Board Of Directors
Paul Cusenza
Mr. Cusenza is CEO of Nodal Exchange, LLC. He has twenty-five years of experience in building and managing businesses. He was a co-Founder and co-President of 23andMe, a personal genetics company, and the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Alliance Management at Perlegen Sciences. He was part of the Senior Management Team of Capital One Financial during a period of great growth in the 1990s, as the Managing Director of Value-Added Alliances and Vice President Marketing & Analysis. Prior to Capital One Financial, he was a Vice President and Partner at Mercer Management Consulting (now Oliver Wyman) for nearly a decade focusing on financial services. He also worked for IBM early in his career. Mr. Cusenza holds a Masters of Business Administration degree from the Harvard Business School and a B.S.E. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan.
Mark Maisto
Mr. Maisto is President Commodities and Retail Markets of NextEra Energy Resources, LLC, an FPL Group company and leading competitive energy supplier with a presence in 25 states and Canada. Mr. Maisto has played a significant role in developing the energy marketing and trading organization at FPL Energy (predecessor to NextEra Energy Resources) since joining the company in 2001. He also has been instrumental in developing new businesses to enhance NextEra Energy's earnings potential, including load following, transmission and natural gas trading operations. In addition to overseeing these businesses, Mr. Maisto leads NextEra Energy's retail business, Gexa, and the wholesale fiber optics business, FPL FiberNet. Mr. Maisto previously served as president of Edison Mission Marketing & Trading, a subsidiary of Edison Mission Energy. He also was chief executive officer of Citizens Power prior to it being acquired by Edison Mission Energy in September 2000. During his tenure at Citizens Power, that company was ranked among the top 10 power marketing and trading organizations and was an industry leader in structured trade transactions. Prior to joining Citizens Power, Mr. Maisto was an investment banker at Lehman Brothers, specializing in energy financing, and was a principal liaison with the Citizens Lehman Power joint venture. Earlier, he was a director of utility finance with General Electric Capital Corporation. Mr. Maisto holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Cornell University and a master's degree in business administration from New York University.
Benjamin Preston
Mr. Preston is Senior Managing Director of Macquarie Energy LLC. Macquarie Energy was formed following the merger of Macquarie Cook Energy and Macquarie Cook Power in February 2010. Macquarie Energy is an active participant in the Eastern (PJM, MISO, ISO-NE and NYISO), ERCOT, and Western (CAISO and WECC) electricity trading markets. Macquarie Energy also trades and markets US natural gas, and recently announced the acquisition of Constellation Energy Group's downstream natural gas business, also based in Houston. Mr. Preston first joined Macquarie Bank in 1995 in Sydney, Australia. Over the years he has worked in trading, origination and management capacities on four continents. Prior to taking up his current position, Mr. Preston was Head of Treasury Commodities Group for Europe, Middle East and Africa based in London, where he oversaw over 100 staff trading and marketing commodity derivatives.
Robert J.S. Roriston
Mr. Roriston is a Partner with Lindsay Goldberg where he has been since 2001. Previously, he worked at Bessemer Holdings from 1988 to 2001 and prior to that at KPMG Peat Marwick. Mr. Roriston is a Chartered Accountant, having graduated from the University of Witwatersrand with Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Accounting degrees. He earned his M.B.A. from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Roriston is also a Director of Pride Manufacturing Company LLC and Maine Beverage Company, LLC. He also serves as a Trustee at the Tilton School in Tilton, New Hampshire.
James P. Smist
Mr. Smist is President of Dean & Company. Prior to joining Dean & Company, Mr. Smist was a Vice President with Strategic Planning Associates (SPA) and then Mercer Management Consulting (which acquired SPA and is now known as Oliver Wyman). Mr. Smist has over 10 years of investing experience in equities, commodities, and private equity co-investments. He has extensive private equity due diligence experience in a wide range of industries including energy, environmental, manufacturing, industrial, consumer products, financial services, and telecommunications. Mr. Smist also has over 20 years consulting experience in helping clients achieve bottom line results. He has assisted clients with corporate and business unit strategy, organization design, business process reengineering, competitive strategy, acquisitions and divestitures, marketing strategy and execution, benchmarking, pricing and investment strategy. He has worked with clients globally across a wide range of industries. Mr. Smist received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering, summa cum laude, from SUNY at Buffalo and his MBA from Harvard Business School. Prior to receiving his MBA, he was a Technical Brand Manager at Procter and Gamble.
Andrew J. Stevens
Dr. Stevens is a Managing Director and co-founder of DC Energy. He helped launch the power trading activities at DC Energy and is responsible for DC Energy's involvement with regulatory proceedings and ISO/RTO market affairs. Prior to DC Energy, Dr. Stevens worked as a consultant to large corporations in the telecommunications and energy industries on a range of business strategy and management issues. His previous consulting experience in the energy business is extensive, with casework involving performance improvement, mergers, acquisitions, deal valuation, energy price forecasting, transaction strategy, transmission analysis and commodity risk hedging. Dr. Stevens received a Ph.D. degree in Chemical Physics from Harvard University and a B.S. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology, where he received the Caltech Prize for academic excellence. Dr. Stevens was awarded graduate fellowships from both the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research (Department of Defense).
Dean L. Wilde II
Mr. Wilde is a co-founder, CEO, and Managing Director of DC Energy, an investment firm with a focus in energy. Since its founding in 2002, DC Energy has become one of the leading financial participants in energy, and consistently ranks among the top five in the competitive marketplace. Mr. Wilde has served on the faculty of MIT, where he taught courses in economics and strategy at the Sloan School of Management. He is co-author with Professor Arnoldo Hax of "The Delta Project, discovering new sources of profitability in a networked economy." Mr. Wilde started his career as a management consultant with Strategic Planning Associates where he became an Executive Vice President and served on the Policy Committee. This firm was later sold to Marsh and McLennan who has grown it into what is now Oliver Wyman Consulting. He continued to serve during a transition period as a member of the Board of Directors and headed the firm's worldwide Communications and Computing practice. Mr. Wilde holds a BS in physics from Iowa State University, and an MS in Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management.