I judge a heat pump by its fifteenth winter: whether the household could afford it without a credit, whether any licensed technician could repair it and whether the family still decides who reads its data.
I am chief product officer of Ambersley Climate Company, an employee-owned maker of heat pumps, air conditioners, furnaces and the controls that run them, based in Springfield, Missouri. My organisation of 780 people covers product management, systems engineering, controls and software, our test laboratories and product safety and regulatory compliance, with a budget of US$118 million. I report to our chief executive, Rosamund Quarrie, and I bring product-safety decisions to the board's product safety and quality committee. Our equipment is sold through independent distributors to about 11,000 contracting firms, and almost none of our customers ever deal with us directly.
I grew up riding along on winter service calls with my father, who ran a two-van heating and appliance repair business in Sedalia. I then spent four years tearing down failed compressors in a laboratory in Ohio and five on a distributor's warranty desk, where I learnt that most equipment that comes back broken was let down by its installation, its documentation or its controls rather than its metal. I moved into product management at a thermostat maker in 2006, built its connected platform and joined Ambersley in 2016 to run residential product management. I became chief product officer in March 2021.
Four questions occupy most of my time. Which heating products should a company still develop when the home market is moving from gas to heat pumps at different speeds in Minnesota and Mississippi? How do we take the industry's refrigerant change without asking contractors and homeowners to absorb a safety margin we chose not to build? Who should be able to repair our equipment and read what it reports? And how should a product line be priced in a market where public incentives arrive and disappear? I have made decisions on each, and several of them cost us money or share.
Heat pumps from 36% to 57% of residential units
In 2021 I recommended stopping development of a new gas furnace platform and putting its US$34 million into a cold-climate heat pump and dual-fuel controls. Heat pumps rose from 36% of our residential outdoor units in 2020 to 57% in 2025, while furnace revenue fell from US$520 million to US$430 million.
A leak sensor in every ducted indoor unit
For our move to a lower-warming refrigerant we fitted refrigerant detection to every ducted indoor unit, whatever its charge, at about US$46 a unit. We launched three months late and gave up about 2.5 points of share in one replacement segment during the 2025 cooling season.
A recall that reached 78% of the kits
In 2023 we recalled all 52,000 electric heat kits from a nine-month production period, with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, rather than the 14,000 traceable to one supplier lot. Eighteen months later 78% had been inspected or replaced.
Diagnostics for 7,900 contracting firms
We opened our service app, manuals and parts to any technician certified to handle refrigerant, not only our certified dealers. First-visit repairs on communicating systems rose from 71% to 84%, and parts returned with no fault found fell from 29% to 18%.
Current focus
I am preparing our 2027 product plan for a market without the federal homeowner credit, which means re-pricing our mid-tier heat pumps against the furnace-and-air-conditioner replacement a family would otherwise buy. I am also working with our product-safety team on what our connected systems should report automatically when a safety-critical component starts to drift.
Conversations I welcome
I welcome one non-executive board seat at a company that makes durable equipment with software inside it and does not compete with, supply or buy from Ambersley, subject to my chief executive's consent. From 2027, once our refrigerant transition is complete, I would also hold conversations about a division presidency or chief executive role at a hardware-and-software manufacturer. I accept a small number of advisory and speaking invitations each year on repairability, product safety and connected-product data.