As the old newspaper adage goes, "If it bleeds, it leads." And if it’s Tesla that is bleeding executives, of course we’ll start there.
Elon Musk said in a company memo that he’s flattening out the executive structure at the company, according to the The Wall Street Journal. But it’s hardly a sudden hemorrhage. Axios has a nice laundry list of who has left in the past two years, some of which we've reported on here and here.
Executive departures include Matthew Schwall, director of field performance engineering, who is leaving Tesla for self-driving competitor Waymo; Jon McNeill, Tesla's former head of global sales, who left to become COO at Lyft; and Jim Keller, the lead for Tesla's internal artificial intelligence processor, who quit for a gig at Intel in April.
The restructuring hasn't seemed to slow down Tesla’s ambitions in energy storage, even as Model 3 production continues to be an issue. The company said it installed a record number of residential Powerwall systems, and as for utility-scale energy storage, “I feel confident that we'll be able to announce a deal at the gigawatt-hour scale within a matter of months,” Musk said on the company's most recent earnings call.
As part of Sunpower’s acquisition of SolarWorld Americas, which petitioned for the tariffs on imported CSPV modules and cells, Juergen Stein, president and CEO of SolarWorld, will step into a full-time advisory position. The interum CEO will be John Boken, a member of SolarWorld’s board and senior managing director of Zolfo Cooper, where he has led dozens of restructuring efforts.
Commonwealth Edison has announced a new CEO, Joseph Dominguez. He will move into the top spot from his current position as EVP for governmental and regulatory affairs and public policy at ComEd. He replaces Anne Pramaggiore, who will move over to parent company, Exelon, as senior EVP and CEO of Exelon Utilities, overseeing all six of the company’s electric and gas utilities, according to the Chicago Tribune. Terence Donnelly, COO and EVP of ComEd, will take Pramaggiore’s role of president of ComEd.
The National Regulatory Research Institute has chosen a new director, Carl Pechman, who is replacing Rajnish Barua, who went to go serve as the executive director of the Delaware Public Service Commission. The NRRI is the research arm of NARUC. Pechman was an economist/supervisory energy industry analyst for FERC and was assigned to be a senior electricity adviser to the U.S. DOE.
Matt Logan has left Advanced Microgrid Solutions as finance manger to be the partnership manager at Honolulu-based cleantech incubator Elemental Excelerator. As part of the partnerships team, Logan will “attract and select high-potential startups, and cultivate relationships with corporate partners that catalyze growth for these startups through investment and project deployment.”
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Enertech Search Partners, a boutique talent acquisition and advisory firm focused exclusively on the intersection of the new energy economy and connected industries, is the sponsor of the GTM jobs column.
Among its many active searches, Enertech has been exclusively engaged to find a VP of Product Management & Marketing.
The client, owned by a major EU utility, is a Silicon Valley startup (2010) that has grown from a maker of home electric-vehicle chargers to an award-winning software platform provider working on some of the largest smart EV charging projects out there, leveraging cutting-edge IOT and blockchain technologies. The company manages thousands of participants — more than all other EV charging infrastructure vendors combined. It is also participating in utility-sponsored sub-metering programs, demand response auctions, and “concierge” programs with community-choice aggregators.
The client is seeking a VP of Product Management with strength in product marketing and experience in related fields (EVSE, EVs, charging networks, automotive technologies, utility programs in DR or EVs).
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Canadian module manufacturer Silfab Solar has hired Ryan Adams as director of business development. Silfab is one of the firms suing the Trump administration over the tariffs on imported CSPV modules and cells. Adams was most recently director of sales for Canada and Central U.S. at SolarEdge.
In other solar news, Georg Bettenhauser has moved from head of sales at Trina Solar to VP of sales and supplier partnerships at EnergySage.
Arthur Haubenstock is now the executive director for the California Efficiency + Demand Management Council, a trade association for energy efficiency and demand-side management. Haubenstock was most recently VP of policy and strategy at solar developer 8minutenergy.
Utility grid operation software provider Open Systems International has brought on Randy Berry as VP of utilities. Berry was VP of business development with Power Systems Consultants and spent about 20 years with Alstom/GE. Berry also wins the award for best LinkedIn photo we've come across this week.
Norwegian startup Greenbird Integration Technology has brought on Frederik ten Sythoff as market engagement director. The addition comes on the heels of bringing on Andrew Lund as global chief revenue officer. Greenbird helps utilities with their digital transformations and is looking to expand globally. Lund was previously at Google Cloud.
Blockchain energy trading startup Power Ledger has tapped Dante Disparte to be a strategic adviser and ambassador. Power Ledger raised $17M in a cryptocurrency "ICO" last year and says that its platform structure “fights against the typical single point of failure that large-scale energy grids have become.”
Power Factors (not to be confused with aforementioned Power Ledger) has hired Jay Lakumb to expand product development in wind. Lakumb was most recently with GE Digital and has previously also been at OSIsoft. Power Factors provides asset management software for renewables.