Richard M. Feldt
Richard Feldt, president and CEO of solar power products company Evergreen Solar was working overtime before he even graduated from Northeastern’s industrial engineering program. “My education prepared me well [for my career],” says Feldt. “I took a number of independent studies and extra courses. The faculty encouraged learning, so I really got a lot out of my five years at Northeastern.”
Feldt’s intellectual curiosity and hard work have propelled him through a dynamic career managing and growing technology companies. His résumé includes positions at Perseid, a developer of optical phased array technology created by Raytheon, Suppliermarket.com, which was sold to Ariba in 2000, and Symbol Technologies, where he helped double revenues in four years. He has also held senior positions at A.T. Cross Company, Eastman Kodak Company, and Spectra-Physics, Inc. “I’ve helped a number of companies substantially alter their approach to making progress,” he says. “And in most cases I’ve been able to do that in a way that most people at the company have embraced.”
It’s that role as a change agent that he’s most proud of. In his current position at Evergreen Solar, Feldt plans to be the change agent yet again—one that turns the company into a leading provider of an environmentally friendly technology, called photovoltaic energy, that harnesses the sun’s energy.
While he’s busy running Evergreen Solar, Feldt finds time to share his engineering and business acumen with students as a member of Northeastern’s Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) Advisory Board and as a guest speaker in the MIE Department. And last summer, he took Russian students on a tour of Evergreen Solar’s nearby state-of-the-art manufacturing plant as part of an exchange program hosted by the College of Business Administration with Moscow State University.
