Tina Wiltsee has recently launched a new company, Advantage Supports, to provide Support Coordination/ Case Management to families in the South Jersey area. She had previously worked as Director of Business Development for Avenues to Independent Living which allocates and monitors state subsidized case management services for adults with developmental disabilities.

Business development and starting a new company are recent choices. For 20+ years previously, she had a career as a telecommunications engineer at several large corporations including as Senior Engineer at CSC working on the DuPont account. She specialized in Network Quality Assurance, Metrics analysis, SLA Compliance, and Customer Reporting.

The career shift occurred because she decided to take a sabbatical to live in Costa Rica where she taught English and helped on a humanitarian project. While teaching English in San Jose, she worked with a group of women in an impoverished village in the rain forest. The women had formed a co-op and were looking for help to build their business of making artisanal skin care products, specifically handmade soap and shampoo. Tina taught the women how to make soap and helped them launch their business.

Tina earned a BA in German Language and Literature from Rutgers University then started in the MA in German Translation Studies/Literature program and won the Rotary International Scholarship in 1986 to study in Vienna, Austria for a year. But when she returned to the US and to help pay for studies, she started working for Johnson & Johnson Corporate and was hired full time at Ortho Pharmaceuticals (J&J Company) in 1989. Work interfered, she did not finish this program, but returned to school in 2007 and earned an MS in Strategic Leadership from Neumann College.