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Key Personnel

Board of Directors

Tracy Livingston
Director and Chief Executive Officer

Tracy leads both the wind development and wind turbine technologies divisions and identified the opportunity and oversaw the development of the Spanish Fork, Utah Wind Park, from conception through project sale. As a land and project developer and expert businessman, Tracy has acquired deep skills in structured finance, corporate governance, and business management. As a technologist his skills include structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering. His diverse background provides the critical experience to bring new renewable energy technologies to market.

Prior to founding Wasatch Wind in 2002, Tracy gathered 17 years of experience founding, developing, growing, and selling technology businesses. In 1989, Tracy founded and grew Specialty Instruments, a medical device manufacturer and JTech Medical, a software and device manufacturing business which doubled in sales every year for 7 years until sold in 1999. Tracy is a member of Utah Angels, a venture capital investment group and has made investments in over a dozen Utah businesses. He has also served on the boards of more then 6 early stage companies several of which have been acquired at significantly increased valuations. He represents wind energy interests on several Utah based energy committees including the governor’s council for the Utah RPS initiative.

Mr. Livingston's business development achievements are backed by fifteen years of manufacturing and engineering commercialization work at Pratt Whitney Aircraft, Hercules Aerospace Rocket Division, and Evans and Sutherland. He earned a Bachelor of Science, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Tennessee in 1983.

Thomas Conroy
Director and President

Mr. Conroy leads the company’s activities to commercialize the wind turbine tower and lifting system products. He is responsible for market and customer development, product strategy, supply chain readiness, and financing activities.

Mr. Conroy’s power generation career began in 1979 when he helped startup the last big wave of pulverized coal plants in the U.S. for Foster Wheeler Corp. He commissioned the world’s first successful low-NOx burners, started up plants in Spain, and then led the startup of the first coal-fired power station in the Dominican Republic. After earning his MBA in 1987, Mr. Conroy entered the enterprise data storage segment of the high tech industry, which is characterized by product price reductions of 50% per year. At Digital Equipment and then Compaq Computer, he held senior positions in the manufacturing, finance, operations, and global services functions where he focused on multiple new product and services introductions. Mr. Conroy holds a Bachelor of Engineering with heat and power concentration from the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. Mr. Conroy earned an MBA, finance concentration, from Columbia University in New York, where he was a Beta Gamma Sigma academic honors society member.

David F. Lincoln
Director,
Managing Partner, DFJ Element

With more than 15 years of venture capital experience, David has been a leading investor in energy and other clean technology companies for over 22 years.

Prior to founding Element in 2005, David was a co-founder and Managing Director of EnerTech Capital Partners, a leading energy technology venture firm formed in 1996. Under his leadership, EnerTech managed over $290 million in two successive funds focused on energy and communications technologies. During his tenure there, David led 14 investment transactions and is considered to be one of the early pioneers in energy tech investing.

Prior to the formation of EnerTech, David founded and served as President and CEO of Deven Resources, Inc., a private equity firm dedicated to the acquisition and development of energy properties, which was successfully sold to a public oil and gas company. Previously, from 1984 to 1991 David was a partner with CMS Companies, a Philadelphia-based private equity and financial services firm. During his tenure at CMS, David was engaged in a variety of roles including the evaluation, acquisition and financing of over $200 million in private investment transactions on behalf of CMS and its clients. During this time, the company launched and grew its private equity business, investing in real estate, communications and venture capital investments totaling over $1 billion.

David began his career at UGI Corporation, a diversified energy and utility holding company, where he was engaged in both the regulated electric and the non-regulated energy divisions of UGI. While at UGI, David was dedicated to a wide range of strategic projects in corporate development and finance in each of the distinct divisions of the corporation.

David received a BA with honors in Geology from Colgate University (1978); and an MS in Energy Management and Policy from the University of Pennsylvania (1982.) Previous boards on which David has served include Capstone Turbine Corp., Catalytic Solutions, Inc., Comverge, Inc., Franklin Fuel Cells, Inc., FuelQuest, Inc., IntelliSource, Inc., Intellon Corp., Orcom Solutions, Inc. Sagemaker, Inc., and Sixth Dimension, Inc.

Sam Gabbita
Director,
Senior Associate, DFJ Element

Sam joined Element Venture Partners as a Senior Associate in 2006. He has experience in private equity and investment banking, with a focus on industrial, energy, and telecommunications companies.

Prior to joining Element, Sam worked as an Associate at Lazard Freres focused on financial restructuring of companies in the energy, transportation, cable and automotive industries. He also spent three years as an Associate with Nautic Partners, a private equity firm, where he focused on growth, buyout and venture investments in the telecommunications and information technology sectors. Sam also worked as a Financial Analyst in Investment Banking for Salomon Brothers.

Sam is member of the board of directors of Wasatch Wind, Inc. Sam earned his B.A. in economics, magna cum laude, from the University of California at Los Angeles, and an MBA, with a major in finance, from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Other Key Personnel


Brett Woodard
V.P. Finance, CFO

Mr. Woodard joined Wasatch Wind in August, 2007 and is instrumental in arranging finance for the company’s project development portfolio and securing capital to expand the companies product development and manufacturing. He has over 25 years experience in arranging international and domestic project finance for high technology infrastructure projects and has also served in senior finance and accounting functions in emerging telecommunications and biotechnology companies. Prior to joining Wasatch Wind, Mr. Woodard was the Head of Nokia Networks Customer Finance N. America. In that position he was lead in arranging project financing packages for major Nokia customers in the U.S. and Latin America. During that tenure he led the Nokia finance team in closing the first bank infrastructure financing in Argentina after the Peso devaluation. Prior to that he was employed by G.E. Capital serving as V.P. NTFC Capital in the Vendor Financial Services group. While in that position he led GECC’s efforts in closing a major participation in the Sprint PCS project finance package and also was involved in creating a profitable portfolio of infrastructure loans to start-up alternative access and wireless telecommunications companies. Immediately prior to joining Wasatch Wind Mr. Woodard served as Acting CFO at ESIN, a new telecommunications network operator in Upstate New York. He holds a B.S and MBA, Finance from the University of Utah, and has also had additional graduate education in the PhD Finance program at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School.

David Oliphant
VP Engineering

Mr. Oliphant is responsible for the Space Frame tower and Hi-Jack Lifting System’s engineering development and certification. He is implementing our ongoing mission to produce innovative damped tower systems and integrated lifting technologies. Mr. Oliphant is a seasoned engineering executive who offers a rare combination of technology expertise, technical teambuilding, and business acumen skills. Most recently he was VP of Engineering for IsoTruss Structures, where he drove customer-based product changes and setup a fabrication facility and technical engineering team in Sri Lanka. Mr. Oliphant has extensive experience in structural systems requiring competence in fluid dynamics, stress analysis, and 3D modeling tools. He is an inventor on 14 issued patents, and earned his BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Utah.

John Aubrecht
Vice President, Development

John is a newer addition to the Wasatch Wind team, bringing 25 years of experience in electric power generation markets. Most recently John was the Executive Director of Wind Energy Development for the largest US wind developer, FPL Energy. John oversees all aspects of wind development for Wasatch Wind.

Michael Cole
VP Special Projects

Mr. Cole is responsible for key development initiatives including a gigawatt-scale offshore wind farm in Lake Erie. Mr. Cole has spent the past ten years consulting within the natural resource, renewable energy and agricultural sectors with a focus on new business and project development. Most recently he organized two grower cooperatives exploring value-added processing and provided ongoing management services. He has prepared feasibility studies and business plans for ethanol production, food processing, waste treatment, recycling, co-generation and wind energy companies. He co-founded and was Director of Operations for a waste processing and fiber recovery company in the early 90's. Prior to that Mr. Cole worked in engineering and construction management with the Bechtel Group overseeing cost controls for the design and construction of the Disney-MGM studio theme park. While with Bechtel he was also in charge of ensuring that $300 million in real estate was identified, acquired, cleared of utilities, and approved by all agencies for a billion dollar urban freeway project. Mr. Cole received a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Brigham Young University and an MBA from Stanford University.

Christine Watson Mikell
Sr. Project Development Manager

Ms. Mikell was the project manager for the Spanish Fork Wind Farm and is managing a seasoned team of specialist at the company to implement wind farm projects. Ms. Mikell worked as an energy engineer for the Utah Energy Office where she promoted wind power as a means to create economic development in rural communities, managed the state’s anemometer loan program and lead the state’s renewable program in regulatory issues. She also spent time in Thailand working as an environmental consultant for CH2M HILL. She holds a B.E. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Vanderbilt University and an MBA from the University of Utah. She was the chairperson of the Utah Clean Energy Board which is the only non-profit in the state of Utah promoting clean energy technologies.