New Member Biographies
August 2014
Elizabeth Kautz
Elizabeth B. Kautz was appointed to the City Council on December 15, 1992. She began serving
as Mayor in January 1995 and is presently serving her seventh term.
As Mayor, Elizabeth has focused on restoring safe neighborhoods, economic development,
maintaining quality level of community development, balancing the needs of residential and
commercial development, preserving our natural environment, infrastructure preservation and
improvement, youth initiatives, transportation issues, implementation of the initiative
Partnerships for Tomorrow, Heart of the City redevelopment, the Governance Model and
balancing revenue and services.
Mayor Kautz recently served as President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and represents Burnsville on numerous
local, regional, state and national boards.
Mayor Kautz received her Masters Degree in Counseling, Psychology from the Alfred Adler Institute of Chicago,
Illinois. She received her undergraduate degree in Theology with a psychology focus from the College of St. Catherine
in St. Paul, Minnesota. Mayor Kautz founded Growth Dynamics, Inc., in 1988 with a mission to foster continuous
improvement within individuals and organizations through heightened awareness of self and the human potential.
Her background is in organizational development, business administration, education, training and development,
pastoral care ministry, and counseling psychology. She was the Executive Vice President for the Hartford Group, Inc. a
real estate development corporation until 2006.
Sanjay Kuba
I am Senior Vice President in Business Development for GSS Infotech Pvt. Ltd. Earlier this
year, GSS Infotech acquired two of my companies – GCI Systems and Veloce Group, LLC.
This brought the total number of acquisitions by GSS to eight in the U.S. since 2008.
Founded in 1999 with headquarters in Hyderabad, India GSS Infotech is a global leader in
IT infrastructure management, application development and testing, and managed
services.
GSS Infotech works with medium and large businesses, both publicly held and closely
held; public sector organizations like K-12 schools, higher-ed, and government entities,
and non-profit organizations. We work primarily with the IT personnel and systems within
each of our customer organizations.
I am thrilled to be working with such a dynamic, growing, global organization like GSS Infotech. Becoming part of GSS
Infotech allows us to provide even more value to our clients.
On the personal side, I am committed to ensuring that the Twin Cities and Minnesota foster a climate where
businesses can grow and thrive. A growing and thriving business community is essential to a high quality of life. A
thriving business community needs competitive taxes and health care costs, a robust transportation, energy, and
communications infrastructure, and high quality education systems.
Ruby Lee, CLUES President (Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio)
Ruby joined CLUES in August 2012, after a long professional career in philanthropy,
media, and government. As the President of Minnesota’s largest Latino nonprofit, she
oversees a $6+ million budget, 100 employees, and several programs and initiatives that
focus on economic empowerment, behavioral health and healthcare prevention and
treatment, and family support services for Latinos and new immigrants.
For the past sixteen years Ruby worked for The Northwest Area Foundation and The Saint
Paul Foundation, whose strategic goals focused on anti-poverty and anti-racism efforts,
respectively. As a Program Director at the Northwest Area Foundation she provided
leadership in its new strategic direction and seeking innovative ideas through the
Foundation’s eight-state region.
Throughout her thirty-year career, Ruby has provided leadership on several national philanthropic boards including
Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees and the Four Freedoms Fund, whose funder-led Boards focus
on immigrant integration and immigration reform efforts across the country.
Ruby was born and raised in Guatemala City where her family still resides. She has been a strong advocate of Latinos
and immigrants across the country and believes that collaboration and inclusion are two vital tools in finding
solutions to the challenges immigrants face today.
As President of CLUES, Ruby has begun moving the 33-year old organization to the next state of development. CLUES
is a family-centric “one stop” resource and service center dedicated to removing barriers, increasing skills, and
promoting self-sufficiency, assets, strengths, and opportunities for Latinos.
Dennis Siemer
Mr. Siemer started his career in the electronics industry at Collins Radio Company in 1960. He was employed as a
factory service technician and field service engineer working on defense related equipment that the company made
and sold to the Army, Air Force and Marine Corps. In 1966 he joined Lear-Siegler, Inc., as a Quality Service Engineer
and worked at the McDonnell Aircraft Company in St. Louis, MO where he provided technical support for military
aircraft navigation equipment.
From 1969 through 1985 he taught in various electronics technology programs at the Mankato Area VocationalTechnical School (now SCC), in Mankato. He was the startup instructor for the Instrumentation and Control
Technology course and later taught Electronics Communications Technology.
In 1985 Mr. and Mrs. Siemer started V-TEK, Incorporated headquartered in Mankato. The company manufactures
electronic component processing equipment and provides packaging services and packaging supplies to the
electronics industry. The company has grown to include service facilities in Mexico. The company purchased Royce
Instruments, Inc. of Napa, CA in December of 2013 and now has over 200 employees in several locations.
He has served and continues to serve on several community boards and is currently an industry
member/representative of the South Central Minnesota Workforce Council.