Justin Copie

Justin first witnessed the fear and lack of choice that surrounds I.T. when he was running a side business called Rent-A-Geek while a student at Rochester Institute of Technology. Making house calls to help with tech issues, he often encountered people who were simply afraid to touch more than the keyboard on their computers. From there, he worked for Verizon, selling DSL all over the country. Again, he recognized the volume of people who didn’t understand and were afraid of tech until they had a frank, human conversation.

A love of sales and the ability to have those honest conversations that change the way people view technology is what brought Justin to Innovative in 2003 as the company’s youngest employee at age 20. Starting on the ground floor as a sales representative, his knack for failing more than anyone else fed his insatiable appetite for learning, and his ever-growing hunger for driving change is what advanced him in just over a decade from Account Executive to Director of Business Development to Executive Vice President to chief servant to others as CEO.

As now-CEO, his desire to change the way things have always been done has only grown. And his path to do that is learning — asking questions, challenging opinions, adopting multiple perspectives. He credits Innovative with giving him the learning experiences, the safety to fail, and the culture to grow and feel loved he needed to be able to do that.

And now it’s his aim to do the same for others; to give brilliant minds space to do their work, while cultivating people who will be the catalysts for change for decades to come.