Philips Names Zia Eftekhar CEO of Professional Luminaires Business for North America
Royal Philips Electronics announced on Dec. 8 that Zia Eftekhar has been appointed CEO of Philips Professional Luminaires North America, effective Jan. 1. Eftekhar will succeed Kaj den Daas, a 33-year veteran of Philips Lighting, who will continue as chairman of Philips Lighting North America and concentrate particularly on supporting the company's legislative activities and participation in industry associations such as the National Electrical Manufacturers Association and the National Association of Electrical Distributors.
Eftekhar is a 40-year veteran of the lighting industry and currently CEO of the Philips Lightolier Group, the single largest business within Philips Professional Luminaires. Since 1992 he has been the president of Lightolier and a Director of The Genlyte Group, the publicly traded parent of Lightolier acquired by Philips in 2008. Eftekhar played a crucial role in the integration of the Genlyte businesses into Philips, and in his new role he will lead the drive to further grow Philips' leadership position in professional lighting systems and solutions in North America.
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Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.