For Blair Kutrow, there’s little difference between working in the office of her sister’s small health care startup or the boardroom of a major wireless corporation. That’s because of finely honed networking skills that have carried her to success in these vastly different business environments.

A former XM Radio and Nextel executive in the earliest days of the wireless industry, Kutrow is currently the business manager for Coastal Kids Therapy, 219 Racine Drive, Suite 1A in Wilmington.  

Kutrow spoke with the Greater Wilmington Business Journal about her transition from boardroom to therapy office and the skills that have made for her success in both.

GWBJ: What exactly do you do at Coastal Kids Therapy?

BK: Coastal Kids Therapy is a pediatric occupational therapy practice. We treat children from babies to 18 years old. With occupational therapy, we focus on function, so for a child that means being able to play, go to school and take care of yourself. 

Every kid is an individual, but we treat children on the autism spectrum. We also have a number with Down syndrome, and sensory processing disorder is a very common one now.

GWBJ: How did you get involved in children’s health care?

BK: I got involved in this as a partnership with my younger sister, Laurel Thornton. She has been an occupational therapist her whole career, mostly working with kids in the school system in Cumberland County. She always had this dream of opening her own practice, but she’s not a business person. So dealing with things like insurance billing and Medicaid are things that if you did that, you wouldn’t have time to do therapy.

GWBJ: Why did you choose to go into business with your sister here in Wilmington?

BK: My parents, my grandparents, my entire family is from Wilmington. But we were a military family, so we never really lived here – we just came for Christmas or go to the beach. We always really loved it, and I had a goal of retiring here one day or having a beach house, and Laurel wanted to retire here also. So we said, ‘Let’s move to Wilmington and start a practice. I’ll help you do the business side of it, and you can do the therapy side of it.’ 

It was a little bit crazy.

GWBJ: What did you do to get the practice started?

BK: First, I tried to do market research and figure out how many kids are in Wilmington and what’s going to be the competition, but it was very difficult to figure out exactly, so we said, ‘Let’s just do it.’ 

I made the investment for our space, and we opened in January 2012. But we really didn’t see our first patient until March with a contract Laurel got. We are doing great now though with about 50 patients. We are cash-flow positive, and Laurel is finally getting paid.

GWBJ: You mentioned your business and executive background a number of times. What exactly is that background; how did you get started in business?

BK: Interestingly, I was a history major at UNC-Chapel Hill. I thought I was going to law school and moved to D.C. right out of college to work for a big law firm but hated it.  

I came back to North Carolina and really got super lucky when I responded – the way you never get a job today – to a classified ad for a company called Vanguard Cellular Systems. This was back really at the beginning of the wireless startups.

GWBJ:  So you got into wireless on the ground floor?

BK: Yes, I was lucky enough to get in at the very beginning. That was in 1988. I did all sorts of jobs, and I stayed there until they sold to AT&T in 1999. After that, I went to work for Nextel back in D.C. again.  

So the two big companies I worked in for the first 20 years of my career – Vanguard and Nextel  – were both amazing, great places to work, startups that took care of their people. At Vanguard, I ran our customer service and billing department and then moved to product development as marketing and management for Nextel.

GWBJ: What was it like to work in such a new and high-tech industry as wireless in its infancy?

BK: Working in wireless industry in the very beginning was exciting because we were creating a brand new industry, and, honestly, it was fun creating something new. But we did not know how big it would be. 

Working in wireless when it started to boom was truly exciting because we knew we were changing the way people lived. 

One of the times I really understood how we could change lives was in the days after 9/11 when I was at Nextel. When the planes hit the Pentagon, the Nextel service continued to work. We spent the days after 9/11 programming phones and getting them to the first responders in New York and D.C. to be used helping with the rescue effort.

GWBJ: What did you learn from this experience working in wireless from the early days through its boom and mainstream adaptation?

BK: I learned it’s very hard to predict the future of technology. Just because something sounds unlikely or you don’t understand it, does not mean it might not be groundbreaking or revolutionary even, so keep an open mind when considering new ideas.   

GWBJ: What led to you getting out of corporate wireless after such a long and successful career?

BK: There started to be a theme. I’d go to companies, then they’d merge, and I’d leave. I worked at XM Radio as senior VP for product development and marketing for three years I think until the Sirius/XM merger. After that, I did a couple little wireless startups and was really getting tired of the corporate world.  

Wireless was fun in the beginning since it was new and exciting, but at this point I didn’t want to work for any of the big companies.  

I really enjoy starting new things, and I also wanted to do something more meaningful … Wireless was very meaningful in the beginning, it changed peoples lives, I think.

GWBJ: So that’s what led you to come back to Wilmington and start the therapy practice? 

BK: I wanted to try something different, and it was a good time. I thought I wanted to end up retired in Wilmington, but I didn’t want to move here when I am 80. I wanted to move here when I could still be part of a community and know people.  

I had made good money in wireless – not enough to never work again – but enough to try something different. And this is a dream Laurel has always had. I thought she deserved a shot at it.

GWBJ: Has your business background helped you start up the practice here and to get involved in the community?

BK: Yes, having a bit of a marketing background, a business background and some nonprofit board experience, I think those skills lend themselves to lots of different things, whether you want to start your own business or get involved in a community nonprofit.

GWBJ: What kind of advice can you draw from your experience for those going into business for themselves or just starting the corporate climb?

BK: I don’t know if you’d learn this in business school, but for me it’s always been about going to work at places you believe in – you either believe in the product or the service. The only time I haven’t been happy in a job is when I didn’t believe in what we did, and I can’t play the game if I don’t believe in it.  

I believed in the beginning of wireless. I thought it was going to change the world, and I think it has.