Title: Founder and president, LPB Energy Management

Details: Canadian-born Berke got his start with a law degree and a stint on Wall Street before entering the telecom industry in the late ’90s, when he moved to Dallas to work with Kenny Troutt at Excel Communications. After the tech bust, Berke saw opportunity in potential deregulation of the energy market and founded LPB Energy Management—a data collection, bill auditing, and energy consulting company—in 1999.

Why You Need to Know Him: Because Berke specializes in saving companies money.

By collecting and synthesizing raw data, LPB builds a profile of how a client’s utilities are used (and often wasted). After combing through energy bills, LPB claims a percentage of the savings—or customers can pay a fee up front. This may be the time to get your energy use in order; under the Obama administration, Berke says, don’t expect to get away with fudging carbon emissions and energy data. Potential laws aside, “apply the same rigor to energy as you do to the rest of your business,” he says. LPB is applying such rigor to the State of Texas’ energy bills; when its 4 1/2-year contract is up in 2010, Berke says he will have saved the state more than $50 million.