Melissa Borowicz is the second‑generation CEO of Utech Group in De Pere, a company her parents started in 1991 that provides business coaching services on issues like culture development and ownership transitions.
For Borowicz, the latter is personal. Like her father who shifted the focus of Utech Group over time, she started her career in counseling and family therapy but eventually felt a pull toward helping businesses. In 2004, she started working with her parents. In 2017, she assumed leadership. In 2020, she bought the company.
The timing with the advent of the COVID pandemic forced Borowicz’s hand in many ways, but it also represented an opportunity for her to put her own stamp on the company her father had built, which was deeply personal and important.
“We talked openly, and when I was making changes he would say … this is giving me anxiety, but usually afterward he’d be like, that worked out really well,” Borowicz reflects. “He gave me a lot of freedom to succeed or fail, and having that trust from him was really important.”
The company has doubled in size since Borowicz took over, including a merger with her brother’s data analytics firm, illumyx. Borowicz says many of Utech Group’s clients say they chose to hire the firm because it has been so successful navigating family dynamics, and word of mouth referrals are huge. Even the clients that aren’t family businesses kind of feel like family businesses, Borowicz says, so the wisdom imparted is universal.
“It’s hard letting go of something you’ve built. It’s hard to navigate family dynamics or interpersonal dynamics,” she says. “We actually practice what we preach here.”
Borowicz was nominated for Women of Influence by her employees, who say she has provided tremendous mentorship and helped them grow as leaders.
“The organization can’t grow if I’m not expanding other people’s leadership,” she says — a lesson that became even more important to her three years ago when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
“We’re on this path together,” Borowicz says of her team, “and I think sometimes recognizing my limitations and when I need to ask for help has been a more difficult part of my leadership journey.”
As she has navigated her disease, Borowicz says she has learned to rely on others and be gentler to her body, but her passion for service hasn’t dulled. She is a founding board member for the Schreiber Institute for Women’s Leadership and also serves on the boards of Curative Connections and Encompass Early Education & Childcare.
Curative Connections has been personal for her since her mother‑in‑law was diagnosed with dementia. The mother of three teen boys, Borowicz is very much in the “sandwich generation.”
“I’m definitely in the stage of raising my boys, helping my husband’s family in particular with supporting his parents as they’re aging, and being in the middle of running a business and managing my own health,” Borowicz says. “I feel like it’s cool that I’ve been able to, in the spectrum of life, be involved in all those different stages from a board and community perspective.”
For Borowicz, who says she didn’t have a lot of female mentors, her work with IWL has been a meaningful way to support mentorship. She says the organization has helped her zero in on her own identity and style and move forward confidently as a leader and mentor.
“It’s … not comparing yourself to others, whether that’s a male counterpart or another female, but really owning your own identity and your own values and what makes you unique,” she says.
That confidence is consistently bolstered in community, Borowicz adds.
“Being in environments where women lift up women and we support each other, instead of competing with each other,” she says, “and creating that space in our community where that happens is important to me.”
*Photograph by Shane Van Boxtel / Image Studios
