Staff and Board

Suzanne Russo

CEO

Suzanne is chief executive officer for Pecan Street. Prior to joining the organization in 2010, she was director of sustainability initiatives for New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development where she led the development of green building and sustainable retrofit standards for municipally-funded affordable housing. Over the past seven years, Suzanne served as chief of staff and then chief operating officer for Pecan Street, during which time Forbes named her one of five women ‘Using Technology to Blow Up Social Change.’ An urban planner with a masters degree in community and regional planning from the University of Texas at Austin, Suzanne has worked in Africa, China, India and the USA on community-based sustainable development.

Bert Haskell

Chief Technology Officer

Bert is Pecan Street’s CTO. He has been working in technology and product development since starting his career in 1984 with Eastman Kodak, where he worked for 5 years as an electronics manufacturing process development engineer while earning his master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Rochester. Bert then worked for 9 years at the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp. (MCC) in Austin, concluding his tenure there as vice president of portable electronics product research. Since 2000, he has held product development, product marketing and advisory rolls at a number of start-up companies including Stellar Display Corporation, Wireless Age, Motion Computing, Portelligent and most recently, Heliovolt, where he was director of product development for CIGS based thin-film photovoltaic modules.

Fisayo Fadelu

chief financial officer & general counsel

Fisayo is Pecan Street’s CFO and general counsel. Prior to joining the organization, she worked for Smith International (a subsidiary of Schlumberger Ltd.) where she led teams on Sarbanes Oxley compliance projects in U.S. and international locations. Prior to that, Fisayo worked with the Audit and Assurance Services group at the Ernst & Young’s Houston office where she supervised audit projects for public companies. She holds master’s and bachelor’s degrees in accounting from Baylor University, a J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Green Building and Community Sustainability Certificate from Harvard University.

Esha Choudhary

database administrator

As Database Administrator, Esha is Pecan Street’s go-to data person. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Information Technology from Uttar Pradesh Technical University and has worked as a software engineer and data analyst in the healthcare and financial industries. Having worked with a range of technologies and database systems, she is responsible for Pecan Street’s data acquisition and ETL pipelines.

James DelVesco

senior programmer

James helps maintain Pecan Street’s technical infrastructure. After graduating with a computer science degree from University of Chicago, he worked in the healthcare industry before joining Pecan Street. James also coaches high school cross country.

Grant P. Fisher

director of data

Grant manages Pecan Street’s water and data operation. Prior to joining the organization, he was a project manager for Sony Electronics where he led the installation efforts of Sony Home Energy Management Systems. Grant has also worked as a Technology Project Manager where he worked on technology efforts, big data, visualization, and water projects for governmental agencies throughout the US.

Scott Hinson

director of engineering

Scott leads activities and electrical research at the Pike Powers Lab. He worked at a thin film CIGS solar module manufacturer where he led module packaging, performance, certification and reliability efforts. Prior efforts include work in the military, medical, consumer and oil industries developing power supplies, precision measurement equipment and inductive heating technologies. Scott received his B.S.E.E. from The University of Texas at Austin with undergraduate specializations in both communications systems and power distribution. Scott was awarded the 2015 Outstanding Engineering Award for “transforming the world’s understanding of consumer and community electricity usage” by the the IEEE Power Engineering Society Central Texas Chapter.

Travis Hyzak

programs manager

Travis earned his B.A. in English and a certificate in Technical Communication from the University of North Texas. After completing his first year at Georgetown University School of Law, where he learned he did not want to be a lawyer, Travis returned to Austin to work in education before coming to Pecan Street. As program manager, Travis is responsible for overall program coordination and management of Pecan Street’s transportation initiatives. This includes the innovative Electric Last Mile Project, which pioneers public-private partnerships to borrow successful elements of the sharing economy to provide electric last mile solutions to improve public transportation connectivity.

Rachel Jenkins

director of operations

Rachel is the director of operations for Pecan Street. Rachel joined Pecan Street in 2012 and has served as the research programs coordinator helping to expand the organizations volunteer research network and as programs manager and lab manager, overseeing Pecan Street’s research programs. She received her B.A. in Anthropology from The University of Texas at Austin. Prior to joining Pecan Street, Rachel worked as a legal assistant and served as a property manager in the greater Austin area.

Joshua Ondrusek

programmer

Josh works to advance the interpretation and research related to the data collected at Pecan Street. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and not long after joined Pecan Street. As programmer, Josh works on a variety of projects connected to Pecan Street’s data collection and the technologies surrounding it.

Richard Smith

technology development specialist

Richard is a licensed master electrician with over 24 years experience in electrical construction and service. Richard owned his own electrical contracting business for 13 years. In 2012, he decided to leave construction and focus his attention on electricity research and renewable energy.