People on the move: Mayfield Renewables, First Solar, Meteomatics

Job moves in solar, storage, cleantech, utilities and energy transition finance.

August 21, 2024 pv magazine

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Mayfield Renewables announced that Jacob Betcher has been appointed as its new chief executive officer (CEO), effective immediately. Betcher is an accomplished engineering professional and proven business leader having been an engineering manager at Generac Power Systems and COO at Apricity.

First Solar announced that Brian Willis is the new manager, corporate communications & external relations. Will was previously director of communications at Pioneer Public Affairs and at Zero Emission Transportation Association.

Meteomatics, the weather intelligence and technology company , is expanding work with U.S. energy companies and investors with the appointments of Durjoy Mazumdar as North America’s head of sales and Chris Hyde as senior sales manager for North America. Mazumdar and Hyde will lead Meteomatics’ continued expansion into the U.S. energy market, as it equips companies and investors with hyperlocal weather intelligence to predict energy demand and consumption in real-time.

ThinkLabs AI, Inc., a startup focused on developing technology to help enhance electric grid planning and operations through a combination of intelligent automation and AI, announced the appointment of five new senior team members:

As the chief technology officer at Thinklabs AI, Neal Vali drives the company’s overall technology strategy and vision. Prior to Thinklabs AI, Neal was the Head of Data and ML Engineering at GE Vernova, where he played a pivotal role in redefining Grid Orchestration using cloud-native solutions.

Gang Zheng, director of research and development at ThinkLabs, worked as the director of autonomous grid orchestration and senior manager of WAMS at GE. There, he led a software development and delivery team across the U.S. and Canada, focusing on product development, project delivery, and user support. His team successfully delivered key projects such as real-time distribution system state estimation, distribution model validation, and an oscillation source location system for power grids.

Chaitanya Baone, head of product at ThinkLabs brings over 12 years of experience in power and energy management products across T&D grid planning and operations, microgrids, EV smart charging and energy storage optimization. Baone has a proven track record of driving growth through innovation and has held leadership roles in R&D, engineering and product management organizations across GE, Eaton, Rivian and Itron.

Surendranath (Suren) Vallabhajosyula is the head of machine learning & data engineering at ThinkLabs. In this role, he is responsible for defining and building the company’s machine learning platform, overseeing application design, architecture, security practices, and infrastructure for multi-cloud data and machine learning applications. Before joining ThinkLabs, Suren served as the senior director of architecture and data platforms at Toyota Financial Services (TFS). There, he spearheaded the development of a secure, scalable, multi-tenant global data platform to support various data and machine learning initiatives.

Before becoming the Head of Finance at ThinkLabs AI, Vimali Pathmanathan, CPA, CA worked for GE Vernova and Opus One Solutions (acquired by GE Vernova in 2022) for seven years. She held key roles as controller and director of finance, playing a pivotal role in financing and acquisition activities.

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