Garthen Leslie, DM '12

Doctor of Management shows Dr. Garthen Leslie's nventing prowess! For years, the 60-year-old Columbia resident has been trying to sell his inventions: a skateboard with an odometer and a speedometer, a sensory-equipped life vest for toddlers, and more. He was selling them all, but nobody was buying. Until last fall, that is, when his proposal for a "smart" window air conditioner won rave reviews from Quirky, a five-year-old New York City-based company whose stated mission is to "make inventions accessible.”

The idea was born last year, when Leslie was driving through Northwest Washington and noticed a profusion of air conditioning units sprouting from apartment windows. He thought, “Wow, those things must be running all day long, and must be costing people a lot of money”, he recalled. He started thinking, “You know there are smart phones that al-low you to control a lot of things. Why couldn't I control that air conditioner with my smart phone?' "

Now, six months later and with the help of Quirky and General Electric, Garthen's air conditioner has hit the market. He has made a splash in the world of everyman inventors, appearing on the CBS News Sunday Morning show and elsewhere in the media. It's left the unassuming Garthen, a former chief information officer for the Columbia Association, "tickled to death," as he put it.

Dr. Leslie is a Senior IT Management Executive with extensive expertise in application develop-ment, IT consulting, infrastructure development, professional services, enterprise project management, storage management and implementation, global technical support, data center management and systems and desktop support. He is an accomplished leader and manager of diverse workforces (local, national, and international). He has managed IT operations with proven strategic and bottom line successes in leveraging technical human capital, advanced hardware and software, and process improvement methodologies. As a director level executive at Johnson Controls, Teksystems, Fannie Mae and IBM, he has achieved superior outcomes in technology improvements. He is a senior level IT policy advisor and significantly influenced bottom line business results at these highly respected organizations.

See Dr. Leslie’s National TV commercial here.