Robert M. Chiste has served as our Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer since September 2001. From 1998 to September 2001, Mr. Chiste was a private investor and co-founded three technology start-ups: TriActive, Inc., a provider of hosted systems management solutions, FuelQuest, Inc., an on-demand software provider for the fuel industry, and iMark, Inc., an internet industrial products auction company. From 1994 to 1997, Mr. Chiste served as Vice Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Allwaste, Inc., a publicly-traded provider of industrial, energy and environmental services, until its acquisition by Philip Services Corp., where he served as President of the Industrial Services Group from 1997 to 1998. From 1986 to 1994, he served as President and Chief Executive Officer of American National Power, Inc., a successor to Transco Energy Ventures Company, an independent power company and a subsidiary of publicly-traded Transco Energy Company. At Transco Energy, he also served as Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning from 1986 to 1988 and headed its corporate venture capital activities from 1986 to 1994. From 1980 to 1986, Mr. Chiste held several executive officer positions with Belco Petroleum and its successor, Enron Oil and Gas Corporation. Mr. Chiste currently serves on the board of directors of publicly-traded Franklin Credit Management Corporation, a specialty lender, as well as private companies AisRe, FuelQuest, Inc. and TriActive, Inc., and he is a former board member of publicly traded Innovative Valve Technologies, Inc., a service provider for industrial valves, and Pentacon, Inc., a distributor of military/aerospace fasteners and component hardware. He received a B.A. in mathematics from the College of New Jersey and J.D. and M.B.A. degrees from Rutgers University.
Frank A. Magnotti President and COO, Enterprise Group
Frank A. Magnotti has served as President and Chief Operating Officer of our Alternative Energy Resources Group since February 2005. He served as our President of Global Sales and Marketing from 2001 until 2005. He joined Acorn Factor in 1997 and also co-founded Comverge as an Acorn Factor subsidiary and served as President and General Manager from 1997 to 2001. In 1992, Mr. Magnotti founded AT&T Bell Labs' Utility Solutions Division where he was the general manager. From 1995 to 1997, he was general manager of Lucent Technology, Inc.'s Utility Solutions Division and served as general manager where he was responsible for worldwide marketing, sales, business development, project management and profit and loss efforts. Prior to this appointment, he held research, program management, strategic planning and general management positions in his 14-year term at Bell Labs. Mr. Magnotti holds B.E. and M.E. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Cooper Union School of Engineering.
Dean Musser President and COO of the Enerwise Group
Dean Musser has 25 years of experience developing and implementing energy infrastructure strategies for commercial and industrial (C&I) facilities.
Dean was previously the president and majority owner of Multi-Test Maintenance Corp., a predecessor company to Enerwise Global Technologies, Inc. which was acquired by Comverge, Inc, July 23rd, 2007. In addition, Dean served on the executive committee for one of the 50th largest electrical and energy management contracting firms in the country.
Dean holds a BS in Electrical Power Engineering from Drexel University as well as an AS in Electrical Engineering Technology from Pennsylvania State University. Dean is licensed as a Professional Engineer in 17 states.
Edward J. Myszka President and COO, Solutions Group
Edward J. Myszka has served as President and Chief Operating Officer of our Smart Grid Solutions Group since April 2005. Prior to joining us, he spent 17 years at Motorola, Inc., a global communications company, where he held numerous positions of increasing responsibility in business management, strategic planning and technology development. Since 2000, he was head of the OEM Energy Systems Division where he had profit and loss responsibility with operations in Asia, Europe and the U.S. From 1984 to 1988, Mr. Myszka led engineering and manufacturing efforts for Lytel, Inc., an early-stage company pioneering optoelectronic and semiconductor laser solutions for the telecommunications industry.
Michael D. Picchi Executive Vice President and CFO
Michael D. Picchi joined us in February 2006 as Senior Vice President, Chief Accounting Officer responsible for all accounting functions and was named Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer in June 2006. From July 2004 to February 2006, Mr. Picchi was Senior Vice President Finance and Controller for publicly-traded PRG-Schultz International, Inc., an audit recovery services firm. From February 2003 to July 2004, Mr. Picchi served as Chief Accounting Officer Corporate Controller for Randstad North America, the U.S. operations of temporary staffing labor firm Randstad Holding, B.V. From February 2002 to January 2003, Mr. Picchi served as Vice President Finance for publicly-traded AirGate PCS, Inc., a Sprint PCS wireless affiliate. Mr. Picchi began his career at Coopers & Lybrand LLP and is a certified public accountant and chartered financial analyst. He obtained a B.S. in Accounting and an M.B.A. in Finance from Indiana University.
Chris Quire Vice President of Engineering, Smart Grid Solutions Group
Mr. Quire joined Comverge in December of 2006 as the Vice President of Engineering, with responsibility for managing all aspects of the organization's product development activities. Mr. Quire spent most of his career with Panasonic, where he held several positions of increasing responsibility within the hardware engineering organization responsible for the development of cellular handsets. Prior to joining Comverge, Mr. Quire was the Director of Engineering for EMS Wireless (now a part of Andrew Corporation), where he managed the development of base station antennas and cellular repeater products. In addition to being granted two U.S. patents, Mr. Quire earned a B.E. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology as well as an M.B.A. (with a concentration in Finance) from Georgia State University.
John Rossi Vice President of Business Development, Alternative Energy Resources Group
Mr. Rossi has held a number of senior management positions in his 10 years with Comverge, including most recently, VP of Engineering. His current responsibilities are in Business Development for the AER group, where he leads the development team in acquiring new projects. This assignment leverages his broad industry background and intimate knowledge of Comverge solutions.
Prior to joining Comverge, Mr. Rossi spent 25 years at Bell Laboratories, the research and development arm of AT&T and later Lucent Technologies. At Bell Laboratories, Mr. Rossi held a number of engineering and management positions, including heading the Electronics and Photonics Development Department. His development work centered on digital signal processing and fiber optic communication. Mr. Rossi later co-founded and acted as Technical Director for the Lucent Utilities Solutions business unit. This unit focused on a number of R&D projects for the utility industry including automated feeder fault detection and energy data communication initiatives. In 1997, he co-founded Comverge, Inc. with Enterprise Group President and COO Frank Magnotti. Mr. Rossi holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Detroit.
Matthew H. Smith VP and General Counsel
Matthew H. Smith has served as our Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary since January 1, 2008. Mr. Smith joined us in January 2005 as Senior Counsel responsible for contract negotiations, intellectual property, litigation and corporate governance matters. Prior to joining us, Mr. Smith worked for the law firm King & Spalding LLP from 2002 to January 2005 concentrating primarily on intellectual property and litigation matters. Mr. Smith began his legal career as a federal appellate court clerk for Judge H. Emory Widener, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Mr. Smith obtained a B.A. in History and Psychology and a J.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Tom Van Denover Senior Vice President of Sales, Solutions Group
As Senior Vice President of Sales, Mr. Van Denover is responsible for leading Comverge's North American sales force. He has spent the majority of his career selling complex technology solutions to electric utilities and helping them to implement these solutions. Prior to Comverge, Mr. Van Denover spent three years as Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for KEMA, Inc. and 12 years as Vice President of Business Development for Schlumberger Sema/Convergent Group. Prior to this, Mr. Van Denover held a Senior Account Manager position with a leading GIS system vendor, Synercom Technology Inc., later acquired by Logica.
Throughout his tenures at these companies, Mr. Van Denover worked with many of North America's largest utilities to implement systems from large-scale AMR initiatives to Mobile Workforce Management to Real-time Energy Management systems. Mr. Van Denover holds a M.B.A. from University of Houston and a B.A. from Ball State University.
Arthur Vos Vice President of Marketing, Products, and Strategy
Arthur Vos IV joined us in April 2003 as our Vice President of Development for our 6DiNET Group after the acquisition of Sixth Dimension, Inc. Mr. Vos was named Vice President, Marketing, Products and Strategy in 2004. As co-founder and Vice President of Sixth Dimension from 1997 to April 2003, Mr. Vos has been extensively involved in the electric utility industry for over 12 years, including the development of demand
response offerings based on real-time monitoring and control technology, strategic sales to electric utilities, alliances and joint product and development offerings with partner companies. Mr. Vos obtained B.S. and M.S. degrees from Colorado State University with an emphasis in artificial intelligence, distributed control systems, manufacturing systems and embedded system design.