Don McDonnell is the managing director and founder of The McDonnell Group, Inc., an Atlanta-based marketing strategy and public relations firm focused on the energy and business to business technology industries. A published author and university guest lecturer, Mr. McDonnell has over 15 years of hands-on executive experience managing public relations, marketing, and operations functions with a wide range of international technology companies and as an officer in the US Navy.

Mr. McDonnell joined London-based KWI in Spring 2004 and was responsible for global marketing, business development, product strategy and North American operations for the leading provider of energy trading and risk management software. Under Don’s leadership, KWI successfully launched its next-generation product K2, and his P&L in North America led the company in profitability. Don was part of the KWI executive team that helped complete the successful July 2005 sale of KWI to Global Energy, a Quadrangle-backed energy software and services company.

Don joined KWI from CES International, the leading utility outage management software company, where he served as EVP & CMO for five years in which the company achieved an eightfold increase in revenues and a tripling of the customer base. Don's CES tenure culminated in a successful sale of the company to SPL WorldGroup, Inc. in Spring 2004. Don also formerly served as Vice President of Marketing for Mincom, Inc., and he previously led corporate marketing for enterprise software provider TSW International, culminating in an S-1/IPO filing in May 1997 and the subsequent $290 million merger with the Indus Group creating Indus International (NSDQ: IINT).

Don began his software career in the early 90's as Director of Business Development responsible for marketing, sales and alliances for Servidyne Systems, an energy engineering services and MRO software company that was later acquired by Abrams Industries. A former NROTC scholarship recipient and US Navy Lieutenant, Don started his career at sea on board a destroyer where he served 2 tours as ordnance and electrical division engineering in the Persian Gulf and Somalia.

Previously, Don served as a founding corporate board member of the software integration standards body, the Open Applications Group, as a volunteer mentor in the Georgia 100, and as a member of the IEEE Power Engineering Society, the Business Marketing Association, and GITA. Don holds a BA (Magna Cum Laude/Phi Beta Kappa) from the University of Rochester (NY) and an MBA in marketing from the J. Mack Robinson School of Business at Georgia State University.

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