MultiSpeak Initiative Advisory Board Members
The nine-member MultiSpeak Advisory Board taps the expertise of software providers and users from utilities to provide advice on the future direction of MultiSpeak and the software integration needs of utilities.
“The Advisory Board focuses on making MultiSpeak a better product for utilities, making sure that NRECA and the vendors keep the co-op perspective in mind,” says Robert Saint, principal engineer for research & technical services and NRECA’s MultiSpeak program manager.
The MultiSpeak Advisory Board includes four utility members, four vendor members, and one NRECA representative. Each is elected for a one-year term at the annual MultiSpeak User’s Group meeting at TechAdvantage. The following members were elected to the Advisory Board in February 2008:
Utility Members:
Jonna Buck
Angela Hare
Scott Lee [slee@coop.caec.com], Manager of Information Systems at Central Alabama Electric Cooperative in Prattville, has specialized in taking organizations with little information systems infrastructure and creating useful systems that matched or improved the management processes. During the eight years he has worked at CAEC, the cooperative has integrated the telephone and data systems for all five offices over a four-county area and installed field technology solutions to provide information to all corporate departments to help CAEC achieve its strategic goals. At the present, CAEC is installing AMR meters, load management devices and microwave towers for substation communication to assist CAEC members with monitoring and controlling their electrical use.
In addition to his work at CAEC, Scott has been manager of information systems for Montgomery-based industries Giles Enterprises, which specializes in industrial cooking equipment; the Alabama Hospital Association; and Blount International, which has construction projects around the world. A native of Montgomery, Scott earned a BA with a major in Management Information Systems from Auburn University Montgomery.
His wife Leisa is a curriculum specialist and elementary teacher and they have three children. Scott is active in the children’s school activities and athletics, community civic projects, and church leadership.
Greg Wolven [gawpe@winenergyremc.com], director of engineering for WIN Energy REMC, Vincennes, Ind., is a licensed professional engineer in Indiana and Virginia with more than 27 years of experience working for rural electric cooperatives. He is in charge of staking, mapping, system planning, AMR, IT and telecommunications. Greg graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1981 with a degree in electrical engineering. He was elected at the Board’s first election, held at the second MultiSpeak User’s Group meeting in 2003.
Greg is a member of IEEE, the National Society of Professional Engineers, and NRECA’s Software Integration Initiative task force. WIN Energy REMC was one of the first two co-ops to adopt a MultiSpeak interface and was awarded the MultiSpeak First Adopter Award in 2001 for integrating CIS and staking.
In his spare time, Greg is a third degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and an assistant instructor of martial arts at the YMCA.
Vendor Members:
Luis Malave [luis@milsoft.com], reelected to the Board, is executive vice president for Milsoft Utility Solutions, Inc., Abilene, Texas. He has worked for Milsoft since 1993 and has contributed to the MultiSpeak Initiative since Version 1. He has been a Board member since the first election in 2003. Luis is a retired Air Force Veteran and holds a B.S. degree in computer science and a minor in mathematics from the State University of New York at Plattsburgh.
Milsoft provides expertise to the MultiSpeak initiative in the areas of electrical engineering analysis, interactive voice response, call handling, outage analysis, outage detection, and circuit modeling. Luis brought object-oriented design to the MultiSpeak Version 2 schema, which allowed a robust system in which objects could be inherited from base class objects. This design brought together engineering circuit modeling and geographical information system methods. Luis and his team of developers continue to contribute to the MultiSpeak initiative through the testing of real-time interfaces and support for new vendors joining the initiative.
Sean Solberg
David Aldrich currently serves as Vice President for Origin GeoSystems, Inc., a provider of ESRI based GIS solutions for utilities. Previously he served Kerrville Public Utility Board in Kerrville, Texas, as the Chief System Engineer for 13 years. He also worked in Distribution Engineering, Planning and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) at Texas Power & Light/TU Electric for l4 years. Mr. Aldrich is a Registered Professional Engineer in the State of Texas and earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University l979.
Stacey Nelson
NRECA Representative:
William “Ray” Gosney, Jr. [gosneyr@nhec.coop] is Executive VP for New Hampshire Electric Cooperative. He joined New Hampshire EC in 1992 after stints at Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative and the Virginia Electric & Power Company. Since that time he has held a number of senior leadership positions including Chief Operating Officer. He is currently Executive Vice-President of the Cooperative's Strategy and Governmental Relations Division responsible for strategic planning, government policy and relations, legislative and regulatory issues, and business relations.
He has been on the Board, has represented NRECA, and has served as Chairman since MultiSpeak was established in 2003.
Ray has a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Virginia Military Institute and has done post-graduate work in business administration at Plymouth State University. Ray is a graduate of the Northeast Public Power Association’s Utility Management Program and the National Rural Electric Cooperatives Association’s Management Program, has a certificate in Quality Leadership from Rivier College, and is a 2001 Associate of Leadership New Hampshire. He serves as Chair of the Information and Telecommunications Management Advisory Group of NRECA’s Cooperative Research Network.
Ray has been a leading advocate with NRECA's Cooperative Research Network and the National Information Solutions Cooperative over the past decade in the development of IT solutions that facilitate the sharing of business information across software platforms to reduce development costs and deployment expenses, and to improve operating efficiencies.