Terry Yake has spent twenty-two years as a manager and executive in telecommunication network planning, engineering, construction, and operations of state-of-the-art exchange and inter-exchange large scale network systems. Yake received his BSEE and MSEE degrees from Purdue in 1965 and 1966, respectively, and first applied his engineering skills while assigned to the Avionics Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Following four years in the Air Force, Yake began his civilian career with the Ohio Bell Telephone Company. While there, he was promoted nearly every year rising to district manager of network operations. In 1981, he accepted a position as assistant vice-president for networks with the United Telephone System's midwest group; in 1983, he was promoted to vice-president for engineering/operations at United Telecom, Inc.

Yake joined U. S. Sprint Corporation in 1984 and was named vice president of technology planning in 1990. He was charged with creating the first totally fiber optic digital network in the United States. He coordinated the placing of 23,000 miles of underground cable and 1,100 signal regenerator locations and oversaw the building and equipping of 28 switching centers in just three years. With the fiber optic network in place, Yake was put in charge of the construction of the world's first nationwide out-of-band telecommunications signaling network to provide the infrastructure for the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) that transmits data and voice over the same transmission facility.