Meet Jerry Jordan, General Manager

Jerry recently joined the Energenecs team as general manager. GMs oversee the daily operations. It is the general manager’s responsibility to ensure strategic goals are met by setting operational policies, creating and maintaining budgets plus managing the team. We spoke to Jerry about his unique experiences and welcome him aboard!

Can you tell us a little bit about your background?

I was in the Navy for 20 years. I started in Millington, Tennessee and was there for about a year and a half getting trained in electronics to work on aircraft. Then I went through some additional training that was specific to the aircraft that I was going to work on, which was the Sikorsky SH-60 Seahawk.

You’ve heard of the Army’s Black Hawk? This would have been the Navy’s versions called the Seahawk and it was full of electronics. Its primary mission, back in the mid 1980s, was to be a submarine hunter. So we had all kinds of things for hunting submarines. It was a brand new aircraft. I started working on it and was able to make the very first deployment of the aircraft off of the east coast. I also went to the Mediterranean for about six months with it and saw lots of the world in that area, which is really nice.

Were you attracted to aviation or the electronics component?

[Laughs] My brother had joined the Navy and he was working on electronics and it sounded kind of cool. So I said, Well, I’ll do the same thing as my brother. I went in and talked to the recruiter who told me I could work on a ship or on an aircraft. He directed me towards the aircraft, so I became an aviation guy.

Are you happy with that decision?

I was really happy with that decision. Pretty much my entire career in the Navy was working or teaching electronics for the Seahawk helicopters. In the Navy, you change jobs every three, four years. My first duty station was in Mayport, Florida and that’s where I made that deployment with the helicopter. After that, I became a teacher. So I went back to Millington, Tennessee, which is just a little north of Memphis, and spent three years instructing new people in the Navy in electronics. A lot of theoretical things, number systems, how to solder, things of that nature.

Did you enjoy teaching?

I did. I was kind of afraid of it at first because I was a bit of an introvert, but it helped me break out of my shell quite a bit. After I did that for three and a half years, I went back to the Jacksonville Florida area, and again, deployed with a squadron out of Mayport. And we did a NATO deployment and interacted with all the different NATO countries. That was a goodwill type of deployment where you meet others and discuss how we do things, how they do things, trying not to talk too confidentially, but just share how everybody does their business of working on ships, or in my case, working on helicopters.

After that, I was stationed in Jacksonville, Florida, as an instructor, teaching others how to work on that helicopter itself, as far as electronics. I did that for three and a half years. Before I left that first command, I got married to a gal who was from my home town in Wisconsin. I met her when I came home on vacation and we hit things off. Our dating life was mostly letters and phone calls because I lived in Florida, she lived here in Wisconsin. We’ve been married ever since.

I then went out to San Diego and deployed again with the same helicopter. This time instead of heading off from the east coast. I hit it off from the west coast. I was on sea duty in California where I was in charge of the maintenance effort for the entire squadron. We had 13 aircraft.

We worked three shifts and had roughly 300 maintenance personnel. I determined which aircraft would be available for the flight schedule, which aircraft needed to be worked on, what work needs to be done with them and who should be doing that.

So I can say I have been all the way around the globe, at least twice. Been in the northern and southern hemispheres, just about every place on the planet. When I was finished in the Navy, I decided I wanted to return to the greatest place that I’d ever been in, and that was back home, here in Wisconsin.

What did you do after the Navy?

I worked for a small firm that started in Grafton then moved to Saukville. I got my 15 minutes of fame working at that company! They started out as a leather goods company that progressed into making suitcases. This was many moons ago when people traveled and you had a very fancy case. They progressed to making plastic cases. I’m a Packers fan and one of our customers was the Green Bay Packers. So if you watch a football game and you look behind where the guys are all sitting, they have all those big helmet cases, and that’s what we made.

I got to know the equipment manager for the Packers pretty well and he would come down here to Saukville to work with us. This was back in the day of Brett Favre. As you know, we play football in some cold weather. So, Brett goes out on the field and plays and then when he comes off the field he would take his helmet off. We developed a very special case for him that he could put his helmet in which was lined with some heating blankets. When he took the helmet back out of the box and put it back on his head, he didn’t get a frozen head and it gave him a slight advantage on how he felt. That case was showcased on Monday Night Football, twice.

So that was your idea?

Yes, this was my idea. So that’s my 15 minutes of fame. After it was highlighted on Monday Night Football, we had four other teams that approached us to get these helmet cases made. One of them was the Jacksonville Jaguars because let’s face it, when they come north to play, that’s really tough on them! This was a small company, about 15 people there. We did things for the Packers and also for people in the drives industry. We would take their motor drives, and put those into a case and make some electronics so that they could go into a customer site. They could say, look, here’s our motor drive. And if you do this, this happens, watch how the motor spins. Basically interactive electronic displays which utilized my talents with electronics.

One of our customers was in the wastewater industry, they sold sewer inspection equipment that we made. After time, we developed our own sewer inspection line and I did all kinds of engineering for that, including dealing with the video or audio recording. We had customers like Roto-Rooter that were buying our equipment. Because it was a small company, I was accounts receivable, accounts payable, sales, service, engineering, whatever needed to be done. I did that for about five years.

One of the ladies that worked for me, found a new job at Wago Corporation and she would tell me how great that company was. Soon after, there was a job for a production manager at this company and she thought it would be a great fit for me, so I joined them and I didn’t have to be the jack of all trades anymore. Wago is a company that started out making terminal blocks, PLCs and HMIs, things of that nature. So pretty much everything that we’re putting into the inside of control panels. I started out as a production manager, and as the company grew I became the director of manufacturing operations.

I set up a production facility in Mexico because the facility in the United States couldn’t keep up. I kind of felt like I took them about as far as I could with development and growth. I was at Wago for 14 and a half years.

How did you get involved with Energenecs/Groth Biogas?

Jared Feider (president of Energenecs) and I had talked back and forth a bit over the last year and a half or so, then when Energenecs made the recent acquisition of Groth Biogas company I came on board.

It is a very exciting time! Predominantly, my time is being spent on the Groth Biogas products right now, because that’s the new acquisition. I would like to see us continue to offer the same products that Groth Corporation has been offering in that biogas industry. I am also establishing lines of communication between Groth Biogas and Groth Corporation.

What do you like to do when you are not working?

Family time is a big deal to me. I have two granddaughters and every other Friday, I pick them up from school and my wife and I have dinner with them. We play games or watch movies and then sleepover and spend the Saturday with them. I’m very blessed.

I also enjoy going out on the Great Lakes to go salmon fishing on Lake Michigan. Years ago, we ran into a school of fish and they were all nice sized fish. I think I hauled in nine fish without a break! A couple of days later, I started having all this pain in my shoulder and thought I was having a heart attack, but it turns out I messed up my rotator cuff pulling out all those fish!