PRESS RELEASE
TULSA, OK, Oct. 01, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AAON, Inc. announced today that its Board of Directors has increased the size of the Board from seven to nine members and appointed Bruce Ware and David Stewart as new independent directors to fill the vacancies, effective October 1, 2021.
Ware brings significant experience serving in multiple executive and leadership roles at publicly traded companies. Presently, he serves as a Corporate Vice President and Group Head of Joint Venture Capital Raising for DaVita Inc. DaVita is a Fortune 500 NYSE publicly traded health care services company. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MPA from The University of Texas at Austin and a bachelor's degree from The University of Mississippi at Oxford. Ware also serves on the Board of Directors of Blackhawk Bancorp, Inc., as well as the University of Mississippi National Alumni Board. He is also a Trustee of Uplift Charter Schools, a high-performing, multi-site K-12 public charter school system in Dallas, TX.
For his part, Stewart brings over 40 years of professional experience to the Board. He currently serves as Chief Administrative Officer and Trustee of the Oklahoma Ordnance Works Authority, Pryor, OK, an industrial public trust that owns and operates MidAmerica Industrial Park. He was appointed to this post in 2012 by the former OK Gov. Mary Fallin. Prior to his current position, Stewart served as Chief Executive Officer of Cherokee Nation Businesses, LLC. In that role, as a member of the Cherokee Nation, himself, he helped negotiate the State-Tribal Gaming Compact in 2004. He holds both M.S. and B.S. degrees from Oklahoma State University and is a certified public accountant. Mr. Stewart was appointed by OK Gov. Kevin Stitt to the Oklahoma State Board of Career and Technology Education, on which he currently serves.
Ware and Stewart will each also serve as members on the Audit Committee of AAON’s Board of Directors.
Paul K. Lackey, Jr., Chair of AAON’s Governance Committee and Lead Independent Director, stated, “Bruce and David are each wonderful additions to our Board. They bring strong professional backgrounds and unique skill-sets that are extremely complementary to our existing Board members. We are excited to leverage their capabilities to further strengthen our Board.”
Gary D. Fields, CEO and President, said, “We are very fortunate to be in a position to add Bruce and David to our Board of Directors. The experience they have each accumulated over the course of their careers is a testament to their immense capabilities and I very much look forward to working closely with them to continue delivering meaningful value to our stockholders as we execute on our long-term strategic plans.”
About AAON
AAON, Inc. is engaged in the engineering, manufacturing, marketing and sale of air conditioning and heating equipment consisting of standard, semi-custom and custom rooftop units, chillers, packaged outdoor mechanical rooms, air handling units, makeup air units, energy recovery units, condensing units, geothermal/water-source heat pumps, coils and controls. Since the founding of AAON in 1988, AAON has maintained a commitment to design, develop, manufacture and deliver heating and cooling products to perform beyond all expectations and demonstrate the value of AAON to our customers. For more information, please visit www.AAON.com.