CENELEC

Mr Dany Sturtewagen (NIKO) – President

Dany Sturtewagen works for the Belgian family owned company Niko, first as Strategy Director and now as Director Corporate Affairs.
At Niko he is also the chairman of the Works Council. Before that, he held several responsibilities within General Electric as Product Manager, Export Manager, later Marketing Manager, Commercial Director and eventually as Pricing Director Europe. He started his career at the Belgian Building Research Institute as Advisor and contributed in several publications in professional industrial magazines on building site organisation and cost-efficiency on building sites. He has been since 2007 member of the board and is now President of the Belgian Electrotechnical Committee (CEB-BEC). Furthermore, he is board member of Cecapi (European Committee of Electrical Installation Manufacturers) and is President since 2015. Within Agoria (the Association of the Belgian Technology Industry) he is member of the Building Technology Committee, the Smart Building Committee and is President of the Business Group Home Automation & Electrical Equipment. From 2006 until 2016, he was appointed Judge in the Labour Court of Ghent (Belgium). Dany Sturtewagen has a Master of Science Degree in Civil Engineering Technology. He has started his mandate as CENELEC's President in January 2019.
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Mr Bernhard Thies (DKE, Germany) - Vice-President Policy

Dr Bernhard Thies has been appointed Vice-President Policy of CENELEC in June 2018 for a two years periode. Before that, he was CENELEC's President from 2016.
Dr Thies was Chairman of the Board of Directors of DKE (German Commission for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies of DIN and VDE) from 2007 to 2017. Since 2012 he is the Vice-Chairman of the EEBus Initiative, a network of leading companies, associations and stakeholders in the German and international energy, telecommunications and electrical industry, which aims to open up new markets in smart connectivity. Dr Thies is also Vice-President of the IRIEA International Robotics and Intelligent Equipment Industry Alliance. An engineer by training, Dr Thies is Associate Professor and gives lectures for a number of years at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen (RWTH Aachen), where he obtained his doctorate. Before joining DKE in 1999, he was CEO of ABB Traffo-BB GmbH, a company specializing in power distribution transformers.

 

Mr Francisco Javier Garcia Diaz (UNE, Spain) - Vice-President Technical

Mr Javier García Díaz has been Standards Director of UNE, the Spanish Association for Standardization and Certification, since 2012. Previously to this, he was Pre-Accession Advisor of the European Commission to Bulgaria in the field of Free Movement of Goods and member of the CEN and the CENELEC Technical Boards (BT). Between 2008 and 2013, he was Chairman of the Technical Committee Management Group of the CEN/BT. He serves as a member of the IEC Standardization Management Board and chairs the CEN Strategic Advisory Group on Services. Mr García Díaz is a graduate in chemical engineering from the Complutense University in Madrid, holds postgraduate qualifications in Business Administration and Marketing Management. He followed Diplomatic Studies at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr García Díaz was elected CENELEC Board Member in June 2015.

 

Mr Kimmo Saarinen (SESKO, Finland) - Vice-President Finance

Mr Kimmo Saarinen holds an M.Sc degree in physics from the University of Helsinki, where he also worked as a researcher. Since 1978, he worked mainly in managing R&D, Quality and Technology at the Finnish capacitor manufacturing company Evox (later Evox Rifa, finally part of American company KEMET Electronics Co). When retiring in mid-2013, he was Vice-President of Technical Marketing with KEMET Electronics Co. and Managing Director of the Finnish arm of KEMET. Currently, Mr Saarinen acts as a Senior Adviser to the Finnish Electrotechnical Standardization Organization, SESKO.Kimmo Saarinen has been active in standardization for more than 35 years. At National level, Mr Saarinen was Chairman of the Board of SESKO, and President of the National Committee, for 18 years (1996 – 2013). He was also Chairman of the Board of Finnish Standardization Association, SFS, for 12 years (2001 – 2012). Mr Saarinen was elected CENELEC Vice-President Finance in June 2016 and will take office from January 2017.

Ing. Francis P. Farrugia (MCCAA, Malta) - Board Member

Ing. Francis P. Farrugia is Director General at the Standards and Metrology Institute (SMI) of the Malta Competition and Consumer Affairs Authority (MCCAA). Previously, he was Director Standardization at the Malta Standards Authority, which became part of the SMI when the MCCAA was established in 2011. Mr Farrugia studied electrical engineering at the University of Malta and is a member of the Maltese Chamber of Engineers. He has an MBA from Henley Business School and was elected to the CENELEC Administrative Board in June 2015.

 

 

Mr Wojciech Konecki (APPLiA Polska) – Board Member

Born in 1967; Wojciech Konecki graduated from the Warsaw School of Economics in 1991 with a master's degree in economics. He has worked in the household appliance manufacturing industry sector for the past 20 years. He has held both managerial and executive level positions in international companies, Whirlpool and Electrolux. Since 2004 he has been the Director General, Member of the Board of the Association of Employers, APPLiA Polska, which represents the industry's interests towards the government, parliament and media, as well as market research and economic analysis activities. Since 2005, he has been working as Councillor and Vice-Chairman of the Polish National Chamber of Commerce (KIG). He is also a chairman of the Committee of Electrical Consumer Goods in the Polish Committee for Standardization (PKN) and holds the chairmanship of the supervisory board of the waste producer EEE collection system ElektroEko SA. Wojciech Konecki has published many articles on the subjects of Circular Economy, EEE recycling, energy efficiency and market trends. As well as his mother language of Polish, he is fluent in English. He is married and has two daughters. Mr Wojciech Konecki was elected to the CENELEC Administrative Board in November 2017.

 

Mrs Geraldine Larkin (NSAI, Ireland) – Board Member

Mrs Geraldine Larkin has been Chief Executive at NSAI, the National Standards Authority of Ireland, since March 2017. Before being appointed at the head of NSAI, Geraldine was the Irish regulator in diverse industries, including the private security sector. As the first regulator of the private security industry, Mrs Larkin drew heavily on Irish and European standards including in the areas of security guarding, electronic security and cash conveyancing in order to regulate the developing industry. She subsequently oversaw the development of further mandatory standards for specialist aspects of private security services. Previously, as a career civil servant she held a diverse portfolio of policy responsibilities including in the areas of policing, crime, anti-drug trafficking, criminal law, human rights and European law. She represented Ireland in various EU and international committees in these subject matter areas. Mrs Larking holds a Masters Degree in Business Administration (MBA – Technology Management) from the Open University. She was elected as a member of the CENELEC Administrative Board in November 2017. .

 

Mr Jacques Levet (FIEEC, France) - Board Member

Mr Jacques Levet has been Technical Director of FIEEC, the French association for electrical, electronic and communication industries, since January 2014. After graduating from 'Ecole Polytechnique', he had a 30-years career as a military engineer in the French Ministry of Defence and in NATO (Brussels), where he mainly dealt with land weapons and missiles. In his final mission with the French MoD, he was, as Major-General, senior adviser for standardization and Board member of AFNOR, the French Standardization Body. Mr Levet was elected as a CENELEC Board Member in June 2016.

 

Mrs Kristin Helen Lind (Energy Norway AS) - Board Member

Mrs Kristin H. Lind has been the Executive Director Energy Norway AS, a subsidiary company of the Norwegian association for Energy companies, working with R&D, education, standardisation and politics in these areas. As from 1st of January 2018 she is also Director of the Department for Distribution Grid Companies in Energy Norway, the association for Energy companies in Norway. She has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Norwegian Electrotechnical Committee since January 2017, and has been a member of the technical committee (NK8) in Norwegian Electrotechnical Committee (NEK). NK8 prepares for necessary standards framework and coordinate the development of NEK standards needed to facilitate the functioning of electricity supply systems in open markets, and corresponds to IEC TC 8 og CENELEC TC 8X. Mrs Kristin Helen Lind was elected as a member of the CENELEC Administrative Board in November 2017.

 

Mr Anders Richert (elsakerhetsverket, Sweden) - Board Member

Mr Anders Richert is Technical Director and deputy General Director at the Swedish National Electrical Safety Board (Elsäkerhetsverket). After graduating from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Mr Richert held numerous positions in Vattenfall. In early 1990s, he was seconded to Unipede (EURELECTRIC) in Paris, dealing with electricity supply and standardization issues on a European level (cooperation with CENELEC). In the early 2000s he was a consultant in the Middle East working with transmission projects. Mr Richert was a Board Member of SEK Svensk Elstandard, representing the electricity industry, before joining the Safety Board and is now a member of the SEK Electrotechnical Committee and TK8. Mr Richert was elected as a member of the CENELEC Administrative Board in June 2016.

 

Board Member to be appointed.