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Executive Team

Redwood Systems' executive team has extensive experience across high-performance networking, lighting systems, energy efficiency, energy management and green building solutions.

Dave Leonard
CEO

Dave founded Redwood Systems with the driving belief that LED lighting presented entirely new opportunities to create energy-optimized commercial lighting and smart building solutions. Prior to forming Redwood, Dave was VP and GM of Cisco System’s Desktop Switching Business Unit (DSBU), Cisco’s largest and most profitable business unit with revenues reaching $6 billion. Along with LAN access, DSBU also provides switching solutions for Metro Ethernet, Industrial Ethernet, and Data Center Blade Servers. During his career at Cisco, Dave held several executive management positions including: VP and GMP of the Wireless Networking Business Unit (WNBU) and VP of Engineering for WNBU

Dave joined Cisco through the acquisition of Grand Junction Networks in 1995. At Grand Junction, Dave served as an engineering leader charged with developing Grand Junction’s first 100 mbs Ethernet switch. Prior to Grand Junction, Dave held leadership positions at Sun Microsystems, Amdahl Corporation, Cray Research and Hewlett-Packard.

In addition to his executive role at Redwood Systems, Dave served as Executive Chairman of the Board for enterprise mobility provider Agito Networks through its acquisition by Shoretel in 2010.  Dave earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Colorado.

Mark Covaro
CTO

Mark is a co-founder of Redwood Systems and has over 20 years of experience as a system architect and designer. For the last 12 years, he has been working on electrical, mechanical, and thermal architecture for networking systems. His specialty has been in analog design, including high speed signaling physics and power system design. Mark has worked at Cray Research, Amdahl, and Sun Microsystems as a system designer and architect.

Mark has worked on three engineering teams (Cray Research, AMD, and Cisco Systems) which have each shipped over a billion dollars of product. Mr. Covaro earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Texas A & M University.

Sam Klepper
CMO and EVP, Building Solutions

Sam is the executive responsible for product strategy, marketing and demand generation for the company’s building-performance solutions.  He has over 20 years of experience creating and marketing game-changing products in high-tech and clean-tech. 

Previously, Sam was with eMeter, an innovative leader in smart grid software, where he introduced the Energy Engage demand response web service and served as General Manager, interim CEO and CMO. Sam was a General Manager for three of Microsoft’s online service businesses. At Intuit, prior to its IPO, Sam conceived of and brought to market the leading small business accounting package, QuickBooks. He also held various marketing and management positions at WebTV Networks and Bain & Company. Sam has a B.A. in History and Science magna cum laude from Harvard University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Tom Carlson
Chief Financial Officer

Tom has successfully guided technology companies to significant revenue growth with more than 20 years of experience in financial operations and has taken multiple private companies through successful acquisitions and IPO. Previously, he was the vice president of finance and CFO at Power Assure, a data center energy management company. Tom served as vice president of finance and operations and CFO at a variety of hardware and software companies such as Optichron, Caspian Networks, Sanera Systems and Silicon Gaming.  Tom earned his BS degree in finance and accounting from the University of Cincinnati and his MBA from Xavier University.

Kirk Roller
Executive VP Sales and Business Development

Kirk is an energy industry and networking sales veteran having held senior management positions with solar development and manufacturing companies SunEdison Corporation, Solyndra and Carlisle Energy Services.  Kirk led Worldwide Sales and then became President and COO at Emulex Corporation, a high speed storage provider to companies like EMC, IBM, and HP.  Prior to Emulex, he was Director and General Manager of Compaq’s Computer Networking Division in Austin.   Kirk has a BBA degree from The University of Texas at Austin. 

Jim Sekinger
SVP Sales and Business Development

Jim has 25 years lighting, controls, and energy industry experience in business development, marketing, and sales. Jim spent 15 years in a variety of senior management roles with Philips Lighting, the last of which as Managing Director for its lighting controls business. Most recently he was VP of Business Development and Product Management at Adura Technologies, an innovator in wireless mesh-networking controls, where he led their product management, business and channel development initiatives.  Jim has a BSBA degree from The Ohio State University and an Executive MBA from Pepperdine University.

Bruce Pelton
SVP, Lighting Technology

Bruce brings more than 35 years of experience to his role as SVP of technology at Redwood Systems. Previously, he was chief technology officer at Tyco Electronics Lighting, where he helped establish a new business unit that developed the first completely warranted end-to-end solid-state lighting (SSL) system. He was associate director of the California Lighting Technology Center at the UC Davis, where he oversaw the engineering function, directed lighting research, and worked with regulators, utilities and industry on standards development.  

Bruce holds 16 issued US and Canadian patents in the field of illumination and has advised companies such as Lumatech, Lumenyte, Ushio, Westinghouse, Access, OptiLED and Samsung. His industry credentials include serving as a senior member of the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE), the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). 

Stewart Findlater
VP of Engineering

Stewart has 20 years of experience in a variety of engineering disciplines. Before joining Redwood Systems, he worked for Cisco Systems as the Director of Engineering for the Desktop Switching Business Unit (DSBU) were he brought many industry leading networking products to market. Stewart has worked at Grand Junction Networks as an ASIC and system design engineer, and Interlink Electronics as a product design engineer. Stewart is author or co‑author for 12 U.S. patents, and holds a BS Degree from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

Stacey Leuzze
Senior Director, Customer Advocacy
Stacey has 20 years of experience in the high tech industry in a variety of engineering, operations, and supply chain disciplines. Prior to joining Redwood Systems, Stacey acted as the Senior Operations Manager for Cisco Systems' Desktop Switching Business Unit.  Stacey has also acted as a Director of HW and SW teams at Hewlett Packard's Network Server Division.  She has extensive experience working directly with customers on co-developed custom mobility solutions. Stacey holds a BSEE degree and an MS in Computer Engineering from Santa Clara University.