Nicole Cottle Named Utopia Fiber’s Director of Government Affairs

Timmerman: ‘[Her] Legendary 25-Years as a Municipal Leader Will Strongly Position UTOPIA Fiber for the Future’

Murray, UTAH (July 31, 2023) – Roger Timmerman, Executive Director and Chief Executive, UTOPIA Fiber announced today that Nicole Cottle has joined the company as Director of Government Affairs. Cottle, who most recently served West Valley City as its Assistant City Manager, is widely known and respected among local and state officials as a smart and passionate leader with a reputation for getting things done. In her career, Cottle, a Bountiful resident, has participated in over $2 billion in creative financing solutions including all types of bonding, C-Pace, PIDs, and public private partnerships and has garnered several hundreds of millions in earmarks, grants, and other funding for large-scale redevelopment efforts to drive economic vitality in the communities she’s served. In her role at UTOPIA Fiber, she’ll manage relationships with local, state, and federal lawmakers, helping to create and guide public policy that promotes the deployment of high-speed fiber infrastructure.

“Nicole’s legendary 25-years as a municipal leader strongly position UTOPIA Fiber for the future,” said Timmerman. “Now more than ever, residents and businesses across Utah and the West depend on high-speed connectivity. Having Nicole on the team will help align policy to meet the needs of local communities, residents, businesses, and all their digital infrastructure needs,” he said.

“I’m enormously proud to join UTOPIA Fiber,” said Cottle. “In my years in local government, I saw firsthand the positive impacts that UTOPIA Fiber’s infrastructure brought to the community. It was an influencing factor in everything from economic development to leveling the playing field in the pursuit of the American Dream. UTOPIA brings equitable access to communities and helps to ensured access to jobs, healthcare, and other benefits. By providing essential infrastructure and allowing for competition, UTOPIA Fiber helps transform the communities it serves and I’m very excited to assume my new role with the company,” she added.

In her near-25 years in city government, Cottle served as attorney, economic development director, chief sustainability officer, director of government relations, general counsel, and most recently as West Valley’s assistant city manager. She has worked at the federal and state level on hundreds of bills, legislative actions, and rulemaking activities. She has also served on the Utah Infrastructure Agency Board (the financial arm of UTOPIA Fiber), Olene Walker Housing Trust Fund, the Intergenerational Poverty Board, the Indigent Defense Commission, various legislative committees, the Inland Port Authority as well as the Executive Board of Operation My Hometown. Cottle currently sits on the Utah Land Use Institute, the Our Hometown Foundation, and is a newly minted Honorary Commander for the 388^th Fighter Wing at Hill Air Force Base. Cottle is licensed to practice law in Utah and Wyoming. In the private sector, she has represented private clients in the areas of legislative and government relations, development and land use, bond finance, estate and business planning, and other transactional law.

About UTOPIA Fiber

Created by a group of Utah cities, the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency (UTOPIA) is a community-owned fiber optic network that uses the Open Access model to promote competition by giving customers the freedom to choose which telecommunication services they want. With fiber availability to approximately 200,000 businesses and residences in over 50 communities, UTOPIA Fiber is the largest and most successful Open Access network in the United States and enjoys the industry’s highest customer satisfaction scores. Since 2009, the agency has successfully designed, built, and operated nearly half-a-billion dollarsworth of fiber projects throughout Utah and the West, including operational partners with Idaho Falls, Yellowstone Fiber, and Bountiful Fiber, all of which have been funded completely through subscriber revenue, at no cost to taxpayers.

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MEDIA CONTACTS

Bob Knight

Harrison Edwards PR

914-242-0010

bknight@harrison-edwardspr.com

-or-

Kim McKinley

Chief Marketing Officer, UTOPIA Fiber

801-613-3837

kmckinley@utopiafiber.com