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For as long as he can remember, Wyre Marshall’s average workday has consisted of a tornado of answering questions.
As the former vice president and deputy general counsel of corporate transactions at Lumen Technologies, a telecommunications company that offers communications, network services, security, cloud solutions, voice, and managed service, the attorney’s responsibilities spanned multiple areas. His dynamic tasks included overseeing the organization’s treasury, corporate development, drafting of nondisclosure agreements, and billing for the legal department’s outside spend.
Marshall recently brought his extensive experience to a new role as vice president and deputy general counsel of centralized services at Brightspeed. Despite moving companies, Marshall maintained ties with Lumen Technologies. In August 2021, Apollo Global Management and Lumen Technologies entered an agreement for Apollo to acquire Lumen’s Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier assets and associated operations across twenty states for $7.5 billion. Brightspeed soon formed to provide high-speed Internet to customers in those states.
Brighspeed’s innovative vision states, “to accelerate the upgrade of copper to fiber optic technologies, bringing faster and more reliable Internet service to many rural markets traditionally under-served by broadband providers, while delivering best-in-class customer experience.”
Marshall reports directly to Brightspeed’s general counsel and assists the relatively new internet provider on managing its corporate transactions and providing legal advice to the company’s leaders for centralized services including treasury, procurement, supply chain, IT, network, and real estate.
Along with bringing his acquired knowledge from Lumen to his new role, Marshall has decades of in-house, as well as in private and public sectors, under his belt. As a student the Georgetown University Law Center, Marshall served as editor of the Journal on Legal Ethics. Following graduation, Marshall joined Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP as an associate in the firm’s corporate securities group. He went on to spend a couple of years as corporate counsel of the San Antonio Water System, where he negotiated transactional agreements for the procurement of ground and surface water rights, as well as the development and operation of large water resource projects covering the state of Texas.
In 2003, Marshall found his calling in telecommunications and joined CenturyLink as corporate counsel. He spent fifteen years at the company and moved up the legal department hierarchy. Ultimately named director of corporate strategy and business development, he oversaw the identifying, initiating, and negotiating of relationships with national and international strategic partners. These included strategic alliances, go-to-market commercial offerings, and minority investments.
Marshall describes himself as positive, but realistic, and credits much of his decades of success to developing relationships with mentors. He encourages new attorneys to seek out environments that are supportive, prioritize employee wellbeing, and celebrate mentorship. He cautions lawyers against dedicating endless hours to simply working hard and billing, believing it’s much easier and productive to focus energy into finding mentors who can offer guidance and support throughout their careers.
The lawyer also emphasizes the importance of remaining flexible and being eager to tackle new challenges. A firm believer that when one door closes another often opens, Marshall stresses the importance of welcoming new experiences and remaining positive about unexpected hurdles.
