Ben Davenport
Vice President of Strategic Development
Ben Davenport is an accomplished businessman, community leader and visionary with more than 15 years of regional and high-impact initiatives experience. As Vice President of Strategic Development, he leads projects that expand existing business and explore new business opportunities working on breakthrough, emerging solutions. In this role, Ben is partnered with the Executive Leadership team and functional leaders to drive the company’s overall strategic direction to create new markets and businesses for GTS.
Prior to joining GTS, Ben served on the Virginia Beach City Council. During his tenure on city council, he led a wildly successful regional technology initiative that was based on creating more job opportunities for the Hampton Roads Virginia region. This initiative was responsible in part for luring the first transatlantic subsea cables in the Mid-Atlantic region, lowering the business equipment tax rates on data center equipment to the lowest in the state and creating a regional fiber ring that will link the three largest cities in the commonwealth of Virginia on a carrier neutral dark fiber network.
Ben led a team from Hampton Roads in the 2018 Smart Regions Infrastructure Challenge in Columbus, Ohio that won 1st place for Most Innovative Project in the country. He is also an equity partner in his family’s award-winning residential development firm. Ben was named as one of 2011’s Top Forty Under Forty by Inside Business Magazine for his leadership in the development community.
He is the founder of the Virginia Beach Broadband Task Force (2015), Co-Founder of the HRPDC Hamptons Road Broadband Task Force in 2016 (predecessor to the Southside Networking Authority), currently serves on the Virginia Beach Technology Council and is the Vice President of the Greater Hampton Roads Tidewater Region Chapter of the NDIA. He ran for Mayor of Virginia Beach in 2018 on a popular regional technology platform.
Ben is co-founder of the Virginia Gentlemen Foundation (VGF), a 501c(3) that raises money for ALS, Wounded Veterans and children with disabilities. During his leadership of the board, the VGF built JT’s Grommet Island, the first ever handicap accessible beach park in the country on 1st Street in Virginia Beach and JT’s Camp Grom, a first of its kind adventure camp for wounded veterans and children with disabilities.