Corporate Leadership
Aegion's leadership team, led by Rob Tullman, includes some of the industry's most experienced individuals with a wide range of expertise in their respective fields.
Our Leadership
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Rob Tullman
Chief Executive Officer
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Ali Sheikh
Chief Financial Officer
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Burt Keating
Chief Operating Officer
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Thys Lourens
Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer
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Robert Moorhead
Chief Commercial Officer
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John Heggemann
Senior Vice President, Controller and Chief Accounting Officer
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Wilton Hockaday
Senior Vice President, Supply Chain & Manufacturing
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Santosh Rao
President, Energy Infrastructure
Rob Tullman
Chief Executive Officer
Rob is an infrastructure executive with 25 years of global experience in water, power, oil & gas, renewable energy, and telecom sectors.
From 2014 to 2019, Rob was President & CEO of USIC, the nation’s largest underground utility locating company with 9,000 field service employees. Under his leadership, USIC doubled in revenue and – through a dividend recap and subsequent sale – doubled the enterprise value of the company for shareholders while delivering safe, high quality services to customers across the U.S. Rob and his teams were directly responsible for rebuilding IT infrastructure with big-data tools and scalable dashboards; building industry leading field operations, training, and safety programs; and overhauling commercial operations. Over the course of six acquisitions, Rob grew and diversified USIC’s service offerings and geographic coverage.
Prior to USIC, Rob was President & CEO of Granite Services (now Field Core, a GE company), servicing heavy rotating equipment for the power generation and oil & gas sectors from 1997-2014. The business grew from a group of 50 field engineers to a global services organization with 9,000 employees who maintained 15% of the world’s electric-generating capacity. Work was performed at 2,000 jobsites in 90 countries on turbines, generators, compressors, and related systems in gas, fossil, nuclear, wind, LNG, and petrochemical applications.
Rob’s team grew the wind energy services business for GE to 900 engineers and technicians globally, in addition to commissioning over 2,000 turbines per year. In the oil & gas midstream, Rob’s team led record performances in plant turnarounds for ExxonMobil in Texas, Russia, Qatar (the largest LNG facility in the world), Fife Ethylene plant in Scotland, and Bonny Island LNG in Nigeria. Work in the nuclear sector included outage support for GE technology nuclear reactors in the U.S. and Romania as well as managing field operations that were ultimately impacted by the tsunami at Fukushima Nuclear station in Japan.
Prior to his GE affiliation, Rob formed his own company, Power & Water Consulting, to resolve the technical difficulties in the startup of the then largest (1000 MW) zero-discharge combined cycle power plant in the world being constructed by Fluor Daniel. After successful completion of the project, he joined forces with three colleagues to form Penpower, a power plant startup services company that was acquired by GE in 1997.
Rob’s experience in water & wastewater began at Nalco Chemical Company in 1988 where he was a top sales performer in specialty chemical sales and worked in potable water, wastewater, and industrial water treatment. He led the first large cogeneration project in the U.S. for Nalco and was the customer lead for industrial applications in corrosion prevention and cooling water efficiency for Dow Chemical.
Rob has a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware and an MBA from Duke University. He is a member of U.S. Masters Swimming, an offshore sailor with 40,000 miles at sea, an occasional guest lecturer at the University of South Florida, and a member of the Tampa Bay Area Committees on Foreign Relations.
Ali Sheikh
Chief Financial Officer
Ali Sheikh brings more than 20 years of financial and global leadership experience across energy, transportation, and industrial sectors. Prior to Aegion, Ali served as Chief Financial Officer for Wabtec’s Freight Services business where he oversaw a $2.5 billion+ global P&L across multiple countries and led due diligence and acquisition to support inorganic growth. From 2008 to 2014, he was Chief Financial Officer for GE Power Generation Services business in the Middle East and Africa region where he designed the regional P&L structure and finance organization to align with the company’s operating structure to provide operational partnership. Prior to GE Power, Ali held financial roles of increasing responsibility within GE Energy and GE Capital.
He holds MBA from Texas Southern University.
Burt Keating
Chief Operating Officer
Burt Keating has spent the last 20 years leading global field operations in private equity-backed and publicly traded companies, as well as the military. Most recently, he was Senior Vice President of Operations at USIC where he led numerous operational excellence initiatives, including a transformation of the company's quality culture and programs. Burt also oversaw the integration of three utility locating company acquisitions.
Prior to USIC, he held multiple operational leadership roles at Granite Services, Inc. As Global Productivity & Quality Director, Burt led continuous improvement initiatives to standardize and optimize gas and steam turbine outage performance across 90 countries and 2,000 jobsites. In his role as Europe Region Director, he had full accountability for safety, quality, and productivity of projects in Italy, East Europe, and Russia. As Americas Region Director, he was responsible for maintaining GE's aeroderivative gas turbine fleet in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and South America.
He also served 20 years in the U.S. Navy's Submarine Force retiring in 2020 as a Commander. Notable career achievements include two Western Pacific deployments; qualifying Nuclear Engineer Officer; serving as the U.S. Navy's representative to the United Arab Emirates; and finally, as the Commanding Officer of a submarine maintenance reserve unit.
Burt holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and Master of Science in Engineering from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette; he received his Master of Engineering Management from Old Dominion University.
Thys Lourens
Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer
Thys has been with Aegion for 10 years as Chief Information Officer. He has 30 years of IT experience covering the manufacturing, packaged consumer goods, life sciences and construction industries. He obtained his BS in information technology at North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa. In his spare time, Thys is a keen amateur wildlife photographer.
Robert Moorhead
Chief Commercial Officer
Robert brings more than 25 years’ experience in sales, marketing, and operational leadership in public and private equity-backed businesses, both domestic and globally.
Most recently, Robert was the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing of USIC. During his tenure, Robert’s teams exceeded customer renewal revenue targets by 47%, increased national account revenue (and margins) 10% and grew the company’s regional customer base by 24%. Robert initiated sales operations processes and a cultural shift towards utilizing customer data to improve service and results.
Prior to USIC, Robert held several sales leadership roles at Aegion. As Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing (2008-2018), Robert’s teams focused on developing infrastructure renewal solutions with municipal and utility owners, consulting engineers and contractors. During that time, Aegion realized a 50% increase in customer orders along with improved margins.
Earlier in Robert’s career, he held operations and sales leadership roles in public and private firms with heavy emphasis on utility infrastructure and field services. Robert was a founding team member of the NCCER, a national construction craft, safety and management training organization that standardizes development and delivery of training programs for the construction and maintenance industries.
Robert earned his M.S. from Johns Hopkins University and his B.A. from Colorado State University. Originally from the Washington, DC, area, Robert now resides in Florida with his wife and three boys.
John Heggemann
Senior Vice President, Controller and Chief Accounting Officer
John started with Aegion in 2013 and has nearly 20 years of experience in the accounting/finance sector in various roles. He majored in accounting at Southeast Missouri State University and has an MBA from Webster University. In his spare time, John can be found competing in extreme sporting events.
Wilton Hockaday
Senior Vice President, Supply Chain & Manufacturing
Wilton (Wil) Hockaday has spent the last 25 years leading and managing global operations in private and publicly traded companies, including military service in the United States Army. Most recently, he was a General Manager for Tampa Armature Works (TAW) with full P&L responsibility for their Unionized Tampa Service Center & Custom Equipment Group.
Prior to TAW, Wil was the Senior Director of Asset Management and Global Sourcing at Granite Services Inc. In this position, he developed vision, strategy, and governance for the deployment of gas and steam turbine tooling, sourcing, procurement, and facility management operations across five continents. Before Granite, Wil spent 14 years in the Oil & Gas sector with Transocean International and National Oilwell Varco leading manufacturing and offshore drilling rig initiatives in North America and West Africa. He had full P&L accountability for offshore drilling productivity, safety, quality, supply chain, maintenance, and shipyard projects for a semi-submersible drilling rig and its diverse crews transitioning and setting up operations in the Gulf of Mexico, Nigeria, Ghana, Namibia and South Africa. Wil also served as a United States Cavalry Officer in Central Europe and the Balkans. He successfully led and maintained mechanized M1A1 Tank and Bradley Fighting Vehicle platoons in Germany and Bosnia–Herzegovina.
Wil holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from the United States Military Academy at West Point and an MBA from the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin. He currently lives in Tampa with his wife and three daughters.
Santosh Rao
President, Energy Infrastructure
Santosh Rao has more than 35 years of global executive experience leading a wide variety of private-equity-backed and large-cap publicly traded services and manufacturing companies.
He is currently Chairman of the Board and was Interim CEO for New Permian Holdco LLC, a supplier of modular above-ground storage solutions for oil & gas and specialty chemical companies. Serving in these roles, Santosh led New Permian through a successful restructuring and sale process in 4Q20.
From 2012 to 2019, he was the CEO of Autosplice Inc., a global manufacturer of interconnect solutions for automotive, industrial, and medical markets. Prior to that, Santosh was the Chief Operating Officer of Oakleaf Waste Management where he led the company's operational transformation, culminating in a successful sale to Waste Management, Inc. (NYSE: WM). He also worked at MSL (now Celestica) as Chief Operating Officer, and Sanmina-SCI (Executive Vice President of Asia Pacific) and IBM in several different roles.
Santosh graduated from Syracuse University with a master’s in industrial engineering and operations research. He received his undergraduate Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) degree from College of Engineering, in Pune, India, and currently resides in Arizona with his wife and two children.
