Chesapeake Strategic Partners, LLC

Sample Customer and Company Experience

RAFAEL COVEN

 

President/Managing Partner


GreenSpark combines his passion for sustainability and clean technologies, with providing turnkey solutions that enable customers to realize major financial savings while improving their environmental performance.

 

He is committed building a company that helps customers realize attractive, measurable economic returns through reducing energy/water/materials consumption, emissions, wastes, and operating costs as well as from renewable energy. The goal is to deliver these results on the broadest scale possible.

 

He has 20+ years of experience with clean technology businesses as a manager, entrepreneur, institutional investor, and management consultant. He has worked with governments, investors, and firms, from startups to the Fortune 500, in strategy, market research, business development, etc.  He has helped businesses to identify, evaluate, create and successfully enter new markets and businesses worldwide. 

 

Entrepreneurial Experience:

Prior to founding GreenSpark and running his own consultancy, he co-founded Ecos Technologies, a developer of enterprise software for environmental information management. As Ecos' VP Marketing, he led efforts to assess customer needs and then develop products and strategy to reflect them.


Consulting Experience:

Rafael has led engagements in new market and industry studies, due diligence, strategy, business development, market entry, competitor intelligence, investor and strategic partner searches, technology transfer and applications research, and best practices. Clients have included institutional, VC, and private equity investors, large and small firms, governments, and NGOs. In addition to Chesapeake Strategic Partners, he consulted for Deloitte, ITCA, and internally at Whirlpool.  As a client engagement leader for ITCA, he led consulting teams to advise and evaluate Polish state-owned enterprises on behalf of Poland's Finance Ministry in 1991. In particular, he was instrumental in the turnaround of a foundering Polish lighting-equipment company.


Hands-on Industry Experience: 


He has led projects across Europe, Latin American and Australasia for companies such as Whirlpool, Philips Lighting, and Abengoa in marketing, finance, strategy, and operations and in working with energy-efficient and renewable-energy generation products. 


Finance Experience:

He has made investments from $2MM to over $100MM and managed over $700MM in equity portfolios. His investment focus was environmental, energy technology companies.

 

Education and Training:

He has an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and a BA in Economic Development from The University of Michigan. He speaks Spanish, Italian and can fake a few others. 

 
He is a member of the U.S. Green Building Council, the Cleantech Network, Chesapeake Sustainability Alliance, and the advisory board of NUvention Clean Energy a joint venture between Northwestern University and the U.S. DOE's Argonne National Laboratory. 
THOMAS WIESER, P.E.

 

Regional Manager

 

Based in Chicago, Tom has over 10 years of experience in the energy and sustainability fields as a manager, entrepreneur, and management consultant. 

Before GreenSpark, Tom also spent another 12 years as a project manager and management consultant and worked with start-ups, Fortune 500 companies, and venture capital firms to manage the implementation of enterprise-wide information systems for supply chain solutions, organization transformation; inter-departmental decision making & scheduling; process & procedure improvement (ISO 9000, Lean & Six Sigma); setting up and running Project Management Offices (PMO). 

At Inland Steel (now ArcelorMittal), Tom was an engineering project manager in Inland’s energy & environment group.  There he was responsible for planning and implementation of capital projects in HVAC, co-generation, energy procurement, and ground-source heat exchangers for several million square feet of production, R&D, and office space at the world’s largest single-site steel plant.

In addition, Tom works with several non-profits, and public sector sustainability-related projects. and is an active in the Chicago Sustainable Business Alliance.

Education & Training:

Tom has a Master's of Engineering Management and an MBA from Northwestern's McCormick and Kellogg Schools respectively.  He has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan State University and did graduate work in energy engineering/management at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT).

He is a member American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), U.S. Green Building Council, Project Management Institute (PMI) and is working to obtain both Professional Project Manager (PMP) and USGBC LEED certification. 

 
KASHIF CHAUDHRY, P.E. 
 
Director

Kashif has over 15 years of strategy and management consulting experience in addition to more than five years of engineering industry experience. He has worked extensively with clients in the chemical and life sciences industries, both in North America and Europe. He has consulted on a variety of issues from strategy formulation, product commercialization, market segmentation to organizational effectiveness. Previously, Kashif was a Vice-President in Gemini Consulting's Life Sciences practice and a global account executive for two of its global life sciences clients. His clients have included major pharmaceutical, chemical, and medical device companies, among others.  Prior to getting his MBA, Kashif was a lead design engineer for Hughes Satellite. 

Education: 

Kashif holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from The Johns Hopkins University, a MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, and an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.
 
 
PAUL MISTOR, P.E.
 
Project Manager

Paul has over over 20 years of global industry and management consulting experience.  He has worked extensively with clients in the supply chain optimization and global sourcing in North & Central America, Europe and Asia. He has consulted and led implemenation projects in a variety of areas including strategy, value chain optimization, global sourcing, and information technology. Previously, he was a Principal Consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers focused on enterprise software implementation and process improvement.
 
Before earning his MBA, Paul was a lead electrical engineer with Westinghouse Electric's Avionics Division (now Lockheed Martin).

Education:

Paul earned an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and a BS in electrical engineering from The University of Michigan where he was a standout athlete.