Owner, Orion Strategies
By Jamie Null
Everyone has a turning point in life. For Curtis Wilkerson, a resident of Buckhannon, WV, it came two years ago when a doctor diagnosed him with a leaking mitral valve in his heart. He underwent surgery and was back at his desk as the owner of Orion Strategies within days. While the recovery time was short, the surgery impacted Wilkerson’s life forever.
“Opportunities like this make the world stop ever so briefly to take account of one’s life,” he says. “I have a great wife, a great kid, a great career and great friends. I discovered that I love my life as much as I thought I did.”
Part of that love stems from Wilkerson’s career. The idea of owning his own firm was one he stumbled upon while interviewing a man for his senior thesis in college.
“When I met this man at his home office, the walls were covered in political posters and memorabilia,” Wilkerson remembers. “I asked him what he did for a living, and he told me he was a political and public relations operative. It was 2 o’clock in the afternoon, and he was drinking a glass of whiskey. I went back to my dorm room and typed out a list of everything I thought I would need to start a firm one day.”
With that list in hand, Wilkerson created his firm, Orion Strategies, in 2007 and now manages offices in both Charleston and Buckhannon. The company is a strategic communications firm serving local, regional and national clients in various industries through public relations, government affairs, grassroots advocacy, research and polling and creative services. Wilkerson has led many high-profile projects that have gained national attention.
“I am amazed that I get to do what I love every single day,” he says. “My motivation comes in not wanting to waste the opportunity I have been given while providing every opportunity I can for my 10-year-old daughter.”
Opportunities also come from within his community, where he is an active volunteer. A member of First United Methodist Church, Wilkerson serves as a Sunday school teacher and chair of the witness committee.
Over the course of one summer, he helped the Upshur Cooperative Parish House & Crosslines, Inc., where he has served as chair of home repair services and summer work teams, organize more than 10,000 hours of labor repairing homes in central West Virginia. Wilkerson also works to collect food for Crosslines’ food pantry and back-to-school supply drives.
“I prefer to invest my time giving back with basic needs of food and shelter,” Wilkerson says of his service. “The Upshur Parish House is a key place in central West Virginia that I am proud to have been a part of. I also believe in supporting the Parish House’s associated food pantry and participating in food drives. Kids will do better in school if they have full stomachs at home. Kids will also do better in school if they have a house that isn’t falling apart. There are so many things we cannot fix that it is worth working on the things that we can.”
Wilkerson has also sponsored Create Buckhannon’s Festival Fridays concert series, helped with the proposed Upshur County Recreation Complex and served on the Buckhannon Bicentennial Celebration Committee and the Buckhannon downtown improvement committee. He is committed to the details of each organization as a silent, behind-the-scenes organizer, and no task is too mundane, whether it is flipping pancakes at the annual West Virginia Strawberry Festival or co-leading the college Sunday school class with his wife, Kristi, for students of West Virginia Wesleyan College.
A raw product of the Mountain State, Wilkerson firmly believes West Virginians need to stay in the state.
“West Virginia experiences what I have referred to as contemporary Appalachian colonialism,” he says. “Raw products leave the state, and finished products are sold back to its citizens. That raw product includes the people who are born here who leave. I want to see us take our state’s great resources and turn them into finished products with global markets. And I know that choosing to live and work here is the only way to become part of that solution.”
