About

Expertise, Experience, Passion

CEO & Principal

Theresa Wise

In 2016, Theresa established Utaza, LLC as a business advisory group focused on Executive IT strategy, customer-centric data analytics, mathematical modeling and revenue optimization.

As CEO and principal, she builds upon her 15 years as CIO, most recently as Chief Information Officer at Delta Airlines. In what is today recognized as a blueprint for airline mergers, Theresa led the airline industry’s first highly successful integration of technology and business readiness plans. Industry analysts lauded the creative solutions given its complexity, size, speed, success.

In the years that followed, Theresa provided the initial vision and leadership for renewal of Delta’s complex and critical technology systems:

  • Customer-centric experience:  mobility, kiosks, call centers and web; tens of millions of real-time, secure daily transactions driving revenue of more than $40M per day

  • Industry-leading reliability of airline operations: 35,000 crew members and 5,800 daily flights, and the airline industry’s best decision support and optimization models

  • Optimized profits and productivity: state of the art pricing and revenue management systems; streamlined business infrastructure

Prior to joining Delta, Theresa held a number of positions at Northwest Airlines, ranging from Chief Information Officer to a student-intern. As an intern, she was credited with inventing new mathematical models for airline planning optimization.  Theresa has been recognized by the Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal as “Chief Information Officer of the Year” for her lifetime of work in Information Technology, and she was recognized by ExecRank as Global CIO of the Year in 2013.  

Corporate board service

Beyond her business advisory service, Theresa currently serves on the Board of Directors of Impinj, Inc. (leading global provider of radio frequency identification devices, software and solutions). She also serves on the Board of Directors of MISO Energy (the operator of the electrical grid and financial energy markets, that optimize distribution of power to much of North America), TCF Financial Corporation (a Detroit-based financial holding company with top 10 deposit market share in the midwest), and Viasat, Inc. (a global communications company).

community service

She is an active supporter of arts and science education: having served on the board of the Science Museum of Minnesota; St Olaf College’s board of regents; and Cornell University’s Council for Operations Research and Information Engineering. She is also violinist with the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra.


 

Education

CORNELL UNIVERSITY
PhD M.S. Applied Math & Operations Research

ST OLAF COLLEGE
B.A. Mathematics & Chemistry

Community Service

CORNELL UNIVERSITY
Advisory Committee: Operations Research and Information Engineering

President’s Council of Cornell Women

ST OLAF COLLEGE
Board of Regents; Executive Committee, Audit Committee, Community Life Committee, chair of Nominating and Governance Committee

Corporate Board Service

TCF Financial Corporation (NYSE: TCF) Board of Directors; Technology Committee, Risk Committee, Finance Committee

TCF is a Wayzata, Minnesota-based national bank holding company providing retail and commercial banking services. Its subsidiaries also conduct commercial leasing, equipment financing and commercial inventory finance business in all 50 states and Canada.

Impinj (NASDAQ:  PI) Board of Directors; Compensation Committee

Global leader in RFID technology and item intelligence solutions for retail, healthcare, logistics, supply chain and Internet of Things (IOT) applications

MISO Energy Board of Directors; Technology Committee, Market Planning Committee, chair of the Strategic Planning and Governance Committee

Largest subnetwork of North America’s electrical power grid, optimizing delivery of power to 16 states and provinces.  Spot and forward financial commodity markets for electrical energy and related derivative products