Off-Grid Energy Access Forum 2019

Christopher is a graduate of Imperial College London, where he obtained a first class honours (M.Eng) degree in Electronic and Electrical Engineering. At Imperial, he helped create “e.quinox” in 2008 alongside Mansoor Hamayun and Laurent Van Houke and subsequently co-founded BBOXX in 2010 to commercialise the technology and help cater for a growing demand for affordable energy products and services.
At BBOXX, Christopher is responsible for product development, supply chain and BBOXX’s manufacturing and technology partnerships and leads its engineering team in London. In addition, Christopher has extensive technical experience in the petro-chemicals (Shell) and aerospace (Rolls-Royce) industries. A British national, he is a full member of the IEEE and IET (Institute of Engineering and Technology) and served as a general member of the 2011-2014 IEEE Ad-Hoc Committee on Humanitarian Activities.

Leslie Labruto is the Head of Global Energy at Acumen, where she leads Acumen’s $20M Pioneer Energy Investment Initiative (PEII). Leslie is responsible for driving strategy, portfolio construction, and thought leadership for Acumen’s Global Energy Portfolio. Leslie joined Acumen from the Clinton Foundation, where she served as Director of Clean Energy for the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) and led programmatic strategy and partnerships. Previously, Leslie worked at Summit Partners, a $15 billion venture capital firm in Boston. Leslie holds two degrees in Civil and Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College London and Vanderbilt University.

Alakesh Chetia has 25 years of experience in solar energy, semiconductor, software and computer systems. Immediately prior to co-founding Yoma Micro Power he was President of Social Innovations and Managing Director of Rural Electrification at
SunEdison Inc. Prior to SunEdison, Alakesh held positions of Vice President and General Manager at Cypress Semiconductor, Chief Operating Officer at TransEDA and Chief Executive Officer at iMODL, while based in Silicon Valley, California. Alakesh holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering degree from Michigan Technological University, and a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Karnataka.

Avi is a Senior Investment Officer at SunFunder. He is responsible for managing relationships with SunFunder's clients and optimizing their debt structure so that they can grow together. Prior to joining SunFunder, Avi was the Director of Market Analysis at Lumos Global, a solar home system provider that launched initially in Nigeria. He began his career as a Special Operations Weather Team Leader in the US Air Force. Avi is a graduate of the Case Western Reserve University School of Law and, as a graduate of the University of Michigan, a proud Wolverine.

Gabriel is based in Nairobi as Head of Energy Access at CrossBoundary, a frontier market investment firm. Prior to CrossBoundary, Mr. Davies worked as an Associate at Augusta & Co, a London-based investment firm focused on renewable energy, where he worked in the investment banking team. At Augusta & Co, Mr. Davies advised developers, utilities, and institutional investors on placing capital into over 2GW of renewable energy projects and businesses across Europe, and also originating and structuring corporate PPAs. Previously, he worked for the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, advising the Government on energy policy. Mr. Davies has also worked for BP’s Alternative Energy division in London and Brazil. Gabriel has written about the off-grid energy sector for the Financial Times’ ‘This is Africa’, the Brookings Institution, Quartz, Greentech Media, and NextBillion, and has been interviewed in Nature’s Energy Journal and on CNBC Africa.  He holds an MA in Physics and Philosophy from the University of Oxford.

Thomas Duveau is on the founding team of the Access to Energy Institute, the first independent, non-for-profit collaborative research and development platform in the energy access industry, which was launched in January 2019 ([url=http://www.a2ei.org]http://www.a2ei.org[/url]). The A2EI is primarily putting data and engineering capabilities at the disposition of the offgrid sector, with a focus on productive use appliances. The A2EI can concentrate on solving the tough challenges in the offgrid sector, that commercial companies cannot put at the centre of their endeavour. An example can be found here: [url=https://vimeo.com/341730105]https://vimeo.com/341730105[/url]
The A2EI is a complementary partner to these commercial companies, be they small local entrepreneurs or large strategic players.

Prior to the A2EI, Thomas Duveau spent 5 years as a chief strategy officer at mobisol, one of the leading commercial companies in the solar home system space, which has electrified over 150.000 households, mainly in East Africa. ([url=http://www.plugintheworld.com]http://www.plugintheworld.com[/url])

Thomas also worked as an officer for renewable energies for WWF Germany from 2008 to 2013. Prior to that, he served as Vice President at Global Capital Finance (Investment with a focus on renewable energies) 2005 to 2008. From 1997 to 2004 he worked in the Corporate Strategy Department of REUTERS in Germany, UK and USA.

Thomas graduated in Economics, Econometrics and environmental management.

Ben Good is an engineer with over 25 years' experience in the renewable energy and utility sectors. He has undertaken a range of senior operational, commercial, financial, and corporate finance roles with various businesses and projects across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Since 2011, Ben has led the establishment of Energy 4 Impact as a major contributor to the development of off-grid energy markets in sub-Saharan Africa.  Immediately prior to E4I, Ben was CEO of a UK-listed renewable energy business with interests in India and southern Africa.  He has a degree in Engineering, Economics and Management from Oxford University.

Wesley is the CTO at SteamaCo, where he builds smart meters and automation software for the world’s toughest markets – off-grid Africa and Asia. SteamaCo’s technology provides power to tens of thousands of consumers in remote environments, at a fraction the cost of comparable smart meters. Wesley’s work ranges from building a world-class Mancunian software engineering team, to developing technology on-site in rural Tanzania, to designing smart meter networks using cutting-edge LoRa technology.

Arne van Stiphout is program manager for Mee Panyar, a social enterprise that works with communities and builds capacity among rural electricians in Myanmar on operation and maintenance of renewable mini-grids as a way to accelerate energy access progress across the country. He obtained an MSc in Electrical Engineering (2012) from KU Leuven (Belgium) and INP Grenoble (France), and a PhD in Energy Engineering (2017) from KU Leuven. During his PhD, he studied the role of operational flexibility in the integration of renewable energy and its impact on the long-term investment planning of the electricity sector. He went on to study multi-energy systems as a postdoctoral researcher at EnergyVille. Thereafter, he obtained an MSc (2018) in Global Governance & Ethics from University College London. In his research there, he studied the political economy of sustainability transitions, focusing on energy policy in Myanmar. Arne is also co-founder of Carbon+Alt+Delete, a non-profit that informs and activates people on climate change mitigation in Belgium.

Brianna leads the data team at Fenix International.  She works with a team spanning multiple countries, including Uganda, Zambia, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Benin, Mozambique, and the US.  She and the data team at Fenix work on a wide range of problems from predicting repayment of small solar home system loans, to analyzing IoT data from solar devices, to understanding the best paths for customer support.  All of these projects help Fenix to provide clean, safe, and sustainable energy to people living off the grid in Sub-Saharan Africa.  After working with several large datasets while completing a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, she took a break from academia and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Northern Uganda.  At Fenix, she's able to work at the perfect crossroads of big data, sustainable energy, and energy access for underserved populations.

Andrew has a background as on off-grid entrepreneur and consultant. He founded Aphelion Energy, leading the development of last mile pay-as-you-go (PAYG) solar home system distribution operations, as well as the construction of mini-grids in Côte d’Ivoire. He also co-founded Soleva, an SHS distributor in Togo.

Andrew led the African Development Bank’s first initiatives in off-grid energy, supporting the creation of a PAYG debt fund, and structuring technical assistance projects on mini-grid regulations. He has consulted for IFC and UNIDO on off-grid and renewable energy, and has led mini-grid site assessment and pre-feasibility projects in Côte d’Ivoire and DRC.

Previously, Andrew has held roles as a strategy consultant in London, and a business developer in Russia. Andrew has a BA in Economics from Cambridge University, and an MBA from IE Business School.

Mr. Mohseninia has over 18 years of experience in telecommunications sector where he has engaged with C-levels to define, design and deliver business solutions, enhancing efficiency and productivity. Prior to joining Aeris in 2013, Mr. Mohseninia was the head of M2M for Logica in the UK responsible for the development of strategy, go to market and sales. Prior to that, he spent more than 4 years in the Middle East and Africa where he established a telecom business for Logica in the region. From 1999 to 2007 Mr. Mohseninia was responsible for the OSS business of Logica, where he successfully transformed the business into a global business and established Logica as a leading supplier of OSS solutions globally. Mr. Mohseninia holds a Ph.D. in numerical computations from the university of Hertfordshire in the UK.

With a 19 year track record, African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM) is the most experienced private equity investment manager focused exclusively on African infrastructure on the continent. AIIM is committed to Africa’s long term development through its infrastructure focus and currently manages USD2.1 billion across 7 funds having concluded investments into more than 55 assets across the power, telecommunications and transport sectors in East, West and Southern Africa.
Ashwin is responsible for originating potential deals, analysing, assessing, structuring and negotiating investment opportunities, as well as the execution, performance monitoring and realisation of investments at AIIM. He has most recently led the successful execution of an in investment into BBOXX Next Generation Utility companies in Kenya, Rwanda and the DRC.  He has also been involved in power projects in Mali, Benin, Ghana, South Africa and Namibia. Ashwin is a non-executive director on the boards of BBOXX Rwanda, BBOXX DRC, Beyond Energy Investments, Mercury Power, AIIF3 Clean Energy and Albatros Energy Mali.

Matt DaPrato is a Director for Wood Mackenzie Energy Transition and Power & Renewables practice research focused on the technologies and market impacts of the global energy transition. His past focus has been in the Americas power and renewables market having authored studies on onshore and offshore wind, transmission developments and regulations, and federal, regional and state policy.

With deep domain expertise in the global energy sector, David is skilled at helping clients understand the market fundamentals driving their strategic decisions.

David is a director in Wood Mackenzie’s power & renewables consulting practice. He has over a decade of experience of working closely with governments, NOCs, IOCs, utilities, IPPs, energy-intensive industries and financial clients across the energy value chain.

David joined Wood Mackenzie in 2011 as a consultant in the gas and power team. During his time at Wood Mackenzie, he has focused on Europe and the MENA region. David is now helping clients understand the impact today's energy transition will have on their business. 

Prior to joining Wood Mackenzie, David worked at Mott MacDonald, where he was a senior consultant charged with managing global oil and gas asset due diligence projects for investment funds. He also worked at BP as a Regulatory Advisor for the European Gas Trading & LNG division, and at Corus (now Tata Steel) as a Commercial Advisor in the international supply and trading division.