Bill Kirk
Bill is the "REAL" Captain Kirk, USAF Gulf War Veteran, CEO Co-founder of Weather Trends International. As of star date 2024, he has yet to ask Scotty to beam him up. His contagious passion for building the coolest, most accurate YEAR-AHEAD weather forecasting technology company on Earth with predictive sales analytics for Fortune 500 companies is in dog year 196 (28 years for those who hate simple math). Yes, we said YEAR-AHEAD forecasting but Bill jokes that God invented math so we use that, man invented physics so we don't use that and stick with a proprietary statistical/24 climate cycle approach; very different than traditional meteorological firms. We think differently, like a business, so we give answers not hedges.
He had way too much math disguised as calculus, physics and weather forecasting theory at Rutgers University, got the B.S. (pun intended) degree and was the only Air Force Distinguished Graduate award from NJ Governor Kean before entering the U.S. Air Force moons ago. With a Top Secret SCI security clearance, Bill experienced "things" many have not (he could tell you but then he'd have to kill'ya - ha) but received all sorts of awards for his support in Desert Storm, NASA Space Shuttle Columbia, Operation Just Cause, Gen Schwarzkopf Queen Knighting, 1000s of F-16 fighter missions, Tornado touchdown and the procurement of a $100+ million dollar Satellite Data Handling System. While he can NOT shoot a U.S.S. Enterprise Star Trek phaser, he is an expert marksman with military small arms.
Bill has been featured on Fox Business, CNBC, ABC 20/20 and many other national TV networks, named as inventor/co-inventor on three U.S. and U.K. patents, and published research in hundreds of Wall Street equity reports from JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Cowen, and other industry tech reports. But he'd much rather be in the home office (which looks like a set out of Star Trek) building the best weather forecasting technology available that's received 13 national and international business technology awards. While the recognition as Forbes Magazine's 5th Most Promising Company in America and #17th ranked CEO on Owler's list of 167,000 CEOs in 2017 are kind of rewarding, the REAL reward is working with the most passionate and loyal group of employees any leader could ask for and some of the most successful companies in the world that "GET IT" when it comes to Better Business in any Weather®! Weather Trends has raised $6.8 million Series A to build the technology with no plans for additional funding.
As a high school Bible scholar from Hawaii, Bill learned early in life that "to whom much is given, much is expected", so the company is very philanthropic with first responders and Christian organizations like WordFM radio and Cure International. Bill is a board advisor for Millersville University Business of Science program, founding member of the Open Atmospheric Society and signatory member of the Cornwall Alliance. He lives in the Lehigh Valley with his two Angels – wife & daughter. God Bless You folks and dare we say it...WARP SPEED AHEAD!
-- Kirk out
Billy Dunn
Billy Dunn joined weathertrends360 in 2019 as the Chief Leadership Officer and brings 20 plus
years of strategic leadership and business development experience. In March of 2020 Billy was
named president of weathertrends360 and now provides leadership across all business
functions nationally and internationally. Billy holds a Bachelor of Science Degree from Cairn
University in Education and Bible along with a Master's Degree in Organizational Leadership
graduating with high honors. Billy has started several successful business ventures in the US
and around the world and continues to serve in several key nonprofit areas including Push The
Rock, Word FM and Truth For Women.
In addition to his role at weathertrends360, Billy serves as the Character Coach for the Lehigh
University Men's Basketball team and speaks to organizations across the world with a focus on
strategic thinking and planning, leadership development and organizational culture. Billy is
married to his college sweetheart Cindy and they have two children, Julia a student at Temple
University and Bryce, an 8th grade middle school student.
Jack Grum
Jack Grum is the Co-Founder and the Chief Revenue Officer for Weather Trends International. He manages all strategic alliances with WTI's business partners.
Jack has over 37-years experience working in the retail sector providing service solutions to major retail, drug, sports, and mass merchandising companies.
Prior to joining Weather Trends Jack was President of a medical services company, servicing hospital and physician groups. He also spent 10 years as SVP Sales for NPC (formerly JBS), a point-of-sales authorization company. During this time Jack's team was instrumental in securing key accounts which significantly contributed to the explosive growth of the company.
Jack is a graduate with honors with a B.A from Temple University.
Rich Woolley
Rich has more than 35 years of applied meteorological forecasting experience for a wide variety of public and private industries. His extensive experience and common sense applications of how meteorological variables influence the decision-making process make him a valuable asset for WTI clients.
Prior to joining WTI, Rich worked for the National Park Service and The Bureau of Land Management, helping reduce the impact of wildfires. His last 3 years with the federal government were spent as the Program Manager for Predictive Services in Nevada, managing a team of professionals to integrate historical fire and weather analysis and develop new methods of forecasting future fire occurrence.
Previous to this, Richard held various positions as an Operations Director and Meteorologist for several private meteorological firms providing long range business weather planning services for global Fortune 1000 companies. He also spent many years providing meteorological and emergency planning support to the electric utility industry, U.S. Army's chemical weapons program, and radio and television station clients while at Accu-Weather.
Rich holds a Master of Science degree in Environmental Engineering from Syracuse University, with a Bachelor of Science degree in Meteorology from the State University of New York. Along with his education Rich also currently owns a 26-acre farm and vineyard producing grapes, soybeans, wheat and corn.
Matt Alonso
Matt Alonso is one of the original employees to start at Weather Trends International (WTI) and currently holds the post of Vice President of Information Technology. Matt is responsible for managing a team of contagiously passionate IT developers, programmers and meteorologists to ensure uninterrupted availability, and redundancy from 66 in-bound sources of data across all IT infrastructures across multiple states. Matt oversees all end-to-end automated client deliverable processes, and assists with custom integrations of WTI's product suite into client planning and forecasting systems. Matt and team spent 4-years building a one-of-a-kind historical/year-ahead global gridded forecasting system that encompasses 5+ million lines of proprietary computer code to generate hour 1 to day 360 year-ahead forecasts for over 6.4 million locations (every spot on Earth) requiring upwards of a quadrillion calculations.
Prior to joining WTI, Matt worked for a weather company that specialized in environmental modeling for clients ranging from wind energy providers to the U.S. Air Force. While there, he was regularly called upon to incorporate their models into some of the World's largest supercomputers as well as supporting the company's internal datacenter operations.
Matt has a Masters in Technology Management from the University of Pennsylvania / The Wharton School. He also has a Bachelor of Science degree in Meteorology from Millersville University where he was one of the first undergraduates to have access to and operationally run the Weather Research and Forecast numerical weather model from NOAA. Matt's dedication and leadership resulted in a 20 under 40 Award for Eastern Pennsylvania.
Bruce Firth
Bruce has 34 years of experience in retail, grocery, and predictive information technology, including a 17 year career at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. At Wal-Mart, Bruce held many positions assisting their Predictive, Planning, Merchandising, Distribution, Transportation Logistics, and Budgeting Systems groups responsible for advanced analytics of Wal-Mart's data warehouse. He implemented purchasing and replenishment strategies to capitalize on long range weather forecasts to assist Wal-Mart merchants with buying, allocation and marketing activities. In 2002, he was the Foreign Acquisition Conversion Specialist for ASDA Stores in Leeds, England and was awarded the Wal-Mart International Expatriate Award in recognition for contributions in the ASDA conversion. Here he implemented a new Warehouse Management System for stockless general merchandise distribution and a reverse logistics supply chain.
Prior to joining Wal-Mart Bruce was a procurement Analyst for Wakefern Food Corporation in Elizabeth, NJ. While at Wakefern he implemented an INFOREM sales forecasting and reordering system to better manage 1,400 stock keeping units in three DCs.
Bruce has an MBA in Marketing from Seton Hall University and a BBA in International Business from James Madison University.
Rebecca Rosas
Rebecca Rosas joined Weather Trends in 2011 with 15 years of communications and business development experience and currently holds the position of Vice President of Business Development. Rebecca is responsible for managing and expanding the weathertrends360 brand nationally and internationally. She specializes in new client communications and introducing weathertrends' wide range of services to major retail and manufacturing corporations, financial groups, trade organizations and advertising agencies worldwide. Rebecca works directly with clients to establish custom deliverables to meet the specific needs of individual groups, and is an active liaison between technical staff and clients.
Prior to joining WTI, Rebecca worked for a number of design firms specializing in design and business development. Rebecca also came to WTI with experience in online and print advertising. She has a Bachelor of Science in Technology from Bowling Green State University where she graduated summa cum laude and with University Honors. Rebecca also obtained a Bachelor of Architecture from Drexel University.
Krissy Klinger
Krissy Klinger joined the Weather Trends International team in 2009 and currently holds the position of Vice President of Client Services and International Business Meteorologist. Krissy is responsible for producing several of the hand-written reports and various client deliverables for Weather Trends clients. She is also responsible for the quality control of our long range forecast for international locations. Krissy enjoys writing and fills in on Weather Trends' blog and social media pages when needed. She specializes in helping clients understand how weather influences their business, and how to make use of the weather to make actionable decisions.
She is a 2007 graduate of Penn State University with a bachelor's degree in Meteorology and a minor in Global Business Strategies for the Earth, Energy, and Material Industries. Although a Science major, Krissy's professors praised her written work and encouraged her to pursue a career where both meteorology and writing would be a large part of her job. That's why she was so ecstatic to join Weather Trends where a large portion of her work is writing.
Prior to Krissy finding her home at WTI, she interned at AccuWeather as a Forecaster and at Southwest Airlines as part of the Weather Dispatch team. At AccuWeather she communicated weather forecasts with clients of various media. At Southwest Airlines, she enjoyed working closely with the Chief Meteorologist and the Dispatch department providing valuable weather information that helped to keep company operations running as smooth as possible in inclement weather. While at Southwest, Krissy participated in an audit of Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts (TAFs) from National Weather Service offices around the nation.
Krissy is the proud "dog mommy" of 2 rescue dogs whom she enjoys teaching new tricks and taking for long walks around their quiet lake community. When the dogs go down for a nap, Krissy practices and studies several forms of self defense and holds a 1st degree black belt in Kenpo Karate. When she's not dog-walking or karate-chopping, she enjoys spending time with her dear family and friends.
Pam Remetta
Pam Remetta joined the Weather Trends team in early 2014. She began her career at Weather Trends as a Business Applications Meteorologist and is now VP Predictive Analytics & Business Meteorologist. While her position holds a variety of responsibilities ranging from account management and customer service, to performing QC checks on data, her main task is performing sales vs weather analyses for clients. She has performed weather-based analysis on a multitude of different products with new categories frequently coming across her desk.
Pam is also the main point of contact for most of WTI's farmer and small business clients, assisting new users with account creation and website navigation. Odds are if you call our office, you'll be talking to Pam!
She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Weather Risk Management Meteorology and a minor in Energy Business and Finance from Penn State University where she graduated in 2013. During her time at Penn State, she served as the President of the Weather Risk Management Club and participated in various philanthropic activities. In her free time, Pam enjoys rock climbing, playing with her rescue dog, and spending time with friends and family.
Evan Lowery
Evan currently holds the position of Chief Science Officer. The title is fitting as Evan is obsessively passionate about all-things weather and programming.
During his tenure, Evan and the Operations team have developed data ingest, analytics, forecast, and custom client processes which have provided our clients
with accurate, timely, and actionable data-feeds. Dozens of Fortune 500 companies have relied upon these products year after year.
In 2024, Evan's focus is on delivering new algorithms that vastly improve upon our already robust forecasting capabilities.
This passion for science is deeply rooted in his childhood when Evan first became fascinated with weather.
What started as a fear of thunderstorms propelled him through school where he earned a BS in Operations Management
from the University of Scranton, a BS in Meteorology from Millersville University, and an MS in Applied Meteorology
from Plymouth State University.
Entering his 17th year at Weather Trends, Evan is focused on providing our customers with the most accurate forecasts in the world.
Vince Menichelli
Vince has been advising and investing in early stage and middle market growth companies for over 15 years. He is a co-founder of Trestle Ventures and is a member of its Board of Managers and Investment Committee. Vince represents Trestle Ventures on the boards of The Talk Market, Orpheus Media Research and Weather Trends International.
Vince is also Managing Director at Actua Corporation (Actua) where he oversees Actua's investments, providing strategic and operational guidance to their partner companies, and evaluating new acquisition opportunities. He has been a director, advisor or observer on the boards of numerous companies. Vince currently serves on the boards of SeaPass Solutions, Inc. Parchment, Inc. and GovDelivery, Inc.
Vince spent nine years with Coopers & Lybrand and Arthur Andersen, most recently as a Senior Manager in the technology practice. He provided management consulting services including financial analysis, market research, merger and acquisition transaction support, due diligence and business valuation. In addition, he worked with clients on numerous venture capital investments, acquisitions, initial public offerings and company sales. Vince holds an MBA in finance from Lehigh University and a BS in accounting from Bloomsburg University.
Laurence S. Kalkstein, Ph.D.
Laurence S. Kalkstein is a Professor within the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Dr. Kalkstein's career has been dedicated to evaluating the influence of climate and climate variation on a variety of environmental factors, including human health, air quality, insect migration, and various climate change influence issues. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with lead authors of IPCC working groups; Dr. Kalkstein's group dealt with climate change and extreme weather influences on human health and well-being. He heads the University of Miami's Synoptic Climatology Laboratory, which is dedicated to evaluating the influence of weather situations upon various environmental features, and his work has been funded by a variety of federal government agencies, as well as NGOs, utility companies, the World Meteorological Organization, and public health agencies. He and his research group are responsible for developing heat-health warning systems, used by the National Weather Service to call advisories and warnings, for over 30 cities in the United States, as well as 30 more major urban areas around the world. Last year, Dr. Kalkstein was chosen as the American Team Leader on a U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation contract (CRDF), and he is collaborating with the Russian Team Leader to develop a detailed climatology of eastern Russia, along with the health effects of this extreme climate. Dr. Kalkstein has been editor of two climatological journals, past president of the International Society of Biometeorology, which is the largest professional organization of biometeorologists in the world, and has served as major professor for 10 Ph.D. students who are now successful academics on their own. He is a graduate of Rutgers University, and earned his Masters and Ph.D. degrees from Louisiana State University.
Richard Gurniak
Richard Gurniak is a partner in Gurniak & Gurniak, Certified Public Accountants and Vice-President of Gurniak Financial Advisors, Inc.
(a Registered Investment Advisor). A native of the Lehigh Valley, Richard earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in
Accounting from Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA in 1987. He became a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) in 1990,
earned his designations as a Certified Financial Planner® (CFP) and Personal Financial Specialist (PFS)
in 2002. He began his career with Gurniak & Gurniak in 1987 and became a partner in 1997.
Richard specializes in helping clients large and small with a variety of client solutions including individual
and business planning, tax planning, tax preparation, financial statement preparation, software & consulting,
and investment advisory services. He also does consulting and advising for closely-held businesses, business
acquisitions and start-up consulting, succession planning and part-time CFO services. He enjoys helping his
clients achieve their goals. In his spare time, Richard enjoys sports and outdoor activities.
Gerry Kress
Gerry Kress has been a Board Advisor and investor for Weather Trends International since 2010. His passion for weather and business analytics helped Weather Trends launch into new sectors in CPG and financial services. Weather Trends International was a subsidiary company under SDI Health from 2003-2006 before it was sold to a VC firm for $4.8 million in 2006 (28x return on investment). Gerry also has vast experience in the medical/health sectors and founded SDI Health in the 1980s, a Philadelphia based company that was sold in 2011 to IMS Health. Gerry resides in the Greater Philadelphia area with his wife, children and granddaughters.
