Global Efficient Energy LLC
2320 Gravel Road, Building 31
Fort Worth, TX 76118
682-626-5591
www.globalefficientenergy.com
Ten years ago, Abe Issa, founder and chief executive of Fort Worth-based Global Efficient Energy LLC, graduated from Texas Christian University’s Neeley School of Business.
In March, Issa made a $500,000 commitment to construct the Abe Issa Field Sales Lab at the Neeley School. The Issa Lab will be located within the future Neeley Sales and Consumer Insights Center in the Spencer and Marlene Hays Business Commons, a $100 million building expansion project. The Hays Business Commons is expected to break ground in 2016.
The Neeley Sales and Consumer Insights Center will engage TCU students with the larger sales and marketing business community and offer technologically advanced spaces for collaborative learning and research. The Abe Issa Field Sales Lab will be a smart-learning lab with flexible spaces for product development, merchandising activities and displays, writable surfaces and the latest in visualization technology, according to school officials.
“We are pleased to support the Neeley School’s vision and are committed to assuring that it becomes the leading sales program in the country,” said Issa. “We hope to enhance collaboration among the Neeley School’s leading academics, entrepreneurs and global corporations with simulated sales environments including a buyer and seller lab, boardroom sales lab and innovative field studies.”
Issa, who grew up in war-torn Beirut, Lebanon, came with his family to America in 1987.
After completing his education at TCU, Issa founded a real estate investment firm. Between 2005 and 2010 he renovated more than 500 homes and commercial properties in Dallas, Fort Worth and South Texas, making millions of dollars. But his inexperience caught up with him in 2010. He lost his real estate company and watched his net worth shrink to $10,000. But that stumble didn’t keep the entrepreneur down. He studied demographics, trends in energy technology, the environment and how entrepreneurial, rapidly growing companies were managed, and he became an avid student of Elon Musk and Richard Branson.
In 2011, with $1,000 in capital, Issa founded Global Efficient Energy, a green energy firm offering homeowners energy efficiency, energy management and solar technology. Global Efficient Energy is a fast-growing privately held residential solar and energy management company in the United States and the third largest residential solar energy provider, according to the company. Revenues are projected to be $60 million in 2015, with plans for 26 offices nationwide by 2016. Issa has been recognized in Inc. Magazine’s 35 Under 35 annual list of young entrepreneurs, as a CEO of the Year by CEO World, and as a real difference maker in technology and business by Tech Republic’s CBS Interactive 40 Under 40 list. He was recently named a finalists for EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2015 in the Southwest Region.
“The Neeley Sales and Consumer Insights Center and the Abe Issa Field Sales Lab will attract the best and brightest students and faculty from across the nation and around the world, to position TCU to be a leader in experiential learning in sales and consumer insights,” said O. Homer Erekson, the John V. Roach Dean and professor of managerial economics and strategy at TCU’s Neeley School of Business.