MCA Board of Directors 2012-2013 Candidates

(please note: you may vote for only eleven candidates)

Bill Allai (current Chairman of the MCA Board)
Motion Control Principal Engineer
National Instruments
Bill Allai is a Motion Control Principal Engineer at National Instruments with a BSEE degree from the University of Michigan. He has spent over a decade in the motion control industry in a variety of technical and strategic roles. Mr. Allai has worked on the development of motion controllers, servo and stepper drives, machine vision frame grabbers and data acquisition products. He has presented at various conferences on topics including mechatronics, motion controller architectures, and industry trends. He currently provides product strategy and technical guidance for the motion control activities within National Instruments.

Matt French
VP/PMC Division General Manager
AMETEK
Matt French is the Vice President, General Manager of AMETEK's Precision Motion Control Division (PMC). He has been in the motion control industry for the past 20 years, working for AMETEK that entire time in a variety of sales and marketing roles. He has been in his current role as VP/GM of the PMC division for eight years. Matt graduated from Heidelberg College with a BS in Physics and earned his MBA through Kent State University. During his time with AMETEK, the PMC division has grown into one of AMETEK's largest operating divisions through both internal development and through the acquisitions of Penn Motion Control (Pittman), Motion Control Group (MCG), and most recently Haydon Kerk. Matt is currently the Security/Treasurer on The Motor & Motion Association (SMMA) board and served as the Spring Management Chairperson in both 2009 and 2010.

John Hegel (current member of the MCA Board)
President & CEO
Minarik Automation & Control
John Hegel has been the President/CEO of Minarik Corporation for 10 years and been in the motion control business for over 20 years. John entered the motion control world as the Sales and Marketing Manager for Superior Electric. In that role, John learned much about the nuances of the motion control market. In 1998, John accepted an opportunity to join Minarik and learn the distribution business from the street level. Over the next couple of years, John continued to learn about the motion control and automation business as he took on more responsibilities in addition to his direct branch management role. He then assumed the role of President and has moved Minarik to a position of prominence in the industry.

Jesse Henson (current member of the MCA Board)
Business Manager, Motion & PLC
ABB
Jesse Henson presently heads ABB’s Motion and PLC business in North America. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Motion Control Association. He also participates in the Program and Emerging Leader committees for the Association of High Tech Distributors. Jesse began his career with Baldor in 1997 and has been in general management, application engineering, sales and service of motion controls for 15 years.

Tim Herbst
CEO
WITTENSTEIN
Mr. Herbst has over 20 years of experience in designing, manufacturing and marketing of mechatronic systems for high performing industrial machines as well as for military and defense applications. After a decade of double-digit growth as GM for alpha gear drives, Inc., Mr. Herbst was named CEO of WITTENSTEIN North America in 2005. His background in engineering and insight into customer requirements lead to corporate success across many new industries. Career highlights include organically growing the company from 1 employee to 70 employees with over $40M in sales while maintaining a profitable CAGR in excess of 30%.

Daniel Jones (current member of the MCA Board)
President
Incremotion Associates
Dan Jones received his BSEE degree from Hofstra University in 1965 and MS Mathematics at Adelphi in 1969. He has over 45 years of experience in the design of precision servo and step motors and has held engineering design and management and marketing management positions at a number of companies. He is recognized as an international authority on electric motors and motion control. He has written 200+ technical articles/papers and held seminars in 10 countries. He is the past president of AIME and a past member of the Board of Directors of SMMA and EMERF. He currently is a member of the Board of Directors of the Motion Control Association (MCA). He is a life member of IEEE and a member of ASME.

John Krasnokutsky
Marketing Manager
Siemens Industry, Inc.
John Krasnokutsky is the Marketing Manager for the Motion Control Business of the Drive Technologies Division for Siemens Industry, Inc. His departmental responsibilities include overall national marketing of their Machine Tool, Production Machines and General Motion Control and Low Voltage Drives Segments, including departmental responsibilities for Product Management of Siemens Motion Control Platforms, General Purpose, Vector and Servo Drives and High Performance vector and servo motors.

Karl Meier
Marketing Manager
ADVANCED Motion Controls
Karl has been with ADVANCED Motion Controls for over 10 years and leads marketing and business development expansion efforts. He continues to provide strategic direction for engineering and product development. His extensive product and industry knowledge comes from nearly 3 decades of experience. Karl’s education includes a Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Electronic Engineering ‘83, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND and a Master of Science in Computer Science ‘87, West Coast University, Santa Barbara, CA. He has also spent time as a graduate assistant and conducted personal research developing algorithms for artificially intelligent identification systems using predictive pattern recognition techniques. He is a member of AUVSI and IEEE where he founded and chaired the local Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) chapter in the Buenaventura Section of IEEE’s Region 6.

John Payne (current member of the MCA Board)
Vice President of the Motion Division
Yaskawa America, Inc.
John Payne is currently the Vice President of Motion for Yaskawa America, Inc. Mr. Payne has 30 years of experience in industrial automation, robotics, vision and motion control. He has spent the last 16 years at Yaskawa in a series of management positions related to robotics and motion control. Prior to joining Yaskawa, Mr. Payne worked at one of the early robot and vision pioneers, Automatix, Inc. While at Automatix, Mr. Payne held a variety of engineering, sales and marketing positions. He was involved in the development of vision guided small parts assembly, multiple manipulator robotic systems and aerospace welding. Mr. Payne holds a BSME from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Bill Steury (current member of the MCA Board)
Group President - Automation & Pneumatic Solutions
Cross Company
Bill originates from Michigan where he attended Michigan Technological University for his BS Electrical Engineering in 1983 and then the University of Michigan in 1995 for his MBA. He began his career with General Electric and moved through a variety of positions primarily in the Industrial Systems business unit. He left GE in 2006 after 20 years to join The Cross Company (in Charlotte, NC) as a Cross Automation Sales Manager and in December 2008 he became the Cross Automation Division President. Most recently, in December 2010, Cross Automation merged with Cross Fluid Power (pneumatics group) to form The Cross Company Automation Group which now serves both the electrical/electromechanical as well as pneumatics needs of industrial customers in their served territories across the southeast.

Ken Sweet (current member of the MCA Board)
General Manager, Electromechanical Division
Parker Hannifin
Ken is the General Manager of the electromechanical product lines in North America for Parker Hannifin. Since 1988 he has been involved in motion control with Parker’s acquisition of Compumotor. Over the years he has been part of Parker’s rotary motor greenfield and subsequent acquisition of Custom Servo Motor and was also the business unit manager for the linear product line anchored by Daedal.

Victor Swint (current member of the MCA Board)
VP and GM Motion Control Business
Rockwell Automation
Victor Swint is Vice President and General Manager of the Motion Control Business within the Architecture and Software group. He has a Bachelor's degree in Accounting from the University of Maryland and graduated from Harvard Business School with an MBA. Victor worked for Emerson, Danaher and Cooper Industries before joining Rockwell Automation. He has held positions of increasing responsibility, including strategic planner, product and marketing management, VP of Operations, VP of Marketing and VP/General Manager.

Andrew Vogl (current Vice-Chairman of the MCA Board)
Vice President, Sales for the Americas
Kollmorgen
Andy Vogl is Vice President of Sales for the Americas at Kollmorgen, A Danaher Company. He has been with Kollmorgen for eleven years and has spent his entire career in the motion control business. He was previously with Parker Hannifin for seven years in various management roles and Danfoss for seven years as Vice President of Sales and Marketing. He holds a business degree from Eastern Illinois University.