Maria Teresa ‘Tera’ Vazquez is President & CEO of Guy Brown. Established in 1997, Guy Brown is a national business-to-business provider of of Office Products, MRO, Breakroom, Janitorial & Safety, Technology, Furniture, Print, Managed Print, Promotional Items. Guy Brown is a certified Minority Women Business Enterprise (MWBE), Woman Owned Small Business (WOSB) and Small Disadvantaged Business (SBD), with a focus on servicing Fortune 500 companies, major healthcare systems and GPOs across the nation.
Under Tera’s leadership, Guy Brown has received excellence and valuable partner awards from some of America’s most well known companies, including John Deere, Boeing, CSX, General Mills and MillerCoors, as well as being named five times as one of the Fastest Growing Privately Held Businesses in the U.S. by Inc. Magazine. In 2018, Tera was the recipient of the Impact of the Year award from the TriState Minority Supplier Development Council (TSMSDC).
Tera was elected as the Chairperson of the Minority Business Enterprise Input Committee (MBEIC) for the TSMSDC in December 2012 and also serves on the executive board of the TSMSDC.
Elected to the Presidency of the Tennessee Latin American Chamber of Commerce in November 2008, Tera assumed office in January 2009 and held the position until January 2012. She is the first female to hold this position.
Tera attended Manhattanville College in Purchase, N.Y., where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in Economics. She then pursued her Master of Business Administration from American University in Washington, D.C. Tera began her career as a brand manager at Pelikan, Inc. in Franklin, Tenn., an affiliate of Pelikan AG in Hanover, Germany. In 1994, she joined Nu-Kote International in Dallas, Texas as the Director of Product Marketing and was later promoted to Director of Sales and Marketing for Latin America. This experience provided the foundation for her work with Guy Brown, where she began as Vice President of Sales and Marketing in 1999.