In the December edition of the Uplight Squad Spotlight, I talked with Manny Ramos, a Director of Client Solutions based in our Boulder office.
What do you do for Uplight?
I work in our Client Solutions Squad. This means I get to work with our utility partners and help them determine which Uplight solutions can help them achieve their organizational goals. I then work with our Customer Success team to monitor ongoing performance to ensure our programs and products are performing as expected.
What do you find most exciting or rewarding about working for Uplight?
Coming in to work every day and being surrounded by hard working, intelligent, and friendly people really makes work fun and rewarding.
How does the work you do contribute towards towards creating a more sustainable future and better customer energy experiences?
Being an engineer, I love the ability to directly correlate the work we do to quantifiable and measurable results. These results can range from kWh/therms saved, an increase in customer satisfaction, or an increase in enrollment to other utility programs. I recently learned that last year we sold enough smart thermostats over a 2 week period to eliminate the need for a 50 MW peaking power plant. This is just one of the many things we do at Uplight year round. Coming from the power generation industry, I love quantifying the results we achieve.
How did you get into this work?
I previously worked for GE’s Renewable Energy business working on the services and software teams. It’s a change to go from creating energy at GE to finding ways to help customers use less energy at Uplight.
What has been your favorite project so far at Uplight?
On my very first day of work, I was responsible for responding to an RFP for a large utility for one of the largest Home Energy Report programs in the country. It was really great to jump right off the deep end and be immersed in the world of energy efficiency, decoupling, program design, EE targets, and savings caps–all while still learning our products and meeting my new co-workers. The way the team rallied around to support and and submit an awesome proposal (which we were eventually awarded.) It was a great way to start working with a new company.
What is one thing that has most surprised you about working here?
The camaraderie of everyone in the company. There are always other people willing to help you out; whether it is support for an upcoming business meeting or if you’re looking for someone to join you on a mountain adventure over the weekend.
