Electrical Marketing's LiveWire

Schneider Electric announced today that after more than 20 years of service, Ralph Harris, the company’s senior vice president, sales and marketing, plans to retire at the end of 2011. Harris has held numerous leadership positions in sales, marketing and organizational development throughout his career with Square D Co. and Schneider Electric, most recently having responsibility for the company’s U.S. Power Business sales and marketing organization.

Lighting control manufacturer WattStopper, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based part of the Legrand group, announced today the resignation of its president, Jerry Mix, and the immediate appointment of Dean Pournaras to that position. Mix, who co-founded Wattstopper 28 years ago, will be joining Finelite as chief executive officer on January 1, 2012.

Pournaras has been a member of the WattStopper management team for the past seven years, rising to his current position as VP of sales and marketing, after 15 years with Legrand/Pass & Seymour, where he served in a number of director-level sales and marketing roles that included the retail and electrical distribution channels. Pournaras is a graduate of St. Mary’s College and earned his MBA from the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University.

In announcing the change, Wattstopper credited Mix with “countless” contributions to both the company and the lighting controls industry, including the development of many industry-first product innovations as well as spearheading recognition of lighting controls as a reliable and effective energy efficiency technology. Under his leadership, WattStopper evolved from a startup to a $120+ million company offering comprehensive energy efficient lighting control solutions for commercial and residential applications. Mix currently sits on the advisory board of the California Lighting Technology Center, as well as the boards of Finelite, ETM Tailored Power Subsystems, and Finis. He is a graduate of the University of Arizona.

Graybar Electric Co. (St. Louis): The company appointed two executives to positions that will focus on electric and broadband utilities. Peter Elkas is now vice president-sales, electric utility and Tom Moore is vice president-sales, broadband utility, effective Jan. 1, 2012. Elkas is a 31-year Graybar veteran who currently serves as district vice president in the company’s Boston district. He has worked closely with electric utility customers in New England for many years. Elkas has a bachelor’s degree in business management from Western New England University and is an actively involved in several utility organizations.
Moore is currently director, comm/data sales in Graybar’s Richmond district. Throughout his 27-year Graybar career, he has served in a variety of sales and management roles within the company’s comm/data business. He is an active member of BISCI and earned his RCDD designation in 1993. Moore has a bachelor’s degree in business management from Western Carolina University and was among the first employees to complete the Rutgers-Graybar Supply Chain Management Program.
The company also named Todd McDonough district vice president for its Boston district, effective Jan. 1, 2012. McDonough started his career with Graybar in 1995 and advanced through several service, sales and management roles, most recently serving as director of electrical sales in the Boston district. He holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Bentley University and is a graduate of the Rutgers-Graybar Supply Chain Management Program.
Graybar’s Boston district, which services customers throughout New England, is one of 13 operating districts for the employee-owned company. The Boston district includes a total of 11 locations and more than 320 employees in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont.

EGS Electrical Group (Rosemont, Ill.): Ricardo Mejia has been promoted to V.P. of performance excellence and will report directly to EGS CEO Eric Meyer. He began his career at Emerson in May 1999 as an operations planner with the company’s Hermetic Motor Division in St. Louis and in Jan. 2002 became the Lean Champion for the Hermetic facility in Reynosa, Mexico, and progressed to positions of increasingly responsibilities within Hermetic to include materials manager, division lean champion and director of quality. Mejia holds a BS in industrial engineering from The University of Los Andes in Bogota, Colombia and an MBA from The University of Notre Dame.

EnOcean GmbH (Oberhaching, Germany): Laurent Giai-Miniet has been appointed CEO Together with Andreas Schneider, Chief Marketing Officer, and Uwe Thumm, CFO, he will promote the company’s technology and drive business growth on a global scale. He will replace Markus Brehler, who has left the company. Giai-Miniet spent 20 years with Texas Instruments (TI), where he has held several management positions. Most recently he was general manager for Low Power RF Products (LPRF), based in Oslo, Norway. Founded in 2001, EnOcean manufactures and markets wireless modules that draw their power from the surrounding environment through energy harvesting. They draw energy from movement, light or differences in temperature to enable fully energy-autonomous and maintenance-free solutions for building and industrial automation. There are already more than 200,000 buildings that use EnOcean wireless sensors, and over 800 interoperable products.