MEET OUR TEAM

We’re a hard-working team, fighting to make distributed energy resources (DERs) an asset to utilities across North America.

We’re building a world-class team of engineers, thinkers, and business people focused on a single goal: to empower utilities at the grid edge with tools that proliferate the adoption of renewable energy, decarbonize our energy supply, and create a healthier planet. We’re a diverse team from all walks of life and backgrounds, and we value that. Interested in joining our team? Check out our openings on our careers page.

Vince Carter

Vince Carter

Lead Electrical Engineer

Vince has worked in various capacities as an electrical engineer for ConnectDER. He supports the product development front, from diving into Research & Development projects to designing PCBs and working on software and firmware development.

Olga Boleslavsky

Olga Boleslavsky

QA Engineer

Olga performs quality assurance, regression testing, and release support for all aspects of ConnectDERs solutions, both hardware and software.

Jorge Cesmegi III

Jorge Cesmegi III

QA Engineer

Jorge is a computer engineer specializing in quality assurance of software, firmware and hardware products. He provides testing and verification for the portfolio of ConnectDER devices. He has a passion for technology and is proud to be a part of the ConnectDER mission to facilitate and bring clean, renewable energy onto the grid.

Ashley Donnelly Leonard

Ashley Donnelly Leonard

Chief Financial Officer

Ashley is responsible for finance, organizational health, and strategic planning efforts at ConnectDER.  She brings a background in investment banking, recruiting, new ventures and non-profit leadership.  Ashley is passionate about mission-driven businesses like ConnectDER that focus on people and planet alongside and as a path to profitability.

Whit Fulton

Whit Fulton

CEO

Whit founded ConnectDER™ to give inventors a place to solve meaningful problems and to ensure they have an ownership stake in the solutions they create.  His personal mission is to create technologies and business approaches that unlock profitable models for renewable energy.  Whit honed his analysis, negotiation, and product development skills through a series of senior managerial positions in energy analytics consultancies and cleantech startups.

Ben Lewis

Ben Lewis

Lead Mechanical Engineer

Ben provides design and development of multiple subsystems of the ConnectDER, as well as support for field deployment operations. He was a fellow in the photovoltaics department of Fraunhofer CSE. Ben previously worked in residential and commercial photovoltaics, solar thermal, and biofuels.

Lorena Machado Gomes

Lorena Machado Gomes

Electrical Engineer

Lorena has a background in electrical engineering and is responsible for assembling, calibrating, testing, and shipping all of the Smart ConnectDER units made in-house. She checks each completed unit for quality, accuracy, and functionality, as well as manages logistics and inventory to ensure our production processes are seamless.

Jon Knauer

Jon Knauer

VP Hardware and Delivery

Jon manages the design and production of ConnectDER’s core products.  He has over 8 years of experience in product development, project management, and consulting.  Jon focuses on bringing product enhancements to rapid fruition.  Prior to joining ConnectDER, he managed software deployments at Performance Systems Development, an energy efficiency services provider, and led energy efficiency and sustainability master planning projects for a number of major US cities at ICLEI USA.
Katie Bentley

Katie Bentley

Mechanical Engineer

Katie is responsible for the design and development of mechanical components within the ConnectDER system, and provides manufacturing support.  She has a background in sheet metal and injection molding design, along with hands-on machine shop experience.  She is proud to be part of a great team striving to grow renewable energy technology.
Colin Mattox

Colin Mattox

Head of Product Marketing

Colin leads ConnectDER’s marketing efforts, focusing on content creation, overall messaging, campaign planning, and budget management. He comes with experience from consumer facing tech startups where he focused on product development and growth. He is deeply passionate about a sustainable and scalable energy future.

Ganesh Sarwate

Ganesh Sarwate

Software developer

Ganesh is a seasoned software engineer who works on building components of ConnectDER’s Cloud product. Throughout his more than twenty years in the tech industry, he has designed and constructed software products and tools in a variety of business domains. He is passionate about building distributed, fault-tolerant, and concurrent systems while adopting emerging technologies.

Dan Lasley

Dan Lasley

Electrical Engineer, Manager

Dan is an electrical engineer with a broad background in several different industries including thermal printers, graphics tablets, and wireless safety devices.  Dan has extensive experience in product development, embedded systems (hardware and firmware), PCB layout, and manufacturing processes.  He is working on enhancing our core products while mentoring and managing our team of Electrical Engineers.   
Bill Mayer

Bill Mayer

VP Sales

Bill is an experienced energy industry executive responsible for Business Development at ConnectDER.  Prior to joining the ConnectDER team, he held Sales Executive positions in the Smart Grid space for over 15 years where he leveraged his utility engineering experience gained at Florida Power and Light and national policy experience gained at Edison Electric Institute. As a clean energy proponent and a Tesla owner, he is looking forward to helping utilities and their customers do more at the meter.

Brad Pulley

Brad Pulley

Electrical Engineer

Brad is an electrical engineer who focuses on various new product development initiatives and Research & Development projects at ConnectDER. He provides support for the design and implementation of testing beds, additive manufacturing, and printed circuit board design.

Kip Leitner

Kip Leitner

Senior Electrical Engineer

Kip Leitner designs and implements hardware, real-time firmware and software for ConnectDER.  He has a passion for renewable energy design and special interests in the semantics of technology, complexity modeling and tool chain efficiency.

Thomas Williams

Thomas Williams

Software Developer

Thomas is a software developer working on ConnectDER’s Cloud product. He has worked as a software developer across several industries for 12 years, focusing on maintaining and updating internal and external software, as well as improving the CI/CD pipeline.
Joseph Scabarozi

Joseph Scabarozi

Senior Electrical Engineer

Joe has over 20 yrs of product development experience as an Electrical Engineer from the broadband industry, ranging from prototype to production. He is excited by the products at ConnectDER and takes pride in helping the planet reach a renewable energy future. As part of the development team, he enjoys working with many different technologies and has always been someone who takes things apart just to see how they work.

Our Valued Consultants

Adam Koeppel

Adam Koeppel

IP and Design Support

Adam is a fearless hacker/maker who provides design, prototyping, and patent development work to ConnectDER. He has a mechanical engineering degree and experience working on groundbreaking products in the energy, finance, and social media market sectors, many of which he holds patents on. Adam has been a founding member of a number of successful startup companies. When ConnectDER needs go-to support on making things quickly, Adam is the guy we go to.
Dr. Evan Malone

Dr. Evan Malone

Product Development Support

Evan founded and currently serves as president of NextFab, a hardware tech incubator and product development services company in Philadelphia. Evan and other staff at NextFab support ConnectDER with hardware design, engineering, and prototyping services. Evan has worked in applied physics at DOE’s Fermilab high-energy physics laboratory and has performed research on mobile robotics and additive manufacturing (3D printing).
Paul Duncan

Paul Duncan

Engineering & Market Advisory Support

Paul is an executive, inventor, and engineer with significant entrepreneurial experience within the energy sector serving electric utilities and their customers. His functional expertise includes customer-centric strategic planning involving thought leadership surrounding all aspects of electric utility distribution operations, with an emphasis on aggregation and control of distributed energy resources within the distribution grid or utility back office. Paul provides ConnectDER with critical expertise on design process, business management, and utility market applications.