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At the Factor This Studio at DTECH 2025, Jim Madej, President & CEO, Trilliant Networks, sat down with Angela Godwin to discuss his journey and career, as well as the vision for leadership he developed along the way.
After starting his career at GE in 1990, Madej worked stints at an energy marketing company and National Grid, before deciding he wanted to run companies. Eventually he found his way to Trilliant, where he took over as CEO for his friend Andy White, who is now Executive Chairman. Following his experience in the energy industry, Madej realized that to facilitate the energy transition, someone needs to make the infrastructure – and that’s where Trilliant, a provider of smart grid and smart cities solutions, stood out to him.
Madej noted that since Trilliant is device independent, it was able to integrate with 25 different meter companies through a contract in Malaysia.
“Our moniker, our branding, is the power of choice,” Madej said, “But for us, what that means is we’re meter independent – we’re kind of agnostic. We’re MDMS system independent, we have a great head end system which can talk to any type of device.”
After years of being a leader, Madej has had some time to think about what makes a good one.
“I work really hard every day to be a better leader than I was the day before,” Madej said. “That starts with running a company well and taking care of your teams, and people that give you their care, custody and control – make sure they’re covered: benefits, employment, stability, communication. And then once you get that stabilized, I think you’ve got to try to be an industry leader and broaden your leadership influence out outside of the walls of the business you’re running.”
