Rick Kornfeld
President and Chief Executive Officer
Rick has worked for some of the region’s most notable tech companies, including Linkabit, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments. Currently the President and CEO of Kitu Systems, Rick was most recently EVP & Chief Strategy Officer, NextWave Wireless and NextWave Broadband and previous to that served as President & CEO, Staccato Communications from 2004 to 2006.
Prior to taking the helm of Staccato, Rick was vice president and general manager of Texas Instruments’ Wireless Chipset Business Unit. He joined TI as part of the acquisition of Dot Wireless, where he was co-founder, chairman, and CEO. Prior to founding Dot Wireless, Rick was a founding member of NextWave Telecom, Inc., where he was the senior vice president and general manager of the Consumer Products division. Previously, Rick was vice president of engineering at Qualcomm, leading the development of the first commercial CDMA subscriber equipment. Prior to joining Qualcomm, Rick held technical positions at M/A-Com Linkabit.
Rick holds a B.S. from the University of California, San Diego where he was named the Alumni of the Year in 2001 and currently serves on the Council of Advisors of UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering.
Gordon Lum
Chief Technical Officer
Gordon holds a BSEE from MIT and a MSEE from UCSD. He spent his first five years, after obtaining his degrees, working in defense communications at Linkabit. Later, Gordon’s career was dedicated to the early stages of digital satellite TV communications. In the mid-90s, he founded and acted as Vice President of Engineering at Correlent Communications (FKA TurboNet) which developed the first certified DOCSIS cable modem, and he remained at the company for 15 years.
Following that, Gordon became the Vice President of Engineering at Kitu in 2011 and now serves as the CTO. As CTO, Gordon represents Kitu in various industry organizations and standards committees. Highlights of Gordon's industry contributions include:
- Vice-Chair of the IEEE 2030.5 Standard Workgroup
- Principal Editor of the Common Smart Inverter Profile (CSIP)
- Principal Editor of the SunSpec IEEE 2030.5 V2G-AC Profile
- Leader of the SunSpec IEEE 2030.5 Profiles Workgroup
- Member and participant in numerous IEEE, SAE, SunSpec, and Security Workgroups
Chris Leclercq
VP Engineering
Chris Leclercq is the VP of Engineering at Kitu Systems. Chris started her career performing embedded software development in the telecommunications industry, working for notable companies such as Motorola, IBM and Uniden. She spent 8 years at Texas Instruments in various roles from development to Program Management, where her responsibilities included management of software, integration, and verification teams worldwide.
Chris joined Kitu Systems in 2010. During her time with Kitu Systems she has been instrumental in architecting and developing the company's embedded and cloud products, and has been a contributor to the development of the IEEE 2030.5 Smart Energy Protocol standard.
Chris brings 30 years of experience to Kitu Systems. She holds a BA in Math and Computer Science from the University of Illinois and an MBA from San Diego State University.
.png)
Michael Hill
VP Operations and Enablement
Michael is the VP of Operations and Enablement at Kitu Systems. He manages all areas of operations including IT, DevOps, SRE, Field Service, QA and Cybersecurity.
Prior to joining Kitu, Michael was a technical lead at Zumtobel Lighting/Tridonic on Net4More, an IoT connected lighting solution. During his tenure, he owned all areas of DevOps and IT. After Net4More successfully launched, he lead the migration of Net4More's production team to Porto, Portugal.
He has a Bachelors of Science in Information Technology - Software Engineering and holds various industry certifications.
Rhonda Woerner
VP Finance and Administration
Rhonda is the Vice President of Finance and Administration at Kitu Systems. She manages all aspects of accounting, finance, and human resources and supports compliance, legal and other operational needs of the company.
Prior to joining Kitu Systems, Rhonda most recently served as Accounting Manager at Pocket Gems, a San Francisco based mobile game start up. In that role, she managed the day to day accounting as well as the company’s tax compliance and payroll activities. During her tenure at Pocket Gems, the company raised $155 million in funding and the company grew from 2 employees to over 200.
Rhonda holds a Bachelors of Accountancy from the University of San Diego and is a California licensed CPA.
.png)
Ross Malme
Senior Advisor
Ross is a Senior Advisor to Kitu Systems and President and CEO of Malme Energy Consulting, providing services to utilities and the energy technology community and specializing in consulting and raising growth capital for early to mid stage energy tech companies. Previously Ross was Senior Advisor at Bowen, Inc. a leading growth capital investment banking advisory firm where he co-managed the firm's Energy Technology practice and has led the Smart Grid practice for Skipping Stone, LLC, an energy consulting firm. He has served on the Advisory Board of DistribuTECH, the largest industry conference in the electric utility industry for over 15 years.
Ross was the inventor of the first utility wireless automatic meter reading system in the industry which became the industry standard for over 25 years and the founder of one of the first successful electricity demand response technology and service companies in North America.