The tumult at Tesla continues with significant workforce reductions earlier this month, along with the addition of a few new names in top spots as the company seeks profitability. The company cut about 4,000 positions, or 9 percent of its employees.
The revamping continues in the executive realm as well. Tesla brought on Sanjay Shah as VP of energy operations. Shah was previously at Amazon and will oversee the solar, Powerwall and Powerpack businesses. Shah is just one of many recent additions after top executives departed the company in the last year.
Jan Oehmicke will also join Tesla next month as VP of Tesla Europe. On the engineering front, Tesla recently brought on Stuart Bowers as VP of engineering and Neeraj Manrao as director of energy manufacturing. Kevin Mukai is the new director of production engineering at the Gigafactory.
One of the executives who left Tesla, Eric Branderiz has emerged as VP and CFO at Enphase Energy. Branderiz was formerly the chief accounting officer and corporate controller for Tesla and spent about a decade at SunPower.
After more than a decade with the California Public Utilities Commission, Melicia Charles has moved to the private sector and is now the director of public policy at Sunrun.
Also, after about a decade with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, J. Arnold Quinn has also moved to the private sector as senior director of FERC-jurisdictional markets for Vistra Energy, which owns generation and retail utilities, including TXU and Dynegy.
S&C Electric’s chief strategy officer Wanda Reder has left S&C to form Grid-X Partners. The woman-owned consulting firm will work with utilities to help them navigate the changing energy landscape.
The New York Solar Energy Industries Association has a new executive director, Suzanne Maloney. According to her LinkedIn page, she is also president of Loudonville Style Adaptive Horticulture. We’re not sure exactly what that entails, but she can probably answer your New York solar policy inquiries and your gardening questions for planting zones all at the same time. NY SEIA has also named Dan Hendrick as president of its board of directors.
Module-level power electronics product platform provider Tigo has brought on Babu Jain as COO. Two years ago, inverter giant SMA took a significant stake in Tigo.
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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 regional territory utility manager in smart resources.
The client is a predictive analytics solution for utilities, which solves challenges around asset health/maintenance, storm recovery, and CMI. This is a small but established firm, which recently received additional funding as well as some recent highly visible wins that will take them to the next level. They seek a Regional Territory Utility Manager, a utility solution sales executive who has carried quotas in excess of $1 million dollars to leverage their network of VP level contacts within the IOU and muni/co-op markets. They must also have knowledge of T&D, asset management, GIS, or OMS sales to drive and build relationships with prospects and customers to close complex sale opportunities while mentoring less experienced sales team members.
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Dana Abella has moved from JinkoSolar to be the director of business development for Latin America at LONGi Solar.
Karim Alzanoon is now a key account manager at Schneider Electric Solar. He was most recently director of channel sales at Huawei and KACO New Energy before that.
Omnidian, a solar asset management firm offering performance guarantees on residential rooftop arrays, has hired Cedric Brehaut as VP of products and Caroline Bec Cox as VP of finance. Omnidian raised $5 million last year.
Candace Yu is now a business development manager at Stem. She spent the last two years at Mercedes-Benz Energy Americas working on utility business development, policy and strategy.
Grid software provider GreenSync has named Mark Woodall as its new chairman of the board of directors.
Joe Benga is now SVP of deployment at Smart Wires. He was most recently in consulting and with Gardner Capital, and Chevron Energy Solutions before that.
Aquilon Energy Services, a software company that speeds up energy trades, has hired David Vinzant as its SVP and head of sales for its Energy Settlement Network. Previously, Vinzant was Schneider Electric’s VP of sales for the Americas.
Former GTMer Mohit Anand has caught blockchain fever. He is becoming director of blockchain strategy consulting at startup OST "Simple Token." What will the future of blockchain in electricity look like? The Interchange podcast recently explored two possible pathways.
ING Capital is expanding its utilities, power and renewables team into San Francisco. Tom Cantello is relocating from New York to San Francisco in July to get the office set up.
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