Khalil named CEO and Cook retires but remains on the board
NORCROSS, GA – Halco Lighting Technologies announces that Fawaz Khalil will be taking the helm as the company’s Chief Executive Officer, following the retirement of its CEO, Kim Cook. Both Fawaz and Kim will continue to serve on the Board of Directors at Halco.
Cook’s career at Halco has spanned more than 24 years. The first 13 years of her career were spent in sales roles including National Sales Manager and VP Sales and Marketing. In 2005, Cook was promoted to Chief Operating Officer. She became President in 2012, followed by CEO in 2015. During her tenure, Cook was instrumental in Halco’s impressive growth through her leadership, channel strategy, and major product category launches.
“After being promoted to CEO in 2015, I continued our focus on identifying and leveraging industry trends to ensure continued success. In recent years, the industry has undergone significant technology shifts in both lamps and luminaires, which will only continue with the introduction of IoT in the lighting space.” Cook said. “The decision to step down required much introspection and careful consideration. In light of where the industry is heading it was clear that I needed to step down and let Fawaz take the reins for this next phase of growth and success for Halco,” she concluded.
Khalil brings both lighting industry experience and managing aggressive growth in diverse industries from early stage startups to Fortune500 companies.
Most recently, he was President – Purafil, at the Filtration Group where he delivered a successful turnaround of a global business delivering 3x market growth and 30% profit growth in a year through strategy development and disciplined execution, while driving lean principles across all functions, including sales, marketing, product management, operations, finance and customer service.
Prior to his role at Purafil, he was Vice President and General Manager for Vertical Markets and IoT solutions at Acuity Brands where he was responsible for developing the overall business strategy, top line revenue, creating value-added vertical market solutions, IoT smart lighting-enabled applications, and remote and field delivered services, ultimately, transforming the business profile and accelerating growth into higher margin businesses. While at Acuity Brands, he also managed the full P&L for the Industrial division which includes high and low bay luminaires, emergency and exit lighting, modular wiring and daylighting solutions for various end markets. Before joining Acuity Brands, Fawaz spent eight years with Danaher Corporation, a global science and technology company. Khalil served the company in manufacturing, marketing and general management positions. His key accomplishments included double-digit core growth and share expansion in a shrinking market by developing segmentation, pricing and digital marketing capabilities. Additionally, he was the subject-matter expert across Danaher for value-added solutions and service commercialization best practices.
Khalil holds a BS in Computer Science from the National University of Computing and Emerging Sciences in Pakistan and an MBA from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. He and his family reside in Johns Creek, GA.
For more information, visit: www.halcolighting.com.
