Cleantech Group

Joe Babiec

Joe Babiec is the vice president, strategic initiatives at VIA. In his position, Joe stewards client relationships from first introductions through product implementations. He plays a major role in gathering feedback and understanding market needs across stakeholders in the energy industry.

Joe has spent the last four years with Rosc Global, a firm that provides merchant banking and advisory services to governments, corporations, and nonprofits. As partner and senior managing director at Rosc Global, he led the firm’s advisory work with government, industry, and civic leaders on technology and innovation strategies for improving global competitiveness. Prior to Rosc Global, Joe was the vice president for knowledge sharing of the Teach For All network where his team of 30 professionals, located in seven cities across the globe, provided specialized technical consulting and training services to the network’s member organizations.

From 2007 – 2010, Joe was a principal at Market Metrics, a leading market research firm focused exclusively on investments and insurance sold by financial advisors worldwide. Prior to joining Market Metrics, he spent four years as a senior manager in Booz Allen Hamilton’s foreign affairs practice. Before Booz Allen Hamilton, Joe was with Monitor Group for eight years beginning as a junior strategy consultant, working his way up to group partner and country competitiveness practice leader. He was later co-founder and chief knowledge officer of OTF Group, a subsidiary of Monitor Group.

Joe earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT and his master’s degree in political economics from the London School of Economics.

Chris Ballinger

Chris Ballinger is former Chief Financial Officer and Director of Mobility Services for the Toyota Research Institute. He joined TRI in April 2017 following 14 years at Toyota Financial Services (TFS), where he served in a global leadership role as Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Officer of Strategic Innovation, helping guide global TFS strategy to address future market trends and business model requirements. Prior to joining Toyota, Ballinger’s career stops included Providian Financial as Assistant Treasurer, Bank of America as Senior Vice President of Treasury, and Staff Economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisors under President Reagan.

Jules Besnainou

Jules Besnainou is the Executive Director of Cleantech for Europe, the initiative helping the EU lead the race to net zero by bridging the gap between cleantech leaders and policymakers. He was previously a director at Cleantech Group, where he advised the world’s foremost cleantech investors, corporates and governments, helping them assess and invest in new innovations. After starting his career in San Francisco and London, he moved back to France to head the group’s EU presence and clients. Jules graduated summa cum laude from Sciences Po Paris.

Stina Brock

Stina Brock is the Senior Vice President of North America for Electron. She is focused on working with industry partners, utilities, and grid operators to bring Electron’s innovative solutions to energy markets to enable a more efficient and sustainable grid. Previously, Stina was the Senior Director of Global Utility & Grid Solutions at Sunverge, leading Sunverge’s Solutions Engineering team. At Sunverge, Stina was responsible for developing Sunverge’s product offerings for utilities. She led Sunverge’s efforts to use blockchain technology to improve how distributed resources at the grid edge can provide value to utilities and energy markets. As an original member of the product team, she grew the company’s product to commercialization and helped to expand Sunverge’s customer base across North America and globally. Prior to Sunverge, Stina led product marketing activities at Primus Power, an energy storage startup based on advanced flow battery technology, and managed utility operations at EnerNOC (acquired by Enel), a demand response and smart grid industry leader. She started her career at Accenture as a strategy consultant in the technology sector. She has an MSEE degree in electrical power engineering from the University of Washington, and AB & BE degrees in engineering and economics from Dartmouth College.

Kendrick Carroll

Bennett Cohen

Bennett brings 15 years of experience at the intersection of energy, mobility and innovation spanning venture capital, startups, large corporations and consulting. Most recently Bennett established the venture capital arm of Royal Dutch Shell in San Francisco, where he led $50 million of investments focused on the future of energy and mobility, served on the boards of portfolio companies, and chaired the global mobility investment committee. Before moving into venture capital, Bennett was based at Shell headquarters in Europe developing the strategy that underpins the company’s New Energies division, which develops business globally in renewable power and storage, smart grid, electric mobility, and energy access. Bennett has also worked as a consultant at Rocky Mountain Institute, where he reported directly to Amory Lovins, and as a Director of Business Development at CPower, a demand response startup that was acquired by Constellation in 2010.

Bennett’s professional passions are sustainability, entrepreneurship, teamwork and the challenges facing the global energy industry.

Bennett is a Kauffman Fellow, and holds a BA in Economics (summa cum laude) from Columbia University and an MSc. in Industrial Ecology from TU Delft.

Jeff Cohen

Jeff is co-founder and Vice President at Xpansiv Data Systems, a technology company focused on digitizing commodities and their environmental attributes for global markets. Prior to Xpansiv, Jeff co-founded EOS Climate which has delivered millions of cost-effective, verified emission reductions to the California cap-and-trade program.

Jeff brings over 30 years of national and international experience developing and implementing policies designed to protect the environment including major national air and drinking water regulations and driving initiatives at the US EPA addressing both ozone protection and climate change. A contributing author on the IPCC Special Working Group on Ozone Protection and Greenhouse Gases, Jeff was part of the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize honorees and is listed in the Montreal Protocol Who’s Who.

He has an M.S. in Public Health from the University of North Carolina, a B.S. in Biology from the State University of New York, and an MBA in Sustainable Management from the Presidio School of Management in San Francisco.

Felix Grolman

The industry expert and entrepreneur Dr. Felix Grolman is CEO of the young company shine, which is positioned to bridge the gap between energy and data driven businesses. Felix previously established a renewable energy utility and direct marketing player with over 160m EUR in revenues, that encompassed power trading and direct power delivery. After he sold its business activities in 2016, the economist and lawyer has taken on a new task: to lead shine to its goal of making decentralised and renewable energy financially independent, profitable and accessible to everyone. Felix had for the last 10 years been a founder, investor and advisor for renewable energy and the digital economy. Following the growing importance of energy and energy production, he has established himself as an active advocate and expert for renewable energies in Germany and Europe. He previously held positions with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Morgan Stanley in London and with the Boston Consulting Group in Zurich, before establishing his own companies within the renewable energy space. Felix also serves on the board of several young digital start-ups and has worked and lived in the USA, the UK, Spain, France, Switzerland and Germany. With his activities Felix wants to put pressure onto the traditional energy economy which ties customers to annual contracts and sells its products using confusing tariff structures. With his new company he intends to bring us all one step closer to a world of abundant energy at zero marginal costs the in which the only non-infrastructure value creation will be in the intelligent selection, distribution and utilisation of energy from all sources.

Scott Kessler

Scott Kessler is the current Director of Business Development at LO3 Energy, which is an energy technology company developing a community microgrid in Brooklyn, NY. Scott’s background includes the administration of energy efficiency programs at NYSERDA and CT Light and Power as well as time spent at a consulting firm assisting utilities in improving their existing programs, promoting renewables and assessing their impacts across the grid. Throughout his nearly ten years of experience in the energy industry in New York and California, Scott has combined an engineering background with experience in business and project management to achieve success and energy savings amidst difficult regulatory environments.

Jared Klee

Florian Kolb

Florian has 20 years of professional experience in tech and non-tech-related industries with a strong background in mergers & acquisitions (Florian has led and worked on more than 60 deals worth over 12bn USD, including venture deals), post-merger integration (7bn USD integration), operational management, restructuring (2,5bn+ program), business development, market entry and innovation (Silicon Valley).

Florian started his career working for a serial entrepreneur who developed and IPO’ed a highly successful packaging business. During the dot.com era, Florian advised tech and start-up companies in early- and later-stage fundraising. He focused on private equity and leveraged transactions in Automotive and Electronics before joining RWE, a leading pan-European energy company with more than 50bn revenues and more than 60.000 employees.

At RWE, Florian lead M&A deals worth more than 10bn USD. After the acquisition of it’s Dutch business, Florian managed the integration of this 7bn+ USD acquisition into the RWE group. He then became the Managing Director of RWE’s Dutch services company, transforming major corporate functions, delivering very ambitious cost-savings and multi-million USD IT programs. Florian was appointed in 2013 by the Executive Board of RWE to manage the 2.5bn+ USD group-wide transformation program, covering all main areas and functions of the business.

In 2015, Florian has been appointed as Managing Director of RWE’s activities in Silicon Valley (which now have been rebranded innogy). He focuses to secure future, non-traditional business for innogy via three core activity streams: 1. market entry, 2. Venturing and 3. innovation. This includes leading strategic investments in early- and later-stage companies, leading the group-wide data-driven business model activities and testing and launching new businesses for innogy in the renewables, grid and retail space. During the last two years, innogy has invested a very substantial double-digit million USD amount in various Silicon Valley-based activities. Florian serves on the boards of portfolio companies from Silicon Valley. Florian is also the founding father of the Free Electrons program, a global accelerator program operated by a consortium of leading utilities from around the world and is acting as a mentor for Singularity University programs.

Florian holds a masters degree in economics from the University of Passau, Germany.　He participated in executive programs from leading academic institutions such as INSEAD Fontainebleau, IMD Lausanne and various innogy TOP 150 programs.

Julie Krosnicki

Julie E. Krosnicki is an associate in the Washington, D.C., office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where she counsels financial and technology institutions on corporate, securities and financial services laws, and related regulations.

Prior to joining the firm, Julie was an associate in the financial institutions and finance and restructuring groups of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York, where she primarily advised systemically important financial institutions on compliance with the Volcker Rule and the “Living Will” provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

John Licciardello

John has built a career focused on financial innovation. Following his undergraduate degree, he moved to Mexico City where he played a key role in an early stage financial technology startup from 2011 to 2015. John had an active role in all aspects of the business from IT to finance. John has also spent time with the Innovative Finance and Program Related Investments divisions at The Rockefeller Foundation.

Currently John is the Managing Director of the IOTA Ecosystem Development Fund where he provides financial support to developers, entrepreneurs and others with open source projects built around the IOTA core technology.

John holds degrees in Engineering, Economics and International Finance from the University of Delaware, Rutgers University, and Columbia University, respectively.

Douglas Miller

Doug is an environmental and behavioral economist with 5 years of experience developing clean energy market solutions and providing related advisory support for industry leaders. He has extensive experience translating complex research into actionable solutions and cultivating industry-wide collaborations. At EWF, Doug is responsible for managing the development of EWF’s “Origin” application and engaging key market actors around its global deployment.

Martha Symko-Davies

Dr. Martha Symko-Davies provides technical leadership, oversees program development and direction for the ESIF and ESI directorate, and guarantees high-quality technical output from NREL’s ESI activities by accessing the most appropriate array of research and development, analysis, and market transformation capabilities within NREL.

Maja Vujinovic

Catherine Woneis

Catherine Woneis is the current head of product management at Cryptowerk, which provides enterprise-grade Data Integrity solutions that make it easy for organizations in multiple industries to securely exchange information and rapidly create and deploy blockchain-enabled applications. For the energy industry, Cryptowerk is focused on helping organizations comply with new regulatory requirements, continue to improve operational efficiency and look for new high-margin revenue opportunities.

Catherine specializes in startups that are centered on making leading-edge technologies useful for the enterprise. She has spoken at numerous technology conferences, and her work spans innovations in AI, machine learning, natural language processing, knowledge management, and smart workflows.