EiKO Global LLC (Shawnee, KS): CEO Gary Withers retired on Dec. 31 and at that time Rick Laird, who had been EiKO’s president, assumed the role of president/CEO. Under Withers’ 33 years of leadership, EiKO grew from a small family business to a global lighting manufacturer with offices on three continents. Withers will continue to serve in a consulting role and board member of EiKO Global.
Laird began his career in the lighting business at Philips Lighting in 1990, moved to Osram Sylvania S in 1995, and joined EiKO in 2007. During his career, he has spent time in several different roles in product development, sales/marketing and business unit management. Laird became EiKO President in 2012.
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.
