{"id":13353,"date":"2025-03-18T09:34:31","date_gmt":"2025-03-18T09:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/transformer-technology.com\/article-hub\/a-look-ahead-insights-from-leaders-on-2025-beyond\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T14:49:45","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T14:49:45","slug":"a-look-ahead-insights-from-leaders-on-2025-beyond","status":"publish","type":"article-hub","link":"https:\/\/transformer-technology.com\/article-hub\/a-look-ahead-insights-from-leaders-on-2025-beyond\/","title":{"rendered":"CEO FORUM: A Look Ahead: Insights from Leaders on 2025 & Beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alan Ross<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Welcome to Part 1 of the CEO Forum. Part 2 will be presented in our May issue. You can view the entire CEO Forum now by going to www.powersystems.technology\/ceoforum.<\/a> There are more changes in technology today within the power industry, arguably than ever before. We are going to address many of these changes, the forces behind them and what that means to the future, with three dynamic company leaders who are charting the course for their companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our guests for our CEO forum are Jon Bucciarelli, President of SD Myers, Angelo Rizzo, Founder and CEO of Systems With Intelligence, and Martin Robinson, Founder and CEO of IRISS.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, let\u2019s get a little background from our panelists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon, share your personal background and how you got to where you are from an industry’s perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon Bucciarelli<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Thanks for having me, Alan. Personally, I’ve been married for 28 years. I have two college-age kids, so I’m enjoying a bit of empty nesting for the first time. Professionally, it took me 25 years to get into the industry. Most people spent 25 years in it. It took me 25 years to get into this power industry. My journey along the way to SD Myers prepared me for this role and the privilege that I have now of building on the legacy of 60 years at SD Myers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I spent the first 11 years of my career at General Motors, engineering, product launch, launch manager. I spent nine years as an educator and coach at Christian high school where I started a school of engineering and taught juniors and seniors in high school what it was like to become an engineer and what the occupation was going to be like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I left that to join a startup, a bioplastic company where we turned algae into plastic.That company is still going today and participating in the renewal of water and carbon dioxide footprint minimization. I managed an aquaculture fish farm in Jamaica for a couple of years where we were harvesting algae.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I came to SD Myers in 2018 and then was named President in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alan <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Angelo, tell us more about your background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Angelo Rizzo<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve been very fortunate to have been in the electric power industry. I first started right out of college at a small entrepreneurial company called Multilin, which is still running as part of GE Vernova. I spent the beginning of my career with Multilin doing protection and control products for substations. In 2001, we took a leap of faith and decided to leave GE to start our own company making Ethernet switches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As young engineers, we really didn’t know much about what a startup meant, but we did see the potential for a transition to Ethernet communications being used to digitize substations, and we founded a company called RuggedCom. Ethernet in substations soon took off and RuggedCom became very successful and was later sold to Siemens. After that we saw another potential to provide visualization for substations and that’s how Systems With Intelligence got started. It was founded in 2010. I was one of the founders, and now I am the President and CEO. It has been about 15 years, and I am still having a lot of fun doing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alan <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you, Angelo. Martin, a little bit of your background please?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martin Robinson<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am an ex-British Army for 17 years, working as combat fleet engineer. I went to work in R&D in automotive, using imaging as a tool to evaluate motors. I fell in love with the technology and began using that in the service lines and invented and patented a new material for inspection windows that we now use for electric cabinets today, globally. That is what IRISS is known for, but we do so much for as I fell in love with reliability, a common-sense approach. I fell in love with the technologies used for condition-based monitoring, and it has become my passion. It isn\u2019t work if you always do what you love, right? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alan <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exactly, Martin. I think what all three of you have in common as I have gotten to know you is that each of your companies has got a pretty long history serving this industry. The power industry is undergoing more change now than in the previous half century. What are your thoughts on the current state of where we are in industry? Angelo let’s start with you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Angelo <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think right now the industry is going through the biggest change it has ever gone through in several ways; the adoption of technology from other industries is being well received within the utilities as it starts to look at different ways of doing things from the old traditional ways, and this is needed to meet the demand that is being put on the grid going through this electrification journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Utilities must really start thinking of new ways of doing things and really keeping up with demand. Then there are also the constraints of having supply challenges. They need to keep assets they have running longer. The industry is going through a significant amount of change and really starting to look at new initiatives to help with keeping the grid reliable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alan <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Excellent, Angelo. Thank you. Jon, your thoughts?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I mentioned earlier, SD Myers has been around for 60 years, and our founder, Stan Myers, was the pioneer in oil processing and reliability of a transformer. Some of the things that we are seeing at our organization is when NFPA 70B moved from a recommendation to a standard, that was very affirming for us. It was what we taught and educated on for many years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We tend to focus on a group that we call the industrials or the underserved. Those folks tend to have challenges such as long lead times for supply, unreliable power, and massive power consumption which greatly affects them. I recently heard at one of power shows or forums, that power consumption is going to double by 2035. That puts an even greater emphasis on those underserved customers to have reliable power and to do it safely. We see that change coming or happening at a faster rate than it ever has. The focus on keeping your equipment running is becoming more and more important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alan <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Excellent, thank you, Jon. Martin, what do you see going on in the industry?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martin <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chickens have come home to roost, which means we have underserved our industry for years. We have not trained engineers well and we have gotten stuck in legacy practices. We were not innovating. Then COVID hits and it hit everybody massively. Suddenly, it was a big wake-up call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a chat with Jack Nicholas, an industry expert in reliability, years ago. Jack is a wellknown figure, one of the true gurus and influencers that we have in our industry. He said, \u201c50 years ago, when the concept of reliability began, I was sitting there thinking, yes, they have finally gotten here. I am sitting here 50 years later, saying \u2018they still haven\u2019t gotten it\u2019, because no one was doing anything about it.\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The swing to better practices for reliability has taken far too long. I see now, post-COVID, people have realized just how vulnerable before they were to external resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’ve seen a massive turnaround on what we call resilience. We are looking at building more resilient systems. They are using technology to underpin the skills shortage. In North America, the \u201csilver tsunami\u201d with 10,000 to 12,000 engineers leaving the workforce every day in retirement means we are losing this massive amount of experience. We are seeing an uptick in the use of IoT or machine learning or Gen AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are also seeing an increased requirement for sustainability, for carbon footprint reduction. All these things are pushing us forward. We have seen in IRISS now, growth in business within the electrical services industry, specifically for these requirements where they’re trying to make their systems resilient, trying to make them smarter, and trying to overcome or meet the requirements, stringent requirements, for carbon footprint reduction that are being placed on the industry. It is a wave that we are riding on, and you can give it multiple labels, but it is all moving towards making us better and more accountable every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In North America, the \u201csilver tsunami\u201d with 10,000 to 12,000 engineers leaving the workforce every day in retirement means we are losing this massive amount of experience. We are seeing an uptick in the use of IoT or machine learning or Gen AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n