About / Management Team
Jim Hermann
Chief Executive Officer
Jim Hermann has over 30 years of general management and sales and marketing experience. He started his career with Boise Cascade Corporation, spending time in manufactured housing and wood products marketing. He spent 4 years as a management consultant before becoming President and part owner of The Earth Stove, Inc., a manufacturer of residential solid fuel and gas home heating products. Jim purchased the company in the mid 90’s and sold it to Lennox International in 1999. Jim became a VP and GM in Lennox’s Hearth Products division. Jim has been an advisor and board member of Home Comfort Zones since 2004. He has a B.S. degree from The University of Washington, and an M.B.A from the Harvard Business School.
Hal Alles
Chief Technical Officer
Hal Alles has more than 20 years of high-tech management experience and was a founder of three high-tech startups. He started his career at Bell Laboratories in 1973 and was a founder of Silicon Design Labs (SDL) in 1983. SDL merged with Silicon Compiler, Inc., in 1987 to form Silicon Compiler Systems (SCS), which was acquired by Mentor Graphics in 1989. Alles stayed with Mentor Graphics as a General Manager and became Chief Technology Officer in 1995. He left Mentor Graphics in 1996 and helped found Genedax, a firm specializing in electronic design automation, in 1997. Alles was CEO of Genedax from 1997 to 2000. He was CEO of Averant from October 2000 to April 2002 when he left to found Home Comfort Zones. Alles has a B.S. in Physics from Case Western Reserve and a Ph.D. in Solid State Physics from the University of Oregon.
David Alles
Chief Operating Officer
David Alles has over 15 years of high-tech operational experience. Before joining Home Comfort Zones in 2002, Alles was VP of Customer Operations at Computerized Thermal Imaging, Inc., where he was responsible for managing inside sales, customer support, training, documentation, and the IT department. Prior to joining CTI, Alles was co-founder and VP of Finance and Operations for Genedax, a startup specializing in electronic design automation. David also worked at Mentor Graphics (1995-1997, business development and project manager) and Intel (1993-1995, business analyst and team lead). David has a B.S. in Industrial Management from Carnegie Mellon University.
Jon Brodeur
VP of Sales and Marketing
Jon Brodeur has 25 years of experience in a variety of industries and functional areas. He began his career working as a CPA in the “Big Eight Firm” of Ernst and Whinney (now known as Ernst and Young) for 2 ½ years and was then hired into a Fortune 200 Company (Black & Decker/Emhart) where he spent five years implementing and training in World Class Manufacturing techniques. He then moved on to work in the Big Six Consulting Firm of KPMG Peat Marwick on Information Technology related consulting projects for five years until a Manufacturing Client of 450 employees (CSSC) hired him to serve as their Chief Operating Officer. For the past 11 years, he has held many senior level positions in the Sales, Marketing and Presidential positions in the Retail and Internet Service Verticals, and has played a significant Executive Management Team role in aggressively growing three early stage/emerging Companies (Surplus Direct, @Once, DS Retail Technologies/ShopLocal). Jon has served on 7 corporate boards during his career. Jon received a BS degree in Accounting from the University of Connecticut.
Josh Gray
VP of Engineering
Josh Gray has over 15 years of high tech product development experience, including 10 years in leadership roles. This is his third VP-level engineering management position, having also served this role at Genedax and Centricity. Prior to Home Comfort Zones, Josh was a senior member of the engineering management team for Passport at Microsoft. This was a 120-member product team delivering a 1 billion transactions / day always-on global web service. Josh’s experience includes a diverse range of technical disciplines and organizational structures. He has managed teams to success working in digital security and authentication, electronic design automation, high-volume web services, network quality of service and traffic shaping and software development tools and infrastructure. His teams have included both US and India-based engineers. Previously Josh also worked at Mentor Graphics and Rogue Wave Software. Josh has a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Oregon State University.