Leadership

Rick Cwiakala is an outcome-driven operations leader with over 25 years of experience building and transforming businesses in the battery energy storage and data center industries.

As Vice President of Operations and co-founder at American Energy Storage Innovations (AESI), he launched a 7 MWh energy storage product and scaled supply chain and production capacity to 4 GWh annually.

Previously, as Vice President of Global Projects & Services at NEC Energy Solutions, Rick established program management and service organizations that constructed, commissioned, and provided O&M services to more than 100 utility-scale battery energy storage projects worldwide.

He also led operations and quality for American Power Conversion’s data center cooling products, where he integrated acquisitions and implemented Lean transformations to support sustained double-digit growth.

Rick holds both an M.Eng. and a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University at Buffalo. He is PMP certified and Six Sigma Black Belt trained.