Management Team
Adrian Tuck, Chief Executive Officer
Adrian has more than 20 years of executive management and leadership experience in a variety of high-tech fields. As CEO, he is responsible for driving Tendril’s strategic direction and has built a solid customer base, a world-class internal team and a strong set of partnerships and investors for Tendril. Prior to joining Tendril, Adrian served as both interim CEO and executive vice president of Ember Corporation, a leading semiconductor provider to the smart grid, where he guided the company’s market strategy through its critical early-growth stage. As an early pioneer of the “Internet of things” market, Adrian was instrumental in the development of the ZigBee standard and served as the vice-chair of the ZigBee Alliance for a number of years.
Recognizing the role that policy will play in shaping the smart grid and home energy management sectors early on, Adrian has worked tirelessly to secure an active voice within policy-making at public utility commissions and on Capitol Hill. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee as well as the Federal Communications Commission on such topics as technology and the Internet, as well as energy and the environment.
Adrian has received numerous industry accolades, including: the 2011 GridWeek Award for Outstanding Leadership in Advancing the Smart Grid; inclusion on The Networked Grid 100: Movers and Shakers of the Smart Grid; being named Entrepreneur of the Year, alongside Tendril co-founder and CIO Tim Enwall, at the ESPRIT Entrepreneur 2011 Awards; and receiving the 2011 Colorado Cleantech Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the Colorado Cleantech Industry Association.
Adrian sits on the board of the GridWise Alliance, as well as the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder. Adrian received his education at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the British Army’s prestigious officer training academy.
Chris Black, Chief Operating Officer
Chris has an abiding passion for technology, operational improvement and building smart, highly productive teams within a fun and collaborative culture. For the last 17 years, he has applied this passion to creating and growing numerous early- to mid-stage software companies. With a goal of leveraging his expertise to help solve some of the world’s key challenges, he joined Tendril in 2011.
Chris believes strongly in Tendril’s ability to deliver the solutions that homeowners everywhere need to make a tangible difference in the way they use energy and to create positive and environmentally sustainable change for themselves and their communities. At Tendril, Chris applies his business acumen, deep technology knowledge, performance management and leadership to his role as chief operating officer, driving a highly motivated team of men and women who are working together to reduce the amount of energy the world consumes.
Prior to joining Tendril, Chris was the senior vice president of technology for Local Matters, a Denver-based company that provides Internet, voice and wireless technology solutions that empower local media publishers and service providers to maximize their success in the local search market.
During his career, Chris has also led technology and operations groups in B2B, B2C and B2B2C segments for companies such as EffectiveUI, Requisite Technology, StorageTek, Paradigm Exchange, Sabre Decision Technologies and Cybertek. He has a B.S. in computer science from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
Amy Marmolejo, Chief Financial Officer
As Tendril’s chief financial executive, Amy is responsible for the firm’s accounting, finance, legal and general administrative functions. With a strong background in corporate accounting and financial reporting for a wide variety of domestic and international corporations, Amy believes that finance doesn’t change the world; implementing ideas does.
This is why she is excited to be a part of the Tendril team and to be using her passion for finance to help a company whose aim is to change the way we think about and use energy.
Amy began her career in public accounting and spent almost seven years serving clients in many different industries – public and private, services, healthcare and universities. After leaving public accounting, Amy joined TeleTech Holdings, Inc., a large publicly traded services company in Englewood, Colorado. She worked on their Sarbanes-Oxley implementation before moving into corporate accounting as assistant controller. Amy then joined Array Biopharma Inc., a Boulder-based public biotech company, as controller until joining Tendril. She has a CPA license and a B.S. in accounting from California Lutheran University.
Rick Walden, Senior Vice President, Utility Business Unit
Rick Walden holds overall responsibility for Tendril’s Utilities Business Group and is responsible for all aspects of sales and delivery of Tendril solutions to investor-owned and public power utilities in North America.
Rick is inspired and motivated by his ability to apply his 25 years of electric and gas utility leadership experience to the solutions that Tendril brings to the industry’s energy management challenges. He has worked for two leading distribution utilities and is well known for his expertise with issues surrounding electric and gas metering. Rick has directed the implementation and operation of two full-scale automated meter-reading (AMR) projects and numerous smart grid/advanced-metering initiatives. He has also held a variety of leadership positions in natural gas engineering and operations.
Rick began his sales career in 2010 selling commercial and industrial load management solutions to investor-owned utilities, cooperatives and municipalities throughout North America for a major retail energy provider. He holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Maryland, an MBA from Loyola College and has completed the executive program at University of Michigan Business School.
Brent Hodges, Senior Vice President, Retail Business Unit
With a long history in the retail energy business, Brent is responsible for successful sales and delivery of the solutions Tendril develops for retail energy service providers as well for retail product and service providers. Prior to taking on this role, Brent was general manager of the firm’s Australian and Asia-Pacific operations, responsible for driving the company’s sales, marketing, business development and overall strategic direction. In this role, he worked for many years to plan, implement and deliver successful customer acquisition and retention solutions for Origin, one of Tendril’s key retail energy clients.
Brent is now enthusiastically applying his experience with this – one of the industry’s most advanced and successful energy consumer engagement projects – to the needs of the firm’s broader client base. He also provides Tendril’s retail customers with the benefit of his many years with Reliant Energy, where he was director of strategy and development before joining Tendril.
In 2010, he was named as one of Greentech Media’s 100 Movers and Shakers of the Smart Grid, and he currently serves on the Governing Board of the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP). He previously served on the Board of Directors for the North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB) and the ZigBee Alliance, a global ecosystem of organizations creating wireless solutions for use in energy management, residential, commercial and consumer applications.
Brent holds a B.S. in industrial engineering from Texas A&M University, an M.S. in industrial engineering from Purdue University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Jamey Miller,
Vice President, Professional Services
Jamey is driven by a desire to achieve operational excellence, and as Tendril’s vice president of Professional Services, he applies his more than 15 years of operations and supply chain management experience to the planning and execution of the services and solutions delivered to the firm’s customer base. This, combined with his strong background in cross-functional team building, business process mapping and program management, ensures that Tendril customers receive the on-time, on-budget project delivery that they expect.
Before joining Tendril, Jamey held executive roles in global supply chain and operations for such organizations as Copan Systems, Sun Microsystems and McDATA Corporation. He has also been responsible for process engineering, supply chain management and manufacturing management for Agilent Technologies and Tektronix.
He is a certified ScrumMaster, Project Management Professional (PMP) and Certified Supply Chain Professional (CSCP). In addition, he is Certified in Production and Inventory Management (CPIM) as well as a Certified Purchasing Manager (CPM).
Jamey holds a B.S. in business administration from Colorado State University, an MBA from the University of Portland and an M.S. in Marketing from the University of Colorado.
Ashish Agarwal,
Director, Engineering
Ashish brings more than 14 years of experience to his role as director of Tendril’s Engineering team. He thrives on working closely with Tendril’s highly technical team on solving complicated problems using cutting edge technologies in a very agile environment. He feels doubly rewarded by the work his team is doing to make the planet healthier for his children and future generations.
With strong experience in providing architectural and technical direction, design and development leadership, Ashish’s specialities include Web Services, Java/J2EE stack, product conceptualization and development, B2B & B2C integration, mobile apps, service oriented architectures and distributed cloud-based systems.
Before joining Tendril, he led a team at Centurylink developing an application framework which today serves a wide array of telecommunication products. He was also instrumental in developing a suite of converged products working closely with business partners from Microsoft, DirecTV and Verizon, among others.
Ashish has a Bachelor of Technology degree in computer science from the Institute of Engineering and Technology and a Masters in management studies and computer science from the Indian Institute of Science.