Vernon Oakes

Chief Operating Officer

The BTI Companies

Vernon Oakes is Chief Operating Officer of The BTI Companies to which he brings a strong background in management and operations gained as a result of numerous corporate and entrepreneurial engagements.  He has had profit and loss responsibility, as well as, expertise in marketing, sales, sales forecasting, domestic and international distributor sales and service, and the development and implementation of management and computerized financial information systems. He has nine years of teaching experience at the college level with two additional years training adults for the Department of Interior.

Mr. Oakes has extensive and varied experience in identifying and pursuing business opportunities in both domestic and international markets including Europe, Canada, Caribbean, Asia and Africa.  His strategic skill base includes the ability to develop or enhance marketing information, pricing, and costing systems.  As past Director of International Marketing for a Fortune 100 Corporation, Mr. Oakes successfully developed innovative distributor parts sales programs, programs for distributor inventory management, worldwide parts pricing strategies and market studies.

As a function of Mr. Oakes' general management experience, he has used cash flow analysis as a major tool to manage specific business enterprises and has provided leadership in corporate atmospheres where downsizing or upsizing has been utilized to meet specific financial and profit goals.  Early in his corporate career, Mr. Oakes gained tactical and strategic insight into complex real estate and business acquisition and expansion ventures. As well, he was afforded the opportunity to analyze, develop, and present viable solution alternatives to senior management for both policy consideration and action planning in his role as the Assistant to the President and Chief Operating Officer of a Fortune 100 Corporation.

Mr. Oakes has sold real estate as an agent for ten years in New York, California and Washington, DC.  He worked for Murchison Realty Company where – over a two-year period - he installed and provided oversight of their conversion to a computerized property management system.  He has extensive experience with various federal, state and local mortgage lending/financing processes and programs. His hosting of the "Homeownership, Making Your Dream Come True" radio program for two seasons on WOL Radio allowed him to convert that knowledge into practical application. Such expertise was augmented by his extensive senior management level exposure within the second largest mortgage company in the nation, where he developed and executed an effective plan to increase their market share within diverse minority markets. 

He is a member of the Potomac Association of Housing Cooperatives, Inc. (PAHC), National Association of Housing Inc. (NAHC), and Community Association Institute (CAI), where he met the requirements to become a Certified Manager of Community Associations (CMCA).  He also has the National Center for Housing Management's designation of a Certified Occupancy Specialist (COS) for HUD-sponsored housing.

Mr. Oakes received a Masters Degree in Business Administration in Marketing and Finance from Stanford University, a Masters of Science in Mathematics from Penn State University and a Bachelors of Science in Mathematics and Chemistry from Bluefield State College.