PARGEN’S Management Team

Dick Paulsen, CEO

Mr. Paulsen has over 20 years of experience in the power and energy industry.  Prior to founding PARGEN, Mr. Paulsen was Chief Operating Officer of Commonwealth Energy Corporation, one of the nation’s largest independent Energy Service Providers (ESP) in the United States. He was responsible for all operations including customer acquisition, customer service, power procurement, power trading, risk management, meter aggregation, forecasting, scheduling, settlement (ISO/RTO), billing, tariff analysis and regulatory affairs.

Mr. Paulsen was also the President of UtiliHost, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Commonwealth that provided all of the mid and back office technology development and data processing services to “electricAmerica”, the retail brand for Commonwealth Energy’s power sales in the United States.  Under Mr. Paulsen’s leadership, Commonwealth grew its customer peak load to 1,000MWs, covering four states and six utility districts.  He managed one of the largest “green” renewable power portfolios in California and has presented to a number of State Public Utility Commissions (PUC) as well as the California Energy Commission.

Mr. Paulsen has been CEO of a national medical imaging company, the COO of a national marketing firm and was the Co-Founder and Executive Vice President of a computer software firm. He has consulted with numerous companies on technology assets, operational processes and strategic initiatives.  Mr. Paulsen has a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from Loyola University and has done postgraduate work in computer sciences.

Jack Russ, Vice President and Chief Engineer-Economist

Mr. Russ over 30 years of experience in the power and energy industry, in both public and private sectors. He has worked for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and San Diego Gas and Electric Company (SDG&E), formulating strategies for the procurement of fuel and electric energy. He was Power Operations Manager for the Marubeni International Energy Company (MIECO), setting up and managing the electric power trading desk and coordinating physical power deliveries.

Mr. Russ has provided economic rationale and financial modeling expertise to Independent Power Producers (IPP), Qualified Facilities (QF) and Energy Service Providers (ESP) for the negotiation of Power Sales Agreements and Fuel Purchase Contracts. Mr. Russ has provided expert witness testimony before the California Energy Commission (CEC), the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), Superior Court, County of Orange, California and U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida.

As the Chief Engineer-Economist for an electric utility consortium, he oversaw and coordinated the activities of alternative energy program participants under U.S. Department of Energy and the Electric Power Research Institute auspices for geothermal, solar and distributed generation projects.

Professor Russ is a retired faculty member of the Department of Economics at San Diego State University. He is a Registered Professional Mechanical Engineer (M18855) with an Engineering degree from the U.S. Naval Academy and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of West Florida.  Further postgraduate work has been done in Public Policy and Economics at San Diego State University and the Naval War College, Newport, RI.