The Team

The executive team at YouSolar is comprised of experts in senior energy markets and solar technology who share a common passion to build the world’s greatest solar+battery system and to change the world for the better.

Arnold Leitner
Arnold LeitnerFounder & CEO
Born in Vienna, Austria, Arnold is a solar and clean-tech pioneer who designed and built one of Germany’s first super-efficient passive houses. Arnold later moved to the United States to get his doctorate in physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder and work in solar. As a consultant for S&P Global, he authored the seminal and influential study Fuel from the Sky for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). As a result of his work, Arnold received an “extraordinary ability” green card and later became a U.S. citizen. While at Columbia Business School, Arnold founded SkyFuel and re-invented concentrating solar power technology. SkyFuel’s high-precision parabolic trough won an R&D 100 Award and was featured by NREL as one of the major clean-tech accomplishments.
Bob Rutter
Bob RutterCTO
Bob has nearly 40 years of experience in automotive, aviation, industrial, and consumer product development. He worked over twenty of those years for Motorola/Freescale in various roles, starting as a device design engineer in the Semiconductor Research and Development Laboratories in Phoenix, Arizona to finishing as European Director of Analog and Mixed Signal Division Product Development in Toulouse, France. Bob holds 8 patents covering a broad range of engineering disciplines from power device design to silicon process development and has a single-engine pilot’s license. Bob takes to the sky every week.
Michael Allman
Michael AllmanBoard Member
Mike has held numerous executive roles in the power and gas industry. Most recently he was the CEO of Sempra Generation and the CEO of the Southern California Gas Company. While at Sempra Mike built the ground-breaking 10 MW “Eldorado” solar plant in Nevada which was the first solar project to use thin-film solar panels. Within a decade Sempra and other developers built thousands of megawatts of utility solar power projects in America’s Desert Southwest. Mike holds an MBA from the University of Chicago BS in Chemical Engineering from Michigan State.
Rupert Mayer
Rupert MayerPartnerships & Operations
Rupert is a seasoned entrepreneur and executive who has built companies in Austria, Germany and California. His most successful venture so far was IPfolio, one of the 1,000 fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. on the Inc. list of 2019. After selling IPfolio to Clarivate and while serving on Clarivate’s product leadership team, Rupert became an active angel investor and soon turned his focus entirely to climate solutions. He first invested in YouSolar in 2018 and stepped into an advisory role in 2022 before deciding to join the company full-time. Rupert holds a master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the Technical University of Vienna.
Marcus Saye
Marcus SayeMechanical Engineer
Marcus joined YouSolar after getting his Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College in London with First Class Honors. A native Texan but true global citizen, he has lived around the globe in Australia, Indonesia, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, Thailand, the UK and now in the San Francisco Bay Area. When Marcus isn’t busy designing the PowerBloc’s modules, he likes to get away into California’s sierras for epic hikes and climbs.
Brett Nelson
Brett NelsonElectronics Technician
Brett grew up in Illinois and moved to California in 2014 to study physics at the University of California in Santa Cruz. He then got his MS in Neuroscience at UC Berkeley, working at the university as a research associate and then continuing as Graduate Student Researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. After several years in academia, he decided it was time for a change. Eager to build things and to learn the ins and outs of electronics manufacturing, he joined YouSolar, where Brett is currently leading our electronics assembly and quality control. He will also run our in-house hardware and software testing and will support customer installations.
David Fillmore
David FillmoreSoftware
David Fillmore has worked professionally for 20 years in the fields of computational physics and software architecture. From 1998 to 2005 he was an associate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. From 2005 to 2016 David held positions as a software developer and senior research scientist at Tech-X Corporation. While at Tech-X he worked on the simulation of solar irradiance and the estimation surface solar irradiance based on satellite observations under grants from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Science Mission Directorate. David received a B.S. in Physics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Ph.D. in Astrophysics and Atmospheric Science from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Jon Farley
Jon FarleyFirmware
Jon developed embedded control software for lighting and power systems for nearly 40 years. With a background in entertainment lighting, his earliest work was on lighting control desks in theatre and entertainment. Jon’s systems have controlled the lighting for productions like “Starlight Express” on Broadway, the Grammy Awards, or shows of Siegfried and Roy at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas. More recently Jon has applied his software design skills to gas analysis systems, veterinary therapeutic products, camera management software, mobile generator load management, LED lighting, and solar power systems. When between software assignments, Jon designs lighting for small theatre companies in Portland, OR, and has appeared in an episode of the IFC show Portlandia. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Technical Design and Production from Yale University School of Drama.
Moritz Nagelschmied
Moritz NagelschmiedMonitoring
Moritz manages the remote monitoring of our CIRRUS™ cloud service and runs analytics on installed PowerBloc systems to improve the EDISON™ optimization engine. He is also working on the data streaming to YouSolar’s upcoming DIYA™ app for mobile devices. Moritz is deeply interested in the sciences and has a passion for nature and wildlife. Moritz has an undergraduate degree in Electronics and Computer Engineering from the University in Graz, Austria.
Gene Krzywinski
Gene KrzywinskiTechnical Advisor
Gene is the founding CEO of eIQ Energy and inventor of the patented DC-DC micro-converter that is key to YouSolar’s innovative power architecture. In addition to being a serial entrepreneur, he has also been successful in the corporate world. Gene was VP of Sales and Marketing for Impala Linear Corp where he turned the company around and led its sale to Fairchild Semiconductor. Gene has a BSEE in semiconductors from Rutgers College of Engineering.