Last evening over fifty people squeezed into the Molson Coors Tap Room to hear from Paetec CEO and noted philanthropist Arunas Chesonis. Upon being introduced by Michael Glade, Director of Water Resources and Real Estate at Molson Coors, Chesonis began by briefly describing a career launched on the boyhood fantasy of building undersea cities, an ambition that landed him at MIT only to discover little was happening in underwater urban development. After getting his civil engineering degree from the prestigious Massachusetts university and receiving an MBA from the University of Rochester, Chesonis began his career at Rochester Telephone. From there he moved to ACC Corp where he served as President when it was acquired by AT&T in 1998. After the acquisition Chesonis and a core team from ACC launched Paetec, now a $1.6 billion telecommunications company, currently ranked as the seventh largest in the country.
Chesonis got involved in sustainability research when he returned to MIT to Chair the Board of Directors of the Earth System Initiative, a program built to engage multidisciplinary research and education efforts in the earth sciences and engineering. As Chair he spearheaded the effort to award $50k “ignition grants” to promising projects and students in need of a bridge to develop ideas to a proof of concept stage. This experience opened his eyes to the benefits inherent in funding direct research. In 2008 his recently formed family foundation contributed $10 million to start the Solar Revolution Project, a fund designed to create 30 energy-related fellowships at MIT. Chesonis notes that in many cases allowing a university to distribute funds wastes much of them; thus by providing the money to students directly the effects are actually multiplicative, causing him to believe he is creating a $30 million impact. The projects, which are worked on by twenty three Phd and four post Doctoral students, range in topic from solar generation, conversion, and energy storage. As an example of one project, Chesonis spoke of a battery the size of a small home with the capacity to heat 500 homes for seven days.
Chesonis is a realist when discussing the future of energy: “You’ve got to have solar or wind or both intrinsically cheaper than coal” in order to have a global impact, because without this cost driver China and India are unlikely to adopt a sweeping conversion to sustainable sources. When asked what focused his attention to issues of sustainability he remarked that it was largely a derivative of his customer focus – “over the next ten years CIOs will be pulled into energy decisions,” as IT infrastructure is the largest energy component of many businesses. When asked how he has time to run a billion dollar company, participate in the foundation and be father and husband to a young family, Chesonis answered without hesitation: “I don’t play golf.”
CORE is the oldest and largest trade association in the Rocky Mountain Region dedicated to promoting sustainable business practices and a more responsible global economy. For more information on the organization and other CORE programs, visit their website.
