Carolina native and 1992 graduate of the Citadel.

With close to thirty years in the public/private Information Technology sector, Carter founded and has successfully run his own IT consulting services company, eGroup, garnering the highest customer satisfaction ratings and repeat, multi-year industry-excellence awards.

Listed as one of the fastest growing businesses at the state, regional, and national level, appearing on the Inc. 5000 list multiple times, and an Inc. Best Places to Work, eGroup delivers speed and certainty with cloud and data center initiatives for the most sophisticated clients across the nation.

Carter is known for being financially responsible and socially progressive – regularly investing in socially responsible causes and civic-minded initiatives that drive South Carolina forward.

Doug, a Physics major from Davidson College, began his professional career as a computer programmer and software engineer. His intellectual property career began in 1998 when he combined his business experience with his legal education and was involved with enforcing a client’s patent against multiple infringers. Since then, Doug has created a well-rounded IP practice that provides legal solutions and strategies tailored to each client from multinational corporations to start-ups. Doug provides his client with strategies to protect inventions (patents), brands (trademarks), websites, software, apps, music, photos, and websites (copyright, licenses and Internet law), and trade secret (the “secret sauce”). Through the creation of intellectual property rights and their enforcement, Doug seeks to develop legal strategies that fit clients’ business goals and increase the company’s worth. Doug also assist clients with drafting, negotiating and reviewing license, assignment, independent contractor and employment agreements as they pertain to intellectual property and ownership. Doug’s business background and legal education and experience make him well suited to understand the interaction between the legal services available to a client, a company’s available resources and the client’s business goals.

Julie joined the SC Department of Commerce Office of Innovation in February of 2020 primarily for the purpose of running the Relentless Challenge grant program.  Originally from New York, Julie started her career in advertising with Gannett Newspapers.  Seeing the future was not in print, but rather in the young, new world of the internet, Julie took the leap to work for AOL.  Starting back in AOL’s CD days and rising through the ranks was thrilling as the entrepreneurial spirit at AOL was everywhere!  Each day there were so many new people joining the company and so many new product innovations. From kick-starting the first paid online advertising program at AOL to working in strategy, account service and project management, Julie has worked with an incredible mix of clients including Dell, Johnson & Johnson, Pepsi, Verizon and even the group Metallica. In addition to AOL, Julie worked with marketing companies developing high-impact advertising and promotional programs that often exceeded customer engagement and acquisition goals. Julie brings her experience to the Department of Commerce to help support South Carolina’s efforts in its relentless pursuit of transformational ideas.

The idea that Julie can be a part of the Office of Innovation’s efforts to mobilizes the dynamic flow of resources and information among people, industries and institutions for the prosperity of South Carolina citizens is what drew her to the position of Grants Administrator.  She very much looks forward to starting each day with the prospect of being able to help innovators, and the organizations that support them, move closer to achieving their goals.  Julie’s goal is to uncover new opportunities and collaborations that continue to grow South Carolina’s innovation ecosystem.

Before Fusion Cyber, Mr. Christopher Etesse, as CEO, completed a 3-year restructuring of FlatWorld Inc.
He relocated the former freemium publisher from upstate New York to Washington, DC, rebuilt the team, and pivoted the
company into a new opportunity called competency-based learning.

• Deep enterprise SaaS technology experience built one of the first Learning Management
Systems (Thomson World Class learning) sold to Pearson.
• Founding team member (under 20) at Blackboard to post IPO
o Grew international services from $500k to $5M in two years
o Executive sponsor for $8M INTL deal that allowed Blackboard to IPO
o Led a $10M investment from MSFT that had a 25X return
• Chief Product Officer Monster Gov Solutions to DoD and civilian agencies’ primary hiring
platform
• Chief Product Officer Presidium
o Grew technology infrastructure from 200 experts to 2500
o Transitioned from solely IT to shared services for enrollment management, acquisition,
financial aid, and retention management
o Increased the company’s revenue from $8m to $24M in net new income & Grew K12
partnership from 20,000 enrollees to 110,000 over two years
• CEO Kadoo.com
• CEO Flat World grew from $1M to $7M in revenue

He also serves on the University of Kentucky, College of Engineering, Dean’s Advisory Council, and has previously served on
the Board of Trustees for Loudoun Country Day School. With 18 years of leadership in driving business models and product