{"id":880,"date":"2017-12-04T07:00:55","date_gmt":"2017-12-04T12:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dandelionenergy.com\/?post_type=press_release&#038;p=880"},"modified":"2025-09-26T16:21:58","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T20:21:58","slug":"dandelion-acquires-top-solar-industry-talent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dandelionenergy.com\/dandelion-acquires-top-solar-industry-talent","title":{"rendered":"Dandelion Acquires Top Solar Industry Talent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Ryan Hunter of Sungevity and Brian Zimmerly of Tesla Join in Operations and Technology Roles<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">December 4, 2017 New York, NY \u2013 Dandelion, the renewable heating company that graduated Alphabet\u2019s X in June 2017, has just made two big hires from the solar industry.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Ryan Hunter Joins as VP of Operations<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ryan Hunter is joining Dandelion as the Vice President of Operations. Hunter most recently served as the Senior Vice President of Installation Operations at Sungevity, where he led a team of more than 120 people and a network of more than 50 installation partners. Prior to Sungevity, Hunter held senior positions at SolarCity and Meridian Solar.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Brian Zimmerly Joins as Director of Product Engineering<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Brian Zimmerly is joining Dandelion as the Director of Product Engineering. Zimmerly most recently served as a Senior Engineer at Tesla, where he developed and deployed new energy technologies and <a href=\"https:\/\/dandelionenergy.com\/dandelion-service-plans-terms-conditions\">services<\/a>, including combined solar, battery storage and energy management. <\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Strengthening Operations and Technology Leadership<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They join the team of James Quazi, Dandelion\u2019s Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, who sold his first energy technology startup, Building Solutions, to SolarCity and then served as SolarCity\u2019s Director of Energy Efficiency Services.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe\u2019re lucky to benefit from Ryan\u2019s experience growing and managing installer networks at SolarCity and Sungevity,\u201d said James Quazi, CTO of Dandelion. \u201cBrian will help us continue to push the boundaries of the geothermal industry on the technology side. We\u2019re thrilled to have both join our team.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;The geothermal industry today is very similar to where the solar industry was fifteen years ago \u2013 expensive and largely confined to the earliest adopters, but poised for mainstream adoption,\u201d said Kathy Hannun, CEO of Dandelion \u201cOur goal is to make geothermal as cost-effective and popular as solar has become, and we\u2019re thrilled to have top talent from the industry.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dandelionenergy.com\/\">Dandelion<\/a> is a renewable heating and cooling company that provides homeowners access to affordable home geothermal. The company is currently operating in upstate New York with plans for significant territory and technology expansion in 2018. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">###<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Dandelion<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dandelion\u2019s mission is to provide earth-powered heating to every home. Its geothermal marketplace connects homeowners looking for cleaner, more affordable heating with local companies selected to install Dandelion home geothermal. Dandelion began at Google parent company Alphabet\u2019s X lab before launching as an independent company in May 2017. Dandelion now operates out of New York City. To learn more, visit us at <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dandelionenergy.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">www.dandelionenergy.com<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Media Contact:<br \/>\n<\/strong>Katie Ullmann<br \/>\nDirector of Communications<br \/>\n<a href=\"mailto:katie@dandelionenergy.com\">katie@dandelionenergy.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ryan Hunter of Sungevity and Brian Zimmerly of Tesla Join in Operations and Technology Roles December 4, 2017 New York, NY \u2013 Dandelion, the renewable heating company that graduated Alphabet\u2019s X in June 2017, has just made two big hires from the solar industry. Ryan Hunter Joins as VP of Operations Ryan Hunter is joining [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":7426,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-announcement"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Dandelion Energy Hires Top Talent: Sungevity and Tesla Executives - Dandelion Energy | Residential Geothermal Heating &amp; Cooling<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Dandelion Energy hires Ryan Hunter (Sungevity) as VP of Operations and Brian Zimmerly (Tesla) as Director of Product Engineering\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dandelionenergy.com\/dandelion-acquires-top-solar-industry-talent\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dandelion Energy Hires Top Talent: Sungevity and Tesla Executives - Dandelion Energy | Residential Geothermal Heating &amp; 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