Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States, November 2025 — Joseph Leonard has started a new role as Vice President of Human Resources at Nortek Data Center Cooling, bringing a distinguished HR career shaped across global industrial technology leaders, high-growth manufacturing environments, and complex, multi-site workforce ecosystems. In his new mandate, he will help strengthen people strategy, organizational capability, and leadership development to support Nortek’s rapid expansion in sustainable, future-ready data-center cooling solutions.
Most recently, Joseph Leonard served as Vice President of Human Resources at Ingersoll Rand, supporting a global industrial technology leader with $7B revenue and 21,000 employees. Over more than one year, he played a key strategic role in shaping talent strategy, strengthening organizational programs, and supporting leadership teams across critical business segments based in Milwaukee.
Before this, he spent over eleven years at Dover Corporation, holding multiple senior HR leadership roles including Vice President of Human Resources, Corporate, where he partnered closely with the C-suite and led HR for four international SaaS businesses. He oversaw a global HR team of more than 40 professionals, supported strategic consulting initiatives in pricing, supply chain and growth, and contributed to successful SaaS acquisitions. Prior to this, he served as Vice President of Human Resources at Colder Products, leading HR through hyper-growth that doubled the workforce and revenue, and earlier held HR leadership roles at Dover Precision Components and Waukesha Bearings, shaping HR transformation, talent programs, safety excellence initiatives, and union-management negotiations.
Earlier in his Dover journey, he also contributed as Director of HR, Americas at Dover Precision Components, leading HR across multiple U.S. and Mexico manufacturing sites, negotiating collective bargaining agreements, centralizing talent acquisition, and designing leadership development programs that trained hundreds of managers company-wide.
Prior to his Dover tenure, he built foundational HR experience at Wiscraft, Inc., serving as Human Resources Manager for a mission-driven nonprofit supporting individuals who are blind or visually impaired. He played an instrumental role in launching a new call-center unit, securing major clients, and contributing to fundraising efforts that strengthened the organization’s social impact.
His early career also includes impactful work in health, safety, benefits, and HR operations at Waukesha Bearings, where he drove safety, wellness, and benefits programs across multiple locations and contributed to major improvements in safety metrics and healthcare programs.
About Nortek Data Center Cooling
Nortek Data Center Cooling delivers industry-leading, future-proof cooling solutions that enable data centers to significantly enhance energy efficiency, reduce environmental footprint, and operate with unmatched reliability. With a strong focus on eliminating downtime, maximizing performance potential, and minimizing equipment footprint, Nortek provides adaptable systems designed for the world’s most demanding digital infrastructure environments.
The company’s advanced cooling technologies empower customers to meet aggressive sustainability targets while ensuring resilience, scalability, and operational continuity in an era where data-center reliability is mission-critical.
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