Energy Jobs: Exec Moves at CenterPoint and Entergy, Buyout at 8minutenergy, and More

For the first time in months, we're steering clear of Tesla news in the jobs column.

CenterPoint CEO Scott Prochazka will retain his post after the merger of CenterPoint and Vectren, which will be finalized in early 2019. Many other executives at CenterPoint will retain their roles in the merger, but Bill Rogers, currently CenterPoint Energy's EVP and CFO, will retire for personal reasons. 

In New Orleans, David Ellis will be the new president and CEO of Entergy New Orleans. He will relocate from New Jersey where he was with Global Power Technologies, a technology provider and consultant to the utility industry. "David's deep background in innovation, reliability and resource management, and delivering customer-focused products and services make him the right choice to lead Entergy New Orleans into the future,” Rod West, group president utility operations of Entergy Corp, said in a statement.

Tom Buttgenbach, the co-founder of 8minutenergy, the largest solar independent power producer in the U.S., has led a management buyout of the shares of fellow co-founder Martin Hermann. Buttgenbach will now also be CEO along with his current title of president. Just after the buyout, 8minutenergy entered into a joint venture with J.P. Morgan Asset Management and an affiliate of Upper Bay Infrastructure Partners to provide more than $200 million in equity capital for 8minutenergy’s 10.7-gigawatt portfolio of utility PV and storage projects.

Battery maker Exide has brought in Timothy Vargo as its new president and CEO, succeeding Vic Koelsch, who will remain on the board. Vargo comes from the automotive supply chain market and was previously president and COO of AutoZone. He will be tasked with growing its OEM partnerships and introducing new products and services for its transportation and power networks lines of business. 

Quantal, an executive search firm focused on building specialized teams in connected industry, is the sponsor of the GTM jobs column.

Among its many active searches, Quantal has been engaged to find a director of client success.

The Client Success team launches and operates best-in-class programs for electric utilities, helping them address grid challenges by engaging customers with connected devices. As the Director of Client Success, ensuring our clients achieve their goals is your mandate. You and your team of Client Success Managers own the client relationship end-to-end, including managing the launch of our platform and programs, building and maintaining strong client relationships, and serving as trusted partners to clients and the sales, product, engineering and marketing teams to maintain account health and drive renewals. This is a highly visible customer facing role.

This is an ideal job for someone who has a passion for working with clients and software products, who enjoys managing teams through complex solutioning, exercises sound business judgment, and is a strategic thinker with extraordinary attention to detail. The successful candidate is a quick learner and self-starter, has the ability to communicate a variety of messages to varying audiences, can build relationships effortlessly, is successful in a player/coach position, and consistently achieves results.

Amena Ali has left Whisker Labs, where she was CRO, to become CEO of VividCortex. VividCortex is a database monitoring service used by companies such as Yelp, Cisco and Etsy.

Liquid air energy storage technology firm Highview Power has hired former InterGen Managing Director Mark Somerset to be its director of business growth. Mathew Brett is Highview’s new business development director. He was previously with NeuConnect and a co-founder of Greenage Power.

Joanna Hamblin is now director of marketing at FreeWire Technologies. She was previously head of marketing at Power Standards Lab and before that at GridCo.

British law firm Fieldfisher has hired Matthew Williams to co-head the firm’s energy and natural resources sector out of its London office to further expand the firm’s renewables presence. Williams joins the firm from Orrick, where he was co-head of the European energy practice.

Jason Cigarran has left Itron (previously Comverge) where he was director of market communications. He has moved on from the fast-moving world of electric utilities to run marketing for a cloud-based point-of-sale company.

Andy Beck is now managing director of public affairs for kglobal. He was previously EVP of Makovsky, where he started and led the integrated marketing and communications firm’s energy, transportation, manufacturing and sustainability and public affairs practices.

Bonnie Lind is now VP of startup Pathion, which makes energy storage systems. She was previously at Berkshire Bridge Capital.

Colin Murchie is now senior director of business development for utilities and public agencies on the East Coast for EVgo. He was previously with Sol Systems.