CD & Power: a Bay Area Top Woman-Owned Company

You might expect to find a large number of women-owned businesses in the Bay Area. The San Francisco Business Times reports there are over 192,000 of them. What you might not expect to find is the Bay Area’s largest independent player in the industrial generator service industry among them. In the Business Times annual listing of the women-owned companies, CD & Power, Northern California’s largest, independent generator service company, muscled its way into the top 100 woman-owned businesses for the second year in a row.

Thirty years ago Chuck Uischner launched the company out of a single bay in Arnold Industrial Park in Martinez, California. Today, it continues to thrive as a family-owned business with Chuck’s daughter, Jill Collaro as President and his son, Don Uischner as Vice President.

Commenting on the Business Times recognition, Jill Collaro said, “It’s nice to be listed among the top woman-owned businesses, but I prefer to think of CD & Power as a family business. Our recent all-hands-on-deck turnout for customers besieged by the fires in Santa Rosa and the surrounding area, brought that home to me. Our work force, (male and female I should add) came together as a family in speeding emergency machinery and expertise out to our neighbors.”

Don Uischner expanded upon the “family” idea. CD & Power is California’s largest independent generator service provider. “We’re big enough,” Don said, “so we had on hand over 40 generators to deploy into the fire emergency. At the same time, we’re small enough so we knew our customers and their power requirements. So, communication flowed easily and deliveries made it through.”