In July 2011, Cree announced the appointment of Stephan Greiner as Vice President of its Europe, Middle East, and Asia (EMEA) region. He leads the team from its German regional headquarters and is responsible for the sales of Crees component portfolio, ranging from LED chips and components to module products. Stephan has more than 16 years of experience in the semiconductor sales market and has worked for some of the biggest names in the industry. After finishing my masters degree in electrical engineering back in 1995, I started my career as an account manager in Siemens Semiconductors, which was mainly focusing on smaller industrial and automotive accounts, with a product range of microcontrollers and power semiconductors.
A little later on, I was part of the movement to Infineon Technologies. I took on different roles in the automotive global key account section with a strong focus on power assets, microcontrollers, sensors, and so on. I was given my first team manager responsibilities in this role and effectively managed all aspects of a sales organisation. In 2002, I moved to Osram Opto Semiconductors to help them build up and manage a sales organisation for what they called Europe and emerging markets, which was essentially Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. This was basically my first step into the opto industry, so the product focus changed to LED and infrared products, optical sensors, and laser components.
In 2008, I was recruited by the largest Taiwanese optoelectronics company, Everlight Electronics. I was appointed as their vice president of global sales and managed their global sales organisation from Taipei, Taiwan, with a main focus on LEDs, infrared, and opto couplers for all of the industries you can imagine, which includes consumer goods, computers, backlighting applications, general lighting, and the automotive and industrial sectors. In 2011, Cree, the leading company in LED technology and lighting, asked me to come on board and help them develop their EMEA components business. At that time, I was open for a new challenge and found the idea of driving the LED-lighting revolution absolutely thrilling, so thats why I took that step and accepted the position.