WindPole Management Team
Steve Kropper, CEO & Co-Founder
Steve is a serial entrepreneur focused on energy information services driven by large databases. He is a founding Fellow at the New England Clean Energy Fellowship Program. Steve started his career in the energy business, initially with Boston City Hospital and subsequently in his own commercial energy consultation business. He worked in the rapidly deregulating telecom market with Cable & Wireless, Martin-Marietta and later International Data Corporation as the telecom analyst. As the Internet evolved he saw promise in automating real estate information services and created the first of its kind and largest in the field Domania.com. Domania managed private label versions of its core service in partnerships with Bloomberg, Dow Jones, AOL, Yahoo, CitiBank, Chase and many other media and financial firms. The firm was sold to Lending Tree (now an IAC/Interactive property). After Domania, Steve served as Senior Vice President at Equinox Corporation where he led marketing for customer acquisition services and business process outsourcing (BPO) delivered from the firm's 450 employee base in India (Equinox was later acquired by i-FLEX Solutions). He has provided corporate strategy and marketing consulting services to clients in both regulated and unregulated markets including energy, telecommunications, real estate information services, and banking customer acquisition. He has also provided advisory services to the venture capital community in the US Northeast.
Steve has a BA from Boston University and MBA from Cornell University. Elected Town Meeting member, Chairman of Lexington's Municipal Energy Conservation Committee. Eagle Scout.
Lisa Bodvar, Vice-President of Development
Post graduation, Lisa joined the product development team at Domania.com. She quickly distinguished herself as a key team member and when Domania.com was sold to Lending Tree, Lisa chose to take on a new challenge and joined Domania's founder at Equinox Corporation. At Equinox, Lisa was Director of Product Development and remotely managed a team of software engineers located in Gurgaon, India, vendor developers in other parts of India, and local vendors while also acting as primary point of contact for clients. Most recently, Lisa managed vendors, data providers and clients for Bank on Real Estate (BoRE), the first national MLS not controlled by Realtors. While at BoRE, Domania.com and Equinox, Lisa was responsible for large-scale data projects, execution of innovative marketing programs, and liaison to top-10 banking clients. Lisa graduated from Simmons College magna cum laude in 2000, receiving a BA in Management.
Dana De Alasei, Director of Product Strategy
Dana is a 12 year veteran of the energy industry. Prior to joining WindPole, Dana has held roles in engineering and sales focused on delivering complex meter data management solutions to Fortune 50 utilities and Independent System Operators across the US. Dana has a BSEE from Valparaiso University and a MA from Harvard University.
David Rosenbloom, PhD, Chairman & Co-Founder
David has a 40 year record of starting successful new ventures in both the private and public sectors. As Chief of Staff and key advisor to former Mayor of Boston, Kevin White, he has extensive experience working with community groups and local governing boards to resolve potentially controversial issues and move projects forward. He has been a founder, Chair, CEO and investor, in four successful private companies and created programs in the public/not for profit sector that generate more than $250 million a year in federal grants to states and communities. He is currently Professor of Public Health at the Boston University School of Public Health. David was Commissioner of Boston Health and Hospitals from 1975-1983 where he fostered development of an extensive network of neighborhood health centers and laid the groundwork for rebuilding the public hospital system and transitioning it to a non-governmental public purpose corporation. From 1984-1988, David was the Vice President, and then President of the Health Data Institute, a private company that pioneered the clinical analysis of medical claims data and developed managed-care tools and techniques used throughout the country today. Health Data Institute was successfully sold to Caremark, Inc. David was also the Founder of QuitNet.com, a Web based smoking cessation intervention, now used by over one million people. David served as Chairman for QuitNet from 2000 until it was acquired by Axiahealthcare.com in 2005. David grew up in Albany, New York. He has a BA from Colgate University and a PhD from MIT in Political Science. He is the author of numerous books and articles on political campaigns and finance, health care, and substance use problems.
Jim Lang, Director & Investor
Jim Lang is Chairman of The Lang Group, LLC. He has current investments and board involvement with: AlphaDetail; Boston Heart Lab; Decision Strategies International; Energy Climate Solutions; Panel Intelligence; Sustainability Roundtable; TellEmotion; and now Windpole Ventures. Formerly, he was President & COO at Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a leader in energy insight, research, and consulting. Jim has a BSECE from the University of New Hampshire and a MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
Sean Howe, Co-Founder & Director
Sean brings a significant breadth and depth in business management from start-ups through to multinational organizations. Sean is a twenty-five year veteran of the communications and high technology sectors. He has held senior management and/or executive roles in finance, corporate strategy, marketing, and business development. In the communication services market with Bell Canada and Bell Canada International (BCI); in the OSS software market at Nortel Networks eBusiness Solutions group and Architel Systems (acquired by Nortel); and in embedded systems at Spectrum Signal Processing. He has held business unit leadership roles with responsibility for $100m P&L's. He was also a senior team member in a successful BCI/MCI joint venture start-up in New Zealand (Clear Communications), and has worked in Silicon Valley with SGI leading global market development in the telecommunications sector. He has provided consulting services to Microsoft in Asia and to a major US utility. He was an advisory board member of Domania.com and is currently an advisory board member of Bankonrealestate.com in Boston; and Meggabyte.com, Adhack.com and Advanced IO in Vancouver. Sean has studied economics, finance, marketing and organizational development and holds a B.A. from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario and an MA from Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia.
Paul Chernick, Investor & Advisor
Paul is a consultant in utility regulation and planning who has testified more than 200 times on utility issues in the United States and Canada. Paul was the utility analyst for the Massachusetts Attorney General in utility rate design, costing, load forecasting, and evaluation of power supply options. Paul has considered, among other things, integrated resource planning, the cost effectiveness of prospective new generation plants and transmission lines, retrospective review of generation-planning decisions, ratemaking for plants under construction, ratemaking for excess and/or uneconomical plant entering service, conservation program design, cost recovery for utility efficiency programs, valuation of environmental externalities from energy production and use, allocation of costs of service between rate classes and jurisdictions, design of retail and wholesale rates, and performance-based ratemaking and cost recovery in restructured gas and electric industries. Paul is a principal at Resource Insight and has a BS in Civil Engineering and a MS in Technology & Public Policy, both from MIT.
Kropper, Howe and Bodvar comprise the executive team. Rosenbloom and Chernick serve in a non-executive capacity.