Venki Ramachandran

Founder and Vice President, Engineering and Operations

Venki has spent the last 15 years in the Smart Grid vertical, developing and implementing smart metering and grid solutions in the utilities industry. Before he joined Verdeeco, he was the Vice President of Systems Integration and managed the off shored development center for Trilliant Networks, a mesh based smart meter company in Redwood City, California.

Prior to that, Venki founded the first scalable meter data management (MDM) company, WACS (now known as Ecologic Analytics) which is now being used at utilities such as PG&E, Puget Sound & Energy and Austin Energy. Prior to that he was the Director of Meter Information Management Systems at Cellnet Data Services from 1995 to 2001.

Venki holds a Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bombay and a Masters of Science in Industrial Engineering from the University of Texas. He owns a patent titled "Method and system for validation, estimation and editing of daily meter read data", USPTO No: 7,557,729

Brian Crow, PE

Vice President, Sales and Business Development

Brian is an 18-year utility industry veteran whose entire career has been focused on finding solutions to the challenges utilities face across their enterprise. He started as a design engineer for Jackson EMC, a distribution utility in Georgia, where he piloted one of the early AMR products and the installation of a combustion natural gas turbine generator.

Prior to joining Verdeeco, Brian worked for the SAS National Utility Practice where he focused on providing utilities with analytic products such as load forecasting and energy trading risk measurement. He also worked at ESRI where he sold GIS and outage management systems.

Brian is a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of Georgia and received his BSAE degree from the University of Georgia.

Paige Besson

Vice President, Marketing and Product Management

Paige is a 15-year technology marketing veteran who has spent her entire career in the energy and utilities vertical. Before she joined Verdeeco, she was founder and president of Enermarc, an integrated marketing communications and strategy consultancy to the smart grid space.

Previously, Paige was Vice President of Corporate Communications for Site Controls, acquired by Siemens, and Director of Corporate Marketing and Communications for Cellnet Technologies, acquired by Landis+Gyr. Paige has also served on the marketing committee of the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) Smart Grid Society, as chair of the branding committee for Washington D.C.-based Women's Council on Energy and the Environment (WCEE), and is currently on the advisory board for The McDonnell Group.

Paige started her career with Schlumberger and has worked with a wide spectrum of technologies ranging from smart metering and distribution automation to demand response and energy storage. She holds a Bachelors of Arts in Technical Writing from Louisiana Tech University.

Fred Baumbach

Chief Financial Officer

Fred has spent more than 35 years in senior financial and operational roles in service and technology companies. His experience ranges from $1 billion companies to pre-revenue startups and he brings to Verdeeco his experience and commitment to the startup environment.

As a partner and Executive Committee member with TechCFO, Fred has worked with a wide variety of software companies, domestic and international, and is also the CFO for one of the largest professionally managed angel investing groups in the Southeast.

Prior to TechCFO, Fred served as the CFO or senior financial executive for early stage technology ventures Brickstream Corporation and Silverpop Systems. He also held senior financial positions at other technology and service companies (Cox Enterprises, Norrell Health Care, Lynk Systems) and was owner of a software company servicing homebuilders nationwide.

Fred started his career as a CPA with Ernst & Young, including three years of service with E&Y's national office accounting and auditing staff. Fred graduated with a BA in Accounting from the University of South Florida.