For this Volta employee spotlight, we’re turning to Jon Mulder, our resident “jack of all trades” and Vice President of Sales. From keeping his fingers on the pulse of industry shifts to strengthening interpersonal connections within our team, Jon’s been an instrumental part of Volta’s success since he joined our team in May 2020. With an automotive and factory-focused background, he fell into his role at Volta as many do—through friendship and a serendipitous twist of fate.
The automotive and automotive-adjacent industries weren’t new to Jon when he first started working here. What was new? In short, physics. All of it.
“Yeah, the details of automotive tech changes, but for the most part it’s been around forever,” he said. “An engine is an engine. But when you start getting into volts, amps, watts? It’s a totally different world, a totally different language. Sometimes it feels like we spend 80% of our time in sales just educating on what it all means!”
And there’s a lot to teach. In an industry where there’s little consistency with how suppliers test and prove the power and efficacy of their power solutions, it’s often difficult for potential buyers to know what to trust.
With so much variability in quality, Jon knows there’s a lot of pressure to dispel misconceptions without digging too deep into the engineering “nitty gritty.” Honesty and clarity are incredibly important.
As far as his role within Volta, Jon sees himself as a bit of a bridge-builder between people, and with good reason: our culture and team are his favorite things about working here!
“We have the most talent of any advanced energy team, period,” he said before joking, “I have to have great talent around me to be successful, and most of them are a lot smarter than me!”
Aside from building connections between members of our team and our customers, Jon’s incredibly proud of the various ways he’s pushed for Volta to grow. His ability to tune into customer feedback and needs led to the development of our Power Distribution Hub (PDH) system component, as well as our continued branching into over-the-road trucking applications.
If there’s one thing we can always count on from Jon, it’s that he’ll continue staying at the forefront of what our customers, end-users, and team members need.
