Cleantech Group

Qiyong Cao

Ms. Cao’s background combines 10+ years of engineering, consulting and venture capital experiences in both the US and China in various environmental and cleantech fields. She is currently a consultant on ADB’s Pilot Asia Pacific Climate Technology Finance Center, where she is responsible for the related activities to support ADB CTFC to promote investments in cleantech through venture capital and private equity funds in China. She is also the advisor for China Impact Ventures, in charge of advising CIV to formulate overall investment strategy, and helping CIV evaluate investment opportunities.

Previously, Ms. Cao worked as Investment Director of Unicorn Capital, a venture capital fund that specialized in cross-border China related investing and commercialization of clean technologies. Prior to Unicorn Capital, she worked as the Director of Investment Research at Tsing Capital, the pioneering and leading cleantech venture capital firm in China, where she closely followed the cleantech market trends and technology development and participated in deal sourcing, new deal screening and due diligence. She also worked as the Manager of the Strategic Research and Advisory Team of the China Greentech Initiative (CGTI), where she led the development of consulting-style strategic research deliverables for different cleantech sectors.

Ms. Cao holds an MBA from Tuck School of Business of Dartmouth College, a M.S. in Civil Engineering from Iowa State University, and a B.S. in Environmental Engineering from Tsinghua University.

Jiri Cermak

Jiri is IT professional by trade, musician and sound aficionado in his free time. Throughout his career, in various product management and business consultancy roles, he strived to link and connect customers’ and businesses’ needs, pains and requirements with IT products and services. Jiri joined Neuron Soundware in August 2017 as customer engagement representative – or Technology Evangelist, as he likes to call himself – to amalgamate his lifetime hobbies and professional interests into a new exciting role and mission. Jiri dreams of scaling human intuition about sound through artificial intelligence.

Peter Corne

Wei He

Wei joined from General Electric Beijing where he was a Business Development Manager in their oil, gas and power business for 4 years. Prior to this he was a senior project manager at RWE China in Beijing until 2014. Wei started his career as a project technology manager at Azure International.

Wei is a graduate of the Harbin Institute of Technology and holds a BSc in electronic engineering, of Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences where he gained an MSc in electronic engineering and of Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business where he was awarded an MBA in Finance.

Chivas Lam

Chivas Lam is the Director of Greenwoods International an advisory firm which develops cross border partnerships and projects in energy and environment between Western technology innovators and large Chinese enterprises. Chivas has 35 years of operational experience in building and re-engineering companies and executing investments in Asia Pacific region.

Prior to Greenwoods, Chivas was the Managing Partner and cofounder of MNL Partners. Before MNL, Chivas was a Venture Partner at Qiming Ventures, a leading Chinese Venture capital firm with $4 billion under management. At Qiming, Chivas led the investment in the waste-to-fuel company LanzaTech, where he joined the company as its China COO, formed its WFOE, created two joint ventures with Baosteel and Capital Steel. Chivas also drove Qiming’s investments in U.S. battery company Powergenix and Chinese advanced materials company Beiterui.

Prior to joining the Venture sector, Chivas was President Asia Pacific of carbon business of Morgan Advanced Materials. Chivas carried Profit and Losses responsibility for eleven legal entities across the region including two joint ventures in China.

Before Morgan Crucible, Chivas was General Manager for South China at GEC Alstom and Project Lead Engineer at Hong Kong Electric Power. Chivas holds a Master’s degree in Engineering from Sydney University and a BS in Engineering with first honors from the University of Hong Kong. He is based in Shanghai and has lived and worked in China for over 20 years.

Qi Lu

Qi Lu is Strategy & Research Partner at Tsing Capital, where she heads the Research Department and works closely with Managing Partners to set firm development and branding strategy for Tsing Capital. Her work includes:

• Leading the company’s effort in extensive and in-depth industry research to identify emerging opportunities for investment (10+ sectors per year).
• Composing and publishing Tsing Capital’s annual investment whitepaper to summarize findings and insights of its focused areas.
• Establishing and maintaining partnerships with industry experts from research institutes, universities, and think tanks.
• Hosting forums and workshops to facilitate discussions among start-ups, corporations, investors and policy makers.
• Speaking or arranging Tsing Capital’s executives’ speaking at world-level conferences or influential workshops.

Qi has over seven years’ experience working in energy, environmental protection and sustainable development sectors. Her focus areas include renewable energy, electric vehicle, energy efficiency, power storage, smart cities, etc.

Prior to joining Tsing Capital, she worked for Carbon Trust and Azure International, two leading environmental and low carbon consulting firms, where she worked with Chinese national and local governments to give recommendations on sustainability-related policy making. She also advised many western Cleantech companies on their China-entry strategies. Qi also worked at Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s Beijing and New York offices as a research assistant intern on power storage and U.S.’s voluntary carbon markets.

Qi holds an M.S. Operations Research from Columbia University and a B.Eng. Industrial Engineering from Tsinghua University.

Petr Míkovec

Petr Míkovec is Managing Director, Chairman of the Board of Directors and co-founder of INVEN CAPITAL, fully employed from May 2014. Petr is responsible for overall fund strategy, deal sourcing, investment process and portfolio value enhancement. Petr was directly responsible for successful completion of investments into sonnen, tado° and Cloud&Heat technologies where he serves as Advisory Board Member. In addition to that Petr represents INVEN at Corporate Club of ETF (Environmental Technologies Fund based in London). Petr has gained over 10 years of experience in Energy sector and over 5 year in Investment Banking.

Prior to joining INVEN, Petr worked at various positions at CEZ a.s. where he as Corporate Development Director implemented updated strategy of the CEZ group, scenario approach to valuation and supervised/led valuations of large investments and divestments in the company (100 million – 1 billion EUR transactions). Prior to his Energy career, Petr worked as a Head of Online Business at Patria Finance (leading investment bank in CZ, member of KBC Group), where Petr turned firms Patria Online and Patria Direct to profit position in two years. In addition to that Petr implemented strategic management reporting which delineated the profitability of the firms Strategic Business Units.

Petr holds a Master’s Degree in Finance and Managerial Information Systems at University of Economics in Prague. As a best student with highest GPA in the class, he completed a four month Professional Diploma Program in Business administration as well as a four month International Internship program as equity analyst at Technovision management fund (hedge fund based in Los Altos Silicon Valley) both at UC Berkeley XT (California).

Jos Peeters

Max Schulze

Developer turned Growth & Strategy Nerd. Co-Founder & CTO of tech startups in Germany, US and UK including Nukotoys, Lobster, Die Politiker. People person & deep understanding of cultures & growth mechanics.

Mark Sun

Mr. Mark Sun has been with Anglo American plc since Sep 2013. Based in Anglo American’s marketing hub in Singapore, Mark is responsible for marketing, sales and market development of platinum group metals (platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium, ruthenium and osmium) in Asia Pacific region. Prior to joining Anglo American, Mark had held a few senior management positions with international companies in materials, electronics and automotive industries where he was responsible for establishing and growing their China businesses. Mark has a B.E.  degree from Northeastern University (Industrial Automation) and an MBA from Shanghai Jiaotong University.

Xinxin Tian

Xinxin Tian joined Momenta in 2018 and leads the corporate strategy and development function of Momenta. Before joining Momenta, Ms. Tian worked as a financial advisory manager for Deloitte LLP (United States) and Ernst & Young LLP (Canada). She has over 6 years of experience providing transaction advisory services for clients in TMT and financial services sectors.

Ms. Tian owns a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from University of Toronto. She is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and a Chartered Public Accountant (CPA) from Canada.

Gert-Jan Vogelaar

Gert-Jan Vogelaar has held the role of Strategic Marketing Director at Punch Powertrain since 2012. Mr. Vogelaar is responsible for Punch Powertrain’s business intelligence, marketing and business development.

Prior to his role as Strategic Marketing Director, he was the company’s Manager Powertrain Design, and CVT Design Group Manager. He was also Project Manager at ZF Getriebe (later Punch Powertrain), responsible for new applications of VT1 and the development and first application of VT2.

Mr. Vogelaar started his career as an Hydraulic Engineer at Volvo Car and then later became Hydraulic Control Engineer at Volvo (VCST).

Charlotte Wang

Charlotte is a serial entrepreneur and established EQuota Energy in 2014, devoting to provide energy management AI big data solution with world-leading data analytics, energy optimization, predictive maintenance and carbon management.

EQuota’s projects are widely used in China in the fields of national high-tech industrial parks, steel manufacturing, commercial buildings and utility groups, partners with GE, Siemens, Honeywell, Engie, China Resources Power and China Power. The founding team members are all MIT alum.

Charlotte is an advocate of big data-driven energy management and she has rich experience in clean power technology industry in China, USA, Germany, Russia and many other countries. Her leading energy projects and a number of research results have been applied to Washington State government, China National Development Bank, National Development and Reform Commission, Ningbo Hi-tech Industrial Park and other domestic and foreign government agencies.

In 2018, Charlotte was named one of the 7 Asian Development Bank (ADB) New Energy Leaders, and led EQuota to became one of the 15 start-up companies finalists to cooperate with nine of the world’s largest utility companies in Free Electrons bootcamp in Lisbon. In 2016, Charlotte was elected as one of Echoing Green (Global non-profit commonwealth organization, founded in 1987) Global Climate Change Scholar. Only 11 scholars and entrepreneurs have been selected in this project worldwide. In the same year, Charlotte was speaker at Davos Economic Forum for the future of energy, who was chosen into Shanghai Thousand Talents Program, which is committed to the introduction of overseas high-level scientific and technological innovation talents. In 2012, Charlotte gained senior fellowship of SEED at Harvard University. This organization brings the world’s best Chinese research scholars, charitable leaders, and young entrepreneurs together to cultivate and shape a group of young leaders of Chinese society. Furthermore, Charlotte won the championship at the Global Challenge Contest in 2016. In 2010, Charlotte received the US National Science Foundation Scholarship, the Grace Hopper Award and the Jack Tang Fellowship.

Haifeng Wang

Richard Youngman

Since January 2016, Richard Youngman has been CEO of San-Francisco based Cleantech Group (CTG). This followed 7 years of driving the growth of CTG’s activities outside North America, especially in Europe and Israel, and Asia, based in CTG’s office in London.

Richard has more than ten years’ experience researching cleantech innovation, venture capital markets, and start-ups across Europe and globally. He is a regular keynote speaker at major cleantech events and is the driving force behind the annual Global Cleantech 100, a list of the world’s most promising private cleantech companies.

Jian Zhang

Jian Zhang is founder and CEO of GridX, a provider of Big Data billing and analytics solutions for to streamline the back office and analytics operations for smart grid. Previously, Jian had spent more than a decade developing and delivering large scale billing and settlement technologies for telecom carriers and digital media companies. Prior to founding GridX, Jian was founder and CEO of Tradescape, a financial clearing and analytics software provider for digital media applications. In that capacity, Jian led the technology startup from inception through profitability. Prior to Tradescape, Jian headed product management for new product group at Portal Software and was responsible for a line of billing products for cable operators, online media companies and telecom carriers. Portal Software was acquired by Oracle for $220 million and became Oracle Billing and Revenue Management (BRM) product offering for telecom carriers. An early pioneer of financial back-office technology for cloud services, Jian was the Principal Investigator of a NIST-funded research project in 2003 to develop the financial accounting technology for cloud/grid computing resources. Jian holds a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA degree from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Jian Zhang is founder and CEO of GridX, a provider of Big Data billing and analytics solutions for to streamline the back office and analytics operations for smart grid. Previously, Jian had spent more than a decade developing and delivering large scale billing and settlement technologies for telecom carriers and digital media companies. Prior to founding GridX, Jian was founder and CEO of Tradescape, a financial clearing and analytics software provider for digital media applications. In that capacity, Jian led the technology startup from inception through profitability. Prior to Tradescape, Jian headed product management for new product group at Portal Software and was responsible for a line of billing products for cable operators, online media companies and telecom carriers. Portal Software was acquired by Oracle for $220 million and became Oracle Billing and Revenue Management (BRM) product offering for telecom carriers. An early pioneer of financial back-office technology for cloud services, Jian was the Principal Investigator of a NIST-funded research project in 2003 to develop the financial accounting technology for cloud/grid computing resources. Jian holds a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA degree from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Leo Zhang

At Cleantech Group, Leo’s work revolves around the company’s core mission in accelerating sustainable innovation. Specifically, Leo supports a broad range of clients across the entire cleantech innovation ecosystem on technology scouting, market research, and advisory services. In addition, he also supports the company’s activities in China, including the company’s annual Cleantech China Tour, which convenes a select group of leading Western investors and start-ups in China for a week of meetings and network-building.

Leo earned a B.S. in Biotechnology with a minor in Technology Management from the University of California, Davis and a M.S. in Bioenergy from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His graduate work focused on the interdisciplinary challenges in implementing and commercializing bioenergy solutions.

Judy Zhao