Promotions and New Appointments

Dec. 1, 2011
WattStopper (Santa Clara, Calif.): Dean Pournaras is now president, following the resignation of Jerry Mix, who co-founded Wattstopper 28 years ago. Mix

WattStopper (Santa Clara, Calif.): Dean Pournaras is now president, following the resignation of Jerry Mix, who co-founded Wattstopper 28 years ago. Mix will be joining Finelite as CEO on Jan. 1. Pournaras has been a member of the WattStopper management team for the past seven years, rising to his current position as V.P of sales and marketing after 15 years with Legrand/Pass & Seymour, where he served in a number of director-level sales and marketing roles in 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.

Border States Electric (BSE) (Fargo, N.D.): Jeremy Welsand is now CFO and a member of the company's executive council. He was an audit partner in the Minneapolis, Minn., office of Grant Thornton, where he led client relationships for annual audits, due diligence and transactional engagements for private and public companies. He was also responsible for providing U.S. and international accounting expertise for a variety of assurance engagements while serving as the U.S. resident specialist for Grant Thornton UK LLP from 2005 to 2007.

Cape Electrical Supply (Cape Girardeau, Mo.): Curt Bucheit has joined the company has CFO. He most recently served as V.P. of finance at HAVCO Wood Products in Cape Girardeau. He holds an accounting degree from Southeast Missouri State University and is a CPA. His new position at Cape Electrical Supply includes responsibility for all financial reporting, IT and logistics.

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. 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 B.A. in business management from Western New England University and is 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. 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 B.A. 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.

National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED) (St. Louis): Marc Malvizzi, electrical division manager of Eastern Penn Supply Co., is NAED's incoming vice president-elect of the Eastern Region. He has been in the industry for 27 years and has served on NAED's Eastern Region Council since 2008. Malvizzi has also served in his local community — he is a 31-year veteran of the Laflin, Pa., volunteer fire department (12 years as fire chief) and a former mayor of Laflin.

Dan Nitowsky, vice president, Mars Electric Co., Willoughby, Ohio, currently directs the Eastern Region Council. Beginning in May 2012, August Sodora Jr., president, Swift Electrical Supply Co., Teterboro, N.J, will take up the regional leadership for 2012-2013.

Fulham Co. Inc. (Hawthorne, Calif.): Jim White has been appointed CFO, Fulham North America. He previously worked for seven years at Philips/Advance, the last four years of which he served as CFO of North America Lighting and Electronics. Prior to that White was with Schneider Electric/Square D for 16 years in finance and accounting.

National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA), Rosslyn, Va.: NEMA awarded two industry executives with its prestigious Kite & Key Awards at its recent annual meeting. Pamela Horner, senior director of government and industry relations for Sylvania, received the award for her 36 years of service to the lighting industry, which include executive posts on several NEMA lighting committees and at the Illuminating Engineering Society. Timothy McNeive, manager of the technical liaison group for Thomas & Betts Corp. also won a Kite & Key Award for the standards development work he has done for NEMA and international standards associations during his 38 years in the industry (all with T&B).

In other news at NEMA, the association announced the officers for its 2012 Board of Governors. They are Dominic Pileggi, chairman and CEO, Thomas & Betts Corp., Chairman; John Selldorff, chairman and CEO, Legrand North America, First Vice Chairman; Christopher Curtis, president and CEO, Schneider Electric, Second Vice Chairman; Thomas Gross, vice chairman and COO, Eaton Corp., Treasurer; and David FitzGibbon, vice chairman and CEO, ILSCO Corp., Immediate Past Chairman.

Xicato (San Jose, Calif.): Gerhard Rieser recently joined the company as V.P. of sales, Europe. He will report to Tom Foster, V.P. of worldwide sales and will direct existing sales operations in Western Europe and initiate activities in Eastern Europe. Gerhard has more than 16 years of experience in the lighting industry with an emphasis on the acquisition of new customers and building up sales networks. Prior to Xicato he held several leadership positions at Tridonic Connection Technology and managed the Zumtobel Group, where he built and managed the worldwide sales and marketing team, including a network of independent sales representatives and distributors.

Stahlin Non-Metallic Enclosures (Belding, Mich): The company has appointed Chris Wood to an inside sales position. Wood has several years of industrial sales experience and a B.A. from Grand Valley State University.

Cicoil (Valencia, Calif.): Jon Hinkley is now Western regional sales manager. He comes to Cicoil from Calmont Wire and Cable, a California-based custom wire and cable manufacturer and also has experience as a regional account manager for Anixter in Northern California. He is a graduate of California State University and served for four years in the United States Air Force as a senior airman.

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. Mejia 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. He progressed to positions of increasing responsibilities within Hermetic to include materials manager, division lean champion and director of quality. Mejia holds a B.S. in industrial engineering from The University of Los Andes in Bogota, Colombia and an MBA from The University of Notre Dame.

The Luminaires Group (Montreal, Canada): This North American-based lighting company, which manages Cyclone Lighting, Distri-Lite, Eureka Lighting and Amerillum brands, announced three promotions to its senior-management team. Christian Fabi is now president of The Luminaires Group; Patrick Foley is executive vice president; and Guy St. Pierre is executive chairman.

Fabi was formerly partner and executive vice president of Eureka Lighting and has a B.A. in finance and an M.A. in marketing from Sherbrooke University of Quebec. Foley, who will retain his position of president of Eureka Lighting where he has been employed the past 12 years, has also been plant manager at JWI Group-Johnson Filtration and a supply chain management consultant at Baan Canada. His education includes a B.A. in engineering from L'École Polytechnique de Montreal, and an MBA from L'École des Hautes Études Commerciales, Montreal. As executive chairman, St. Pierre, a founding partner of The Luminaires Group, will be responsible for long-term vision and strategy development of the Group.

Rep News

Arlington Industries recently recognized Larry French from the L. W. French Co., Glen Allen, Va., for 30 years of service as a representative in Virginia. Larry started his business in Richmond, Va. on Nov. 1, 1981. For most of those years he has represented Arlington Industries.

General Cable has appointed Blomquist, Densley & Young (BDY) as its rep for the Utah, southwest Wyoming, northeast Nevada and southern Idaho territories. BDY has served the electrical wholesale distribution market in this region for 30 years.

ILSCO, Cincinnati, has appointed Davenport & Associates Inc., an eight-person independent manufacturers' rep based in Nashville, to represent the ILSCO brand of electrical connectors in eastern Tennessee. Davenport & Associates was established in 1979.