AROUND TOWN:
Genalta head touts YPO
I meet a lot of Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) members who credit their involvement in the 21,000-strong global network as an invaluable resource in making them better leaders through education and the exchange of ideas.
Paul Miller, president of Genalta Power, is a strong voice for YPO after two years of membership that he says has been of great benefit to his career growth, as well as a lot of fun.
YPO members enjoy a number of retreat events; Miller has organized one for his forum group in his home province of Newfoundland and will be heading off for another in Germany this fall.
Miller was appointed as president of Genalta Power just last month, but he has already functioned in corporate executive roles for many years.
After graduation as a chemical engineer from University of Alberta he spent some time in northern Alberta with Talisman Energy before joining Edmonton-based Matrikon OPC. Within 10 years, the company had expanded from two offices to 18, with 600 employees. Miller dealt with some of the largest oil and gas, power generation, pulp and paper and mining and minerals companies.
The company transferred him to Newcastle, Australia, and then back to Canada where he worked out of the Toronto office with responsibilities for Eastern Canada and the northeastern U.S.
At the same time he studied in an 18-month program to gain an executive MBA from Kellogg Shulich and commuted for a year to Matrikon’s Bahrain office, eventually taking his young family there to live for six months.
Coming back to Canada, Miller joined Geoglobal Resources as president and CEO of the Calgary company engaged in the exploration of petroleum and natural gas resources. It meant a lot more travel as he visited with investment bankers and with the com- pany’s properties in India and Israel.
Earlier this year he looked for other opportunities in Calgary and was delighted to find Genalta, which because of its huge growth swing was looking for a president to run the day-today operations.
The company was founded by Graham Illingworth — who’s now serving as CEO and chairman — four years ago in Kelowna with a geo-thermal focus.
He relocated the firm to Calgary as this is where he saw the potential for growth to convert waste energy to power applications in a number of industries.
Miller is passionate about his YPO relationship and has quickly become as excited about its success as he is for Genalta Power’s tremendous growth potential.
The company has several major projects converting waste into clean electric generation including two commissions for Pengrowth at Judy Creek. Both agreements included a 20year contract for Genalta to sell its power back to Pengrowth, reducing its operating costs, and to sell any excess into the power grid.
What used to be lost in the atmosphere is now providing up to 2 mw of instant power.
Genalta is also capturing flare gas to generate electricity at Shell’s Galloway project and converting waste gas to power at a Baytex Energy plant in Peace River.
Miller says that today Genalta is generating 11 mws of power and by end of September that will have increased by another 26 mws.
And although there is lots more business in the Alberta oil and gas sectors there is also tremendous potential with other deregulated power markets, particularly in the U.S. and Australia.
Wayne Chiu, CEO Trico Group has announced the completion of some significant changes to his executive management team.
Georg Paffrath, a man with over 25 years of operational and financial expertise, has been named as president of Trico Communities. Tom Chisholm, who has a background as a leader in top performing home building operations, is president of Trico Homes and Ryan Murray has been named its new sales manager.
With 14 years in real estate and retail marketing, Wanda Palmer is filling the role of vice-president marketing and Maaike Ezinga will use his broad knowledge of labour laws, compensation, talent management and recruitment as director of human resources.
No doubt they will all be attending the International Fireworks Festival at Elliston Park next month. Trico Group is once again a major sponsor.