the soft grid 2013

Elisabeth Brinton is a trusted senior executive, thought leader and entrepreneur with a track record of successful innovation, execution, value creation and disruption across multiple industries, including Energy, Water, Food, Agriculture, and High Tech. 

Most recently, Elisabeth was the Corporate Strategy Officer for PG&E Corporation, a F200 Energy Holding Company that has been a global utility pioneer in renewables, customer solar, T&D, and energy efficiency.  She launched PG&E’s groundbreaking IOT “Grid of Things” business strategy, ran M&A and strategic investments, and led California’s exploration of new utility business models. Earlier, Elisabeth was the Chief Customer Officer of SMUD, running the $2 Billion Retail P&L for that vertically integrated utility, including complex 24x7, high-stakes operations and a team of 1,000 employees.

An entrepreneur at heart, Elisabeth has been in the C-Suite as an executive officer, CEO or Founder of four successful Silicon Valley start-up companies with technologies and products that were pioneering and disruptive for their time.  Ventures include, Loudcloud that pioneered the ASP business model and the now ubiquitous Cloud, where Elisabeth was on the founding leadership team and ran global marketing, helping the company scale and go public in record time for a US company.  Earlier, Elisabeth was the founder and CEO of her own technical product development and marketing agency where she created a business delivering over $100 million in value, serving both major consumer brands like Pepsico and Nike, and innovative start-ups delivering deep, pioneering work in food, agriculture and high tech, including the development of several patents and commercializing new category creating products like branded, value-added produce and early organic and specialty products from ice cream to natural sodas.

Elisabeth is a chemist and passionate creative, blending scientific/technical expertise with customer centric market innovation, business strategy and policy leadership.  She is a top honors graduate of Principia College with a triple major across scientific and humanities disciplines and both a Harry S. Truman and Lincoln Academy Scholar.  Out of College, Elisabeth worked for the US House of Representatives as a legislative assistant for a member of Congress and the House Judiciary Committee.

Currently, Elisabeth is a voluntary faculty Co-Chair for Singularity University’s Global Energy & Climate track (2013 Executive Program Alum) and serves on the Advisory Boards of Smart Wires, Rancho Purisima Farms, and the UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center.

Kevin Dasso is Senior Director of Technology and Information Strategy at Pacific Gas and Electric Company. Kevin has 30 years of experience in the gas and electric utility business including engineering, operations, construction and asset management. Kevin is currently responsible for developing and implementing strategy and policies for the utility related to the Smart Grid and transmission and distribution technology integration. He leads the company’s Smart Grid team involving the Electric Operations, Customer Care, Energy Procurement and Information Technology departments. Kevin is a member of the Board of the Gridwise Alliance and on the Advisory Board for the California Energy Commission’s Public Interest Energy Research program. He is a former member of the Western Electricity Coordinating Council’s Reliability Policy Issues Committee, and is former chair of the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) Planning Committee Reliability Assessment Subcommittee. Kevin received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering at Iowa State University and a M.S. in Electric Engineering at Santa Clara University. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in California and is a member of the IEEE Power Engineering Society.

Paul Dick joined Tendril in 2015 as the Vice President of Utility Solutions and Strategy. In this role, he helps utility executives find new opportunities to manage and grow the business in the areas of energy efficiency, customer engagement, regulatory change, and grid innovation. Paul brings 29 years of experience working for utility and telecommunications companies in a variety of leadership, business and technology positions. Prior to joining Tendril, Paul held the position of Executive Advisor and Principal Consultant for the SAS Institute, Energy Business Unit. In this role, Paul helped utilities find strategic and operational value in data and analytics across the business using connected technologies like smart grid and the Internet of Things.  Paul gained much of his industry experience at OGE Energy Corp., where he helped bring solutions to the business communities that solved problems around asset management, reliability, and energy management. He also created opportunities to leverage the power of customer experience in a connected grid world. He co-architected and designed an award-winning program called Information Factory that created solutions from new data sources of the smart grid including strategic and operational capabilities. Paul has provided leadership on multiple industry councils over the years including the inaugural Utility Analytics Institute Executive board. Paul has also presented at a wide range of events, panels, authored whitepapers, media articles, and executed workshops on many industry topics including demand response, geospatial asset analytics, dynamic customer intelligence, utility economic impacts through analytics, utility business transformation, and enterprise information architecture. Paul earned a Bachelor of Science in Organizational Leadership from Southern Nazarene University.

Steve Ehrlich is Space-Time Insight's Senior Vice President of Marketing. With over 25 years of software industry experience and a passion for technology and all aspects of the marketing domain, Steve brings a wealth of product, marketing and executive management experience to the Space-Time Insight team. He previously co-founded and led marketing and product strategy for BUZ Interactive and played similar roles at Apptera, a voice solutions provider. Prior to that, as Vice President of Marketing, Steve led speech recognition vendor, Nuance, from startup to market leadership and a successful initial public offering. Steve started his career at Oracle Corporation where he held a range of technical and product marketing management roles. Steve holds Bachelors and Honors degrees in Commerce from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.

Tim Fairchild is the Director of the SAS Global Energy Practice. In this role he leads a team responsible for developing global product strategy and defining and delivering market-driven offerings for the Energy industry. His team works closely with global customers, business partners, and SAS Research & Development to ensure that SAS solutions meet the needs of the market. Tim represents SAS on the Board of Directors of the Research Triangle Cleantech Cluster which works to expand the Research Triangle region's potential in smart grid, advanced transportation, water technologies, renewable energy and energy efficiency by bringing together the collective power of industry, government and academia.

Josh Gerber is Manager of Smart Grid at San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), a Sempra Energy utility. In his role leading enterprise-wide smart grid strategy, policy, and project alignment, Josh manages the development and implementation of SDG&E's Smart Grid Deployment Plan. Prior to joining Sempra, Josh was a Systems Engineer at Inflow, Inc., now part of SunGard Availability Services. In his 10+ years with the Sempra utilities, Josh has held multiple senior positions involving the planning, architecture, and implementation of smart grid, advanced metering, and other technology infrastructure.

SDG&E is a regulated public utility that provides service to 3.4 million consumers through 1.4 million electric meters and more than 840,000 natural gas meters in San Diego and southern Orange counties.

Krishan Gupta is a Big Data and Analytics expert at eMeter, a Siemens Business.  As Director of Product Management, his team manages eMeter’s EnergyIP Platform and Analytics Applications, which have become leading solutions in Smart Grid and Utility Analytics.  Krishan brings more than 10 years of Big Data experience to the team in industries ranging from Social Media to Data Center Automation.  Prior to eMeter, Krishan held Product Management roles at Cisco and Symantec, and was an early team member at Dipity, a data-management company for media companies.

Linda Jackman is Group Vice President of Industry Strategy for Oracle Utilities.  Linda studied Accounting and Information Systems in Perth, Australia, and is undertaking her Master of Business Administration at the University of Queensland. She has more than 20 years experience in information systems, specializing in capital intensive industries such as mining and utilities. After a number of years working in Australia and Europe Linda moved to North America to lead the implementations for several major utilities. In 2005 she joined SPL WorldGroup as Vice President of Product Management for Customer Care and Billing. SPL was acquired by Oracle in 2007, where she is the now the Global VP Utilities Industry Strategy.

Greg Jones is the Chief Technology Officer at MachineShop ([url=http://www.machineshop.io]http://www.machineshop.io[/url]) leading the company's technology strategy and engineering teams. Prior to co-founding MachineShop, in 2007 he joined SensorLogic as VP of Operations to help define their company transformation and launch as an industry leader in developing an Application Enablement Platform for the M2M (Machine-to-Machine) marketplace. During 2001-2007, Greg was the GM of DSL Products for Texas Instruments leading their growth to market leadership in the DSL Broadband chipsets for terminals and central office deployments where he managed a group of almost 700 employees worldwide. Greg has held various other positions throughout his 30 year career in the telecommunications industry including: pioneering early cellular radio technologies, networked commercial radio, consumer products, broadband gateways, and led multiple product launches from both a technology and marketing perspective. A veteran startup entrepreneur, Greg holds a Bachelors of Science in Information and Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is involved with various social causes in the Greater Dallas area and serves on various boards and committees of the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas.

Ogi Kavazovic is responsible for the go-to-market strategy for Opower's three solution lines. He works closely with our sales and product teams to help guide the company's product strategy and competitive positioning and promotes Opower and its solutions at industry events and conferences. Prior to joining Opower, Ogi was a management consultant at Katzenbach Partners, where he advised Fortune 500 clients on corporate strategy development, with particular focus on the utility sector and Smart Grid industry. Ogi began his career as a software engineer, developing risk and asset management systems for major financial institutions, such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. Ogi was also one of the lead architects of a "smart field" data management platform for Schlumberger Information Systems. Ogi received his BA and MS degrees in Computer Science from Harvard.

David is one of the world’s leading UX designers. As a partner and head of Greenstart’s design studio, David co-creates the scope for every design partnership with a portfolio company. David spent five years as Executive Creative Director at frog design’s San Francisco headquarters, leading a team of more than 100 designers, engineers, strategists and program managers to bring innovative products and services to market. His work building frog’s energy practice and leading the firm’s biggest accounts in all categories of advanced consumer experience – smart phones, digital retail, next gen automotive and the social web – gives him unique insights into the challenges of digital cleantech products and services. He is a sought after speaker at conferences such as SXSW, ARPA-E and PSFK. David holds a BA from NYU and a master’s from NYU’s ITP program at Tisch School for the Arts.

Richard Mora is President and CEO of Landis+Gyr Americas where he leads a team of more than 2,000 employees that deliver smart grid and smart metering solutions to utilities across North and South America.  Mr. Mora serves as Executive Vice President of Landis+Gyr Holdings, where he develops and executes corporate strategy in conjunction with worldwide company leadership.  A Six Sigma Black Belt, Mr. Mora is an expert in process and productivity improvements. He is well versed in new business consolidations and start-ups, risk management, team building and international operations.  Mr. Mora holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.

Jeff Nichols is the Director of Information Security and Information Management for the Sempra Energy utilities. The utilities serve the energy needs of over 20 million customers in a 24,000 square mile southern California service area. Mr. Nichols’ organization provides the complete range of info security, cybersecurity, data access, analytics & data management services for the utilities’ 12,000 employees. His organization also leads numerous strategic planning, Smart Grid and “big data” initiatives.

Mr. Nichols was previously the Director of IT Infrastructure for the Sempra utilities. Before coming to Sempra, he was Executive Director of IT Infrastructure at Kaiser Permanente; a divisional VP and CTO at Science Applications International Corporation; and VP/General Manager at a private software development firm.

Mr. Nichols serves on multiple Boards, including 211 San Diego, a nonprofit community service organization; the Utility Analytics Institute; CES21 (California Energy Systems for the 21st Century); and the Utilities Telecom Council (UTC). He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Kentucky and a master’s degree in business administration from Kent State University.

Anton Prenneis is Technical Evangelist and CTO of EMC’s OEM business unit. Anton is passionate about finding ways to bring to market industry vertical solutions that are beneficial to both the bottom line and society. Of these, Smart Grid inspires him the most. While it can be challenging at times to make the business case for Smart Grid, the social case is crystal clear – society must find smarter and cleaner ways to generate, distribute and consume electricity, particularly as more and more people around the globe come “on-grid”. And of the many facets to this challenge, the ability to analyze and act on the massive volumes of data being generated by sensors and devices offers the biggest near-term opportunity to dramatically improve the efficiency of the distribution grid, and eventually enable the transformation of electricity distribution into a smart system capable of supporting electric vehicles, alternative energy sources, two-way electricity flow, and dynamic pricing models. In his role, Anton works across EMC’s federated business model that spans storage infrastructure, virtualization, Big Data, and security. On the Big Data side, Anton works with Pivotal, an EMC company that is bringing to market real-time analytics technologies and a platform-as-a-service upon which developers can write next-generation analytics applications. Anton also works with RSA, EMC’s security division, which has built encryption, authentication, and adaptive security technologies into major AMI deployments. Feel free to introduce yourself to Anton in person and to connect online on LinkedIn [url=http://www.linkedin.com/in/prenneis]http://www.linkedin.com/in/prenneis[/url], or Twitter [url=https://twitter.com/antonprenneis]https://twitter.com/antonprenneis[/url].

Bruce Rogers is Director of the Technology Innovation organization at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).  He is responsible for managing TVA’s strategic research and development activities that enhance the agency’s competitiveness and promote national leadership in key technological areas.  Mr. Rogers has over 34 years experience at TVA in a number of operational areas performing and managing activities that improve the generation, delivery, marketing, and use of energy products to wholesale and retail energy markets.  He is a recognized industry leader in the areas of: energy efficiency, load management, and modernization of the electric grid.  Mr. Rogers currently leads a team of engineers and scientists that advance understanding and application of innovations in science and technology to help TVA meet future challenges.  The primary focus of the research team is advancements in small modular reactor technologies, power delivery technologies, consumer energy efficiency, and electric transportation.  Mr. Rogers has authored or co-authored numerous technical papers and articles within his area.  He has also served as chairman or committee member in several ASME, IEEE, and EPRI users/working groups.  He currently serves in leadership positions at the University of Tennessee (UTK) CURENT Center, the Power Systems Engineering Research Center, the National Electric Energy Testing Research and Applications Center, and is a member of the UTK College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Industrial Advisory Board.  Mr. Rogers received the Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering degree with honor from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

As Founder and President of Geli Ryan Wartena brings over 10 years of experience in computational and battery R&D and 10 years experience in energy storage business and control platform technologies. Since 2010, Ryan has served as CEO, Chief Strategy Officer, Director of Product, and President of Geli, a San Francisco & Melbourne based energy software and business solutions company. Ryan directs Geli’s collection of software products to create the Geli Internet of Energy platform to support all ecosystem partners to provide energy services from networked assets.

Prior experience includes computational software development, UL/ETL storage product validation, organizing battery pack manufacturing in US and Japan, developing solid-state Li‐ion microbatteries, and integrating energy storage systems into grid networks. He is the author of patents in energy storage and energy computing technologies. Ryan holds degrees in Chemical Engineering from UC San Diego, Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Post Doc research at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC and MIT. Ryan loves long-lived energy networks and his goal in life is to see the world operate on a renewably energized Internet of Energy.

Ben is the Director of Grid Research for Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables (Formerly GTM Research), specializing in Distribution Automation, Network Management and Renewables Integration markets. He previously worked as a research analyst for Knwldg Houston, formerly a green energy and healthcare consulting firm, where his research focused on AMI deployment and smart grid regulatory policy. Prior to Knwldg Houston, Ben was a policy intern with Wexler and Walker Public Policy Associates where he performed research for energy, transportation, and defense clients.

He has authored multiple studies on the smart grid market, concentrating on policy evolution, technology innovation, the market's competitive landscape and project economics. Ben has delivered keynote presentations for multiple industry conferences, moderated and participated in panels covering a variety of topics, and regularly hosts industry webinars with GTM Research / Greentech Media. Ben has been a smart grid contributor on CNN Money, NPR, and the Texas Tribune. He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science.

Rick Thompson co-­founded Greentech Media in 2007, leading the company from unknown upstart to the authoritative information services provider covering the transformation of the global electricity system.

Prior to GTM, Thompson spent 15 years at leading technology start­ups, incumbent networking and telecommunications companies, and technology media and market research firms. Rick was senior telecom analyst at Light Reading/Heavy Reading, the dominant online media & research firm in the telecommunications market, acquired by CMP Media in 2005. Mr. Thompson previously served as the vice president of marketing at PanGo Networks, a wireless software startup, and as director of product management and marketing at Sycamore Networks Inc., where he defined the product strategy and launch of the industry’s first intelligent optical switching platform through their IPO in 1999. Under his leadership, Sycamore deployed several of the world’s largest intelligent optical network infrastructures. Prior to joining Sycamore, Rick held product management positions with Packet Engines, a pioneer of Gigabit Ethernet switching that was later acquired by Alcatel; and FORE Systems, a leader in ATM networking that was later acquired by Marconi and, subsequently, Ericsson. Mr. Thompson earned a bachelor of science degree in industrial engineering from the University of Pittsburgh.