NESCO, Needham Electric Supply Corp. (Canton, Mass.): D. Gregory Wilson has been appointed president. In this new role, Wilson will be responsible for managing the day-to-day business initiatives of the company and for its continued profitable growth. Wilson previously served as vice president and general manager for the C&I business. Wilson succeeds Joe Cincotta, who will now serve exclusively as NESCO chief executive officer. Prior to joining NESCO, Greg served in various management and executive positions with several other electrical distributors.
Border States (Fargo, N.D.): Gerald “Poke” Buck has been appointed vice president–Northwest region. Buck has been with Border States since May 2003. He has served as a supply chain services specialist, business development specialist, and Northwest region manager. He has general management responsibilities for 11 branch locations in North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana, and has been a member of the Executive Council since November 2005.
Capital Lighting & Supply (Alexandria, Va.) Ken Avery has joined the company as vice president of vendor relations. Avery has 27 years experience in electrical distribution in the Baltimore/Washington market. His responsibilities will include purchasing, inventory management, product and vendor selections and relations.
Ideal Industries Inc. (Sycamore, Ill.) Westley W. Howard has been appointed product manager for its hand tool line. With more than a decade of experience working for such companies as Lutron, Western Forge and Supra Products, Howard brings excellent marketing, technology and channel management leadership to Ideal. He will report to Business Unit Manager Bruce Hartranft. In his new position, Howard is responsible for coordinating the accelerated sales efforts for Ideal hand tools in the North American marketplace. Griffin will focus on managing the sales effort as well as providing direction and training on new products. He will additionally direct new promotional methods to target opportunities for maximizing brand recognition and market penetration. Howard joins Ideal from Lutron Electronics, where he served as retail marketing leader for the past two years. In this role, he was an integral part of developing and implementing multi-channel strategies to launch Lutron lighting control systems. Prior to Lutron, he gained product management experience at Western Forge as a national accounts/product development manager, and at Supra Products where he managed retail accounts such as Home Depot, Lowe’s, Ace and Menards.
Summit Electric Supply (Albuquerque): Daniel Ferrari has been named the company’s Houston commercial sales manager. Ferrari will focus on expanding Summit’s commercial construction client base in the Houston market and elsewhere on the Gulf Coast. Ferrari began his career with Siemens in Houston in 1979. He later worked as a salesman and construction manager and branch manager for an independent electrical distributor. In 2003, he accepted a position with Eaton Cutler-Hammer, where he soon became that company’s Houston construction manager. In this capacity, he hired and trained the sales construction team both in the commercial and residential markets.
Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson (Columbus, Ohio): Charles (Chuck) Spears has been named president of Liebert North America. Spears, who reports to Bob Bauer, Emerson group vice president and Liebert Worldwide president, has relocated from Belgium, where he managed an Emerson business. Spears spent the past four years as president of Emerson Climate Technologies - Europe. Prior to that post, he spent nearly 25 years with Emerson’s Copeland Corp., culminating with his promotion in 1999 to president of Copeland - Asia, where he oversaw the opening of a research and development center and manufacturing plant in China.
W2 Architectural Lighting, a division of WAC Lighting (Garden City, N.Y.): Anna Schast has been appointed Eastern territory sales manager. In her new position, Schast will work closely with W2 sales agencies to create specification lighting solutions for architects, designers, engineers and specifiers in more than 15 states throughout the northeast, from Ohio to Maine, and Pennsylvania to South Carolina. Prior to joining W2, she worked as a specification sales representative for Continental Lighting Systems, and a territory specification manager for Modular International Inc., in-charge of specification sales for the metro New York City market.