Management Team
Chris Brown – President
Chris Brown is the president of Clayton Controls and is responsible for all aspects of the company's management. An eighteen-year veteran of Clayton, Chris has held many positions in sales and operations.
“When I started with Clayton, I immediately liked that it had a small company feel with big company expectations,” Chris said. “That is what makes Clayton such a unique company and sets the tone for our culture.” Chris is very involved in the company's day-to-day operations and works closely with customers and suppliers. “We have a great team of professionals who make it happen everyday for our customers,” he said. “That level of dedication and service is invaluable to our success and the success of our customers”.
John Allard – Vice president
John Allard is the vice president of Clayton Controls and oversees the company's sales, technology support and marketing strategies.
“I've seen a lot of changes during my 23 years at Clayton but our company culture and customer relationships have remained the same,” said John. “Our focus is on serving our customers and putting together the right solution for their specific need.” John played a key role in delivering the company's electronic product lines and expanding their offering to customers.
Ric Leyva - Sales Manager, Arizona, Nevada and Northern California
Ric Leyva is the Sales Manager of Clayton Controls Arizona, Nevada and Northern California region and has been in the Automation industry since 1990 with experience ranging from Application Engineering to Sales and all levels of corporate management.
“Our focus in Arizona, Northern California and Nevada is to assist our customers in getting to market faster than their competition by leveraging our decades of combined experience in automation, motion, robotics, vison, sensor and pneumatics. The customer is the expert at their process and we are experts at applying the latest technologies to achieve their manufacturing goals. It used to be the BIG that ate the small, nowadays it’s the fast that eat the slow! Let us help make you the fastest in your industry! ”.
Mike Angotti - Sales Manager, Southern California
Mike Angotti has been in the Automation Industry since 1994. Holding many positions from Sales, Pnuematic Specialists, and Sales Director. He also spent two years as Director of Sales in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand stationed in Singapore.
“I have been working with Clayton Controls since 2008 and am excited to now be part of the team. My goal is to help expand the Clayton Controls footprint in the Southern California Market. The focus will be to provide first class service along with superior customer support to solve our client's needs. Our breadth of knowledge on the industries served and the technologies offered will help put our customers' needs first and allow them to achieve thier goals ”.
Don Allen - Manager
Don had 10 years of experience in Packaging and Automation prior to coming to Clayton in 1994. He enjoys problem solving and works closely with the sales department, reviewing projects to ensure it fits with their core competency. Once the project is accepted, he works directly with the customer to provide a quote based upon the BOM customer drawings, digital images and assembly instructions. Don draws upon his experience to discover the best way to build and manufacture the product in a timely and cost efficient manner.
Sales Team
Southern California
Sean Julian - Territory Manager, Inland Empire
Sean has been working in Industrial Automation distribution and Manufacturing for over 20 years. First in the San Francisco Bay area assisting large companies in the Semiconductor, Bio Medical, Clean Energy & Pharmaceutical industries. And the last 5 years in Southern California working with Aerospace, Packaging, Food/Beverage, and Electric Vehicle companies.
“I have worn many hats in my 20 year Automation Career. Inside Sales, Project Manager, Assembly Tech manager and for the last 10 years Field sales. I enjoy meeting new customers and working with them to find the best fitting solution for their automation applications. I’m very excited to be part of the Clayton team.”
Farhan Mahbub – Territory Manager, Los Angeles, CA
Farhan comes to Clayton Controls with over 10 years in the machine vision industry.
He brings a level of experience and expertise that is rare and has already proven to be extremely valuable to increasing the success of our customer's machine vision projects. We invite you to contact Farhan to discuss or review your machine vision applications.
Arun Alagappan - Territory Manager, Orange County
Coming from an engineering background in the medical device industry, Arun is excited to make the transition into technical sales. He started out as a Biomedical Engineer for large medical device corporations in both Northern and Southern California. His technical background and expertise will further help him provide the most efficient solution for his customers.
“I have always enjoyed interacting and building positive relationships with people. Having experienced the engineering side, I am ecstatic to transition into a role where I can help customers and provide them with solutions while creating long lasting relationships. Having worked in larger corporate companies, I feel Clayton Controls is the perfect fit for my growth in a team and family oriented environment. I am beyond excited to take on this new journey with a forward thinking company that’s continuously finding ways to affect positive change in the industry.”
Kelly Mada - Territory Manager, Northern LA / Ventura and Santa Barbara County
Kelly has been working in Industrial Automation for the past 33 years. I am excited to be part of a company that is continually growing and changing with technology. A company that believes in making a difference in today’s ever evolving world of manufacturing. It feels good to be part of the Clayton Controls family again and to share my passion of helping others.
Ingo Ruppert – Territory Manager, San Diego
Ingo has been working in the Automation Industry since 2006 with a high focus on building lasting connections with his customers. Having been in multiple executive roles from engineering to sales for component manufacturers allows him to see the big picture and focus on what makes a project a success.
“Before starting my role at CES, I worked with Clayton Controls as a vendor. Here I had a chance to get to know the team. One of the driving forces for me accepting this role is to support the CES team that breathes the Clayton Controls spirit of building long lasting relations with customer and earns a seat at the table as trusted advisor. If the customer is successful, we will be successful.”
Northern California/Northern Nevada
Jason Bauman - Territory Manager, Mid Valley/I-80 Corridor, Northern Nevada
Jason has been involved in helping customers with their automation and fluid power needs for over 18 years. His background as both a salesperson and business owner has provided Jason with a unique perspective of all aspects of the business and helps him understand the needs of our customers.
“I love Clayton Control’s dedication to our customers. There is a real family atmosphere and a can do attitude throughout the company. We have an awesome team!”
Erin (Graves) Diven, M.Ed. - Territory Manager, Peninsula
Erin has been in the Industrial Automation industry since 2007 primarily in Inside Sales. She is now utilizing her wealth of product knowledge and long-standing customer and vendor relationships in her role as Territory Manager.
"I am happy to be returning to the Industrial Automation Industry after pursuing education over the past 7 years. I’m even happier that I have been welcomed back to a company that I have always consider family. I look forward to taking what I have learned about the process of creativity and education and integrating that into new innovative ways of helping others problem solve and develop new applications in order to thrive in our ever-evolving economy."
Garrett Brown - Territory Manager, Central California Region
Garrett Brown brings a dynamic blend of expertise in industrial distribution and automation to our team. With a career beginning in 2018 in industrial distribution, Garrett has cultivated a deep understanding of customer applications, vendor and customer relations, and our core product lines.
In 2022, Garrett transitioned his focus to the automation industry, leveraging his background in industrial distribution.
“I am proud to be a part of the Clayton Controls team, and enjoy the constant learning required to stay up to date with customer applications and the evolving technologies we use.”
Arizona/ Southern Nevada
Danny Acuña - Territory Manager
With over 18 years of technical sales and leadership experience, Danny brings a passion for helping his customers find the most efficient solutions through building relationships and understanding their needs. He is now applying the same expertise in building strong customer and vendor relationships as a Territory Manager for Clayton Controls in Arizona and Southern Nevada.
“I’m excited to be part of the Clayton Controls team. While Clayton Controls is a professional company that continues to challenge itself and grow, the family environment shines through and makes it a perfect fit. I’m enthusiastic about the future and being part of a forward-thinking company that adapts to the ever-changing world of technology.”
Engineering Team
Chris Prior - Senior Applications Engineer
Chris joined the Clayton Controls team with a background in motion controls and robotics. With over fifteen years in the automation industry covering projects from design thru implementation and production he brings a wide range of talent covering servos, VFD’s, PLC’s, robotics and motion control programming.
Josh Mylnar – Senior Applications Engineer
Josh Mylnar is a Senior Applications Engineer for all of California and Nevada. Josh is highly experienced in all things Automation with over 20 years of selling, supporting, and implementing almost every form of automation there is from down to the component level all the way to complex turnkey robot cells. Josh is passionate about helping customers from all industries solve complex automation applications.
“I am beyond excited to be working with the Clayton team. It has been very obvious from the beginning that the level of professionalism and the level of technical expertise that we have at Clayton is top notch.”
Michael Perez – Senior Applications Engineer
I am an Electronic Engineer graduated from the University San Carlos of Guatemala. My first experience on automation was on 2006 as a salesman selling pneumatic and sensor devices in Guatemala, after being a salesman for a couple of years, I changed to be an application engineer mostly with Mitsubishi Electric products and developed different applications in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, even I had my own integration company at Honduras.
Came to the US in 2013 and have been working on the bay area since, have being helping customers on providing solutions now with Robots and different automation devices to fill their needs.
Sonu Singh - Design & Application Engineer
Sonu a recent graduate joined the Clayton Controls team with a background in product design and development. He has a Master’s in engineering and will be working closely with our CES team to support them on projects that require his engineering expertise right from design thru assembly. He will also work and support our applications and technical support team.
“I enjoy working on different projects and to learn something new from each one of them.”