The IDEA Board of Directors, chaired by Jack Carlson, president of Southwire’s North American Business, announced today that president and CEO Bob Gaylord has stepped down to pursue other areas of interest.IDEA, a business-to-business technology service provider, is jointly owned by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) and the National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED). The IDEA Board and the entire organization thank Bob for his leadership and service to the electrical industry community during the last seven years as CEO,” said Carlson.

With Gaylord’s departure, the IDEA Board has named Chris Curtis, former CEO of Schneider Electric’s North American Operations, current chairman of the NEMA Board of Governors, and an IDEA Board member, to manage the day-to-day operations of IDEA while chairing the search process for a new executive officer.Chris has been in the electrical industry for more than 20 years and is well known to both the manufacturer and distributor communities. He is uniquely qualified to help the IDEA organization and its customers through this leadership transition. We are very fortunate to be able to have Chris available at this time,” Carlson said. Throughout this year, NEMA and NAED leadership have worked closely as IDEA shareholders to increase support of, and attention to, IDEA’s mission of providing the industry with a single source of complete, high-quality data delivered efficiently and cost-effectively. Core to that mission is the establishment and administration of an industry data standard that provides distributors with all key information their customers require, and manufacturers with a clear expectation of what data is needed from them.

For its subscribing users, IDEA sources, synchronizes, and distributes data management solutions such as the Industry Data Warehouse (IDW), managed by IDEA based on a standard set of data fields. Manufacturers populate the IDW with accurate and timely product and pricing data, while distributors use that data as part of the eCommerce solutions they provide to their customers.