BSG Team Ventures is proud to announce the successful completion of the chief executive officer search at Harvest Automation Inc. in Billerica, MA.
BSG recruited John Kawola to replace Charles Grinnell, who will assume the role of chief operating officer at the innovative robotics start-up. “John’s experience commercializing hardware technology and leading companies thru the various stages of growth will be invaluable as we take the company to the next phase.” Grinnell stated.
Clark Waterfall, who led the search process added, “Charlie and his team have built an exciting company, and we were excited at the prospect of working with him and the Board of Directors to identify a commercial-stage CEO who could leverage prior experience and success as an impact player to help bring Harvest into the customer market.”
For the past four years, Kawola served as the President and CEO of Z Corporation. Z Corporation was a manufacturer of 3-D printers and hardware peripherals. Z Corporation was acquired by 3D Systems at the beginning of 2012. While serving as CEO at Z Corporation (at the time owned by private equity firm, Ratos (www.Ratos.se), he managed 45 million dollars in revenue and over 130 employees. Participating in all facets of the company, he had worked his way up from Sales Manager, when he joined the start-up in 1997.
“I am extremely excited to be joining Harvest,” recently said Kawola. “They have a robust technology that is focused to address clear customer pain points. Agriculture, like most industries, is always looking to become more efficient and productive and our aim is to bring solutions that address specific labor constraints. Charlie [Grinnell] and the team have done a fantastic job so far and my goal is to help lead the company through strong market introduction and scale-up.”
Harvest Automation develops and engineers robots for the agricultural industry. By addresses labor scarcity issues, Harvest creates a workforce of sustainable robots that can safely work alongside people. Backed by Entrée Capital, Founder Collective, Life Sciences Partners, Cultivian Ventures, and Massachusetts Technology Development Corporation, Harvest Automation is headquartered outside of Boston, MA and was founded in 2008.
For more information, please see the Harvest Automation press release: http://bit.ly/UgRxle.
Read the recent article about John Kawola’s new job in The Boston Globe: http://bo.st/SAAvBq.
