The Uplight executive leadership team brings together seasoned leaders from across the energy industry’s most innovative and proven companies—now united together to accelerate the clean energy ecosystem. Get to know the leadership team below.
Adrian Tuck, CEO
Adrian is a 20+ year entrepreneur and technology leader. As former CEO of Tendril, Adrian led the company to become a market leader in the use of advanced customer and energy analytics to drive utility customer engagement and demand management. He’s received numerous industry accolades, including being named a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer.
Why is Uplight’s mission important to you?
There is no more important mission than helping this planet rid itself of its dependency on carbon. If I can look back on my life and say that I helped build a more sustainable future for this planet, I will feel it was a life well spent.
What do you try to do every day?
(Laughs). I try to laugh every day—life is too short not to have fun.
Yoav Lurie, President and COO
Yoav is a leader in building SaaS solutions for the utility of the future. As CEO and Co-founder of Simple Energy, he drove the company to become the leading provider of Marketplaces, instant rebate technology, and customer engagement software. He has been named one of Inc. Magazine’s top “30 Under 30” Entrepreneurs and is an EY Entrepreneur of the Year finalist.
Why are you excited to be on the Uplight leadership team?
Bringing together these leading companies to form Uplight was the single biggest thing we could do to push forward our mission—I’m excited to be leading a group of incredibly motivated and talented people toward a singular goal of creating a more sustainable future.
What do you like to do when you aren’t working?
I love to build or fix things—my last project was a sandbox for my two kids.
Jaylene Kunze, CFO
Jaylene brings 15+ years of finance and accounting, people, facilities and legal experience—including CPA and CIA certifications—to her role at Uplight. Previously as CFO of Tendril, she established processes to help the company scale and grow effectively and efficiently. She is passionate about ensuring the right people are in the right roles.
Why are you excited to be on the Uplight leadership team? Combining the best parts of each organization is going to lead us to building a great company that will have a tremendous impact on our employees, our customers and the world. I am excited to be a part of helping grow and scale our company.
What are your favorite sports teams? The Denver Broncos, Colorado Rockies and Michigan Wolverines.
Justin Segall, Chief Strategy Officer
Justin is an entrepreneurial leader with 15+ years experience in accelerating a clean energy future. He is passionate about driving change by motivating and enabling a new technology-driven connection for energy users and providers. As Co-Founder and former President of Simple Energy, Justin drove the initiative to certify the company as B-Corporation.
Why is Uplight’s mission important to you?
Since I was 10 years old, my mission has been to create a more sustainable future. Having a codified purpose with hundreds of talented co-workers and partners gives me the most hope that every day we’re working to solve the climate crisis in harmony with our high growth.
What was your first job?
Stuffing billing statements for my father’s medical practice.
Jake Meier, CTO
Jake brings 15+ years of experience building high-performance engineering teams from the ground up, holding VP-level positions at Placeable and Local Matters. As Tendril’s VP of Engineering, Jake was responsible for guiding the engineering organization (both in systems architecture and process) to deliver against Tendril’s strategic product initiatives.
Why are you excited to be on the Uplight leadership team?
We have a unique opportunity to bring together great teams, advanced algorithms, and world-class products & technology, to help our utility partners reinvent the customer experience and ultimately change the grid and the world.
What was your first job?
I worked a retail job at Eastern Mountain Sports, in which I spent every dollar I made (and then some) using my employee discount on hiking, biking, skiing, and climbing equipment at the store.
Jen Kinney, Chief Product Officer
As the CTO of Simple Energy, Jennifer applied her extensive experience in AMI/smart grid, SCADA, and outage management systems to leading product and software development teams. She brings experience and passion for the energy industry having helped lead commercialization at the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL).
Why are you excited to be on the Uplight leadership team? I can’t wait to learn from the other leadership team members and work towards some very awesome, aggressive goals together.
What is the name of your first pet? Fancy—she was my first barrel race pony and was super fast.
Dave Grant, EVP for Enterprise Solutions
Previously as SVP Sales and Marketing at Tendril, David helped leading energy providers establish a competitive advantage by engaging their customers. Prior to Tendril, David spent fifteen years at Teradata examining the business models of the markets they served, including utilities, to make businesses more effective using data and analytics.
Why are you excited to be on the Uplight leadership team? 100% of the utility executives I speak to get excited about what we’re doing and tell me how smart it is. Our clients need and are anxious for the end-to-end portfolio that we now bring to the market.
What are you reading right now? I just received “Cult of the Dead Cow” as a Father’s Day gift and am looking forward to reading it. The sub-title is “How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World”. It sounds fascinating.
Jay Grinde, EVP of Client Solutions
Jay brings more than 15 years of management and executive leadership experience to Uplight. Jay was VP of Client Solutions at Simple Energy, where he led his team to bring technology solutions into the utility energy efficiency space. Jay holds two US Patents related to the validation and issuance of instant rebates.
Why is Uplight’s mission important to you?
Many of the people who inhabit our planet right now, and many of those who came immediately before us, have started us down the road to a full climatological meltdown. The science says that without immediate, meaningful intervention that we are some short years away from the point of no return. I’m betting on that meaningful change coming from utilities and I want to help them.
Where is your favorite place to travel?
My family and I love to sail. We’ve spent a bunch of time in some of the most beautiful places in the world—the Virgin Islands and the French West Indies are favorites. We’re headed to the Whitsundays for the first time this winter.
