GG Pique - Biography

Biography

GG was born in Havana, Cuba on May 16, 1947 and immigrated to the US with his family in 1961. He graduated from the University of Connecticut in 1969 with a degree in Chemical Engineering and started out his career as Middle East regional sales manager at Combustion Engineering ABB while he pursued his masters degree at night at the University of Hartford.

After earning his MBA, GG got briefly involved in the Global Launch of the Midrex process. This involved the catalytic reforming of natural gas to effect the direct reduction of iron ores.

By age 29, GG became Country Manager of Dorr Oliver de Mexico. In this first (of his three tours of duty) in Mexico, GG was in charge of the turn-around of the Mexico City subsidiary of what then the largest water treatment company in the world. The Stamford Connecticut parent is long gone. Dorr-Oliver de Mexico thrives over 30 years later, run by the team GG put in place.

Later, he was a VP of Sales at Fluor Corporation mining and metal division.

He worked for 10 years for the reverse osmosis membrane companies in San Diego, while helping raise two children. During this time he also became involved as Editor of the Omega-3 Project which published several books on the health effects of dietary oils. Along the way GG became involved in the design, startup and operation of Dozens of seawater desalination plants worldwide.

He also worked for Ionics (now GE) in the design, and start-up of the Santa Barbara, California Emergency desalination Plant in 1992 as well as the retrofit of Ionics Iberica desalination plant in the Canary islands.

In the spring of 1993, GG was approached by Dick Heckmann, Chairman of US Filter to join the "Dick Heckmann Gang" GG became Sr. Vice President and Corporate officer of US Filter Corp., a Fortune 500, NYSE water Company, where he drove a 25% division internal growth rate while simultaneously integrating and successfully running an avalanche of multi-national acquisitions.

In 1999 Vivendi bought US Filter for $7.5 billion in cash. All of the USF stock options were cashed. GG spent 9 months after the acquisition “tucking his people in.”

Three days later GG joined ERI Energy Recovery, Inc. start-up on February 7, 2000 as a Marketing consultant to help map product scale-up and a global launch. Energy Recovery manufactures the PX, a unique, patented ceramic freewheeling pump that recycles 98% of the pressure energy of a desalination plant. This has cut desalination energy costs by more than half and is helping make seawater desalination affordable. See link to The Economist June 2008 article on desalination and energy below.

Mr. Pique was recruited as Executive Vice President in 2001 and became President CEO of ERI in 2002. Since he became involved in 2000, ERI revenues grew dramatically and the company achieved 70% global market share as climate change increases water scarcity and the PX technology helps drive desalination plants being built in India, China, Africa, Israel, Spain and Australia.

GG took ERI public through a NASDAQ IPO in 2008 and "retired" from ERI three years later.

GG now runs IONPROS LLC a company involved in research and development of alternative energy solutions.

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