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AHOSKIE – Roanoke Electric Cooperative announces that Derrick Buffaloe has joined its team as its vice president of innovation and technology.

In this role, Buffaloe will be responsible for identifying areas of improvement and value while also evaluating disruptive industry trends and identifying ways to revolutionize product offerings, technology capabilities, and customer-center service models.

Buffaloe will provide direction on what emerging technologies should be assimilated, integrated, and introduced within the organization to ensure an effective response to the emerging needs of the business strategy.

“I am confident that Derrick will serve as a transformational executive and critical business partner to the co-op’s Executive Leadership team,” said Marshall Cherry, the co-op’s President and CEO. “He brings a current knowledge and future vision of leveraging information and technology in business model design, business process re-engineering, product and service development, and overall service excellence.”

Buffaloe has more than 20 years of experience in the areas of web hosting, IT infrastructure, business transformation, application integration, and systems management. Prior to joining the Roanoke team as a consultant in 2020, he joined the ranks of Senior Technical Staff Members at IBM. As a STSM, Buffaloe was a consultant to senior management and was responsible for providing technical leadership and guidance in critical situations, operating system platforms, infrastructure devices, and overall architecture.

As an executive, Buffaloe guided the construction, development, implementation, and delivery of technology solutions and infrastructure for IBM Global Technology Services. Throughout his career at IBM, he served as a technical advisor and partner to executives, including C-level Executives at major global organizations within the financial, automotive, telecom, retail, and energy sectors, and managed internationally distributed project teams.

Chartered in 1938, Roanoke Electric Cooperative provides service to 14,500 members in Bertie, Hertford, Halifax, Northampton, Gates, Perquimans and Chowan counties.