Green Jobs and VC Moves at Schneider, Opower, KPCB, Khosla, Amyris, and DOE

Executive moves in greentech. Is your new boss (or new ex-boss) on this list?

Eric Wesoff November 20, 2013

Eric Wesoff

Editor-at-Large
Greentech Media

Eric Wesoff is Editor-at-Large at Greentech Media. Prior to joining GTM, Eric Wesoff founded Sage Marketing Partners in 2000 to provide sales and marketing-consulting services to venture-capital firms and their portfolio companies in the alternative energy and telecommunications sectors. Mr. Wesoff has become a well-known, respected authority and speaker in these fields.

His expertise covers solar power, fuel cells, biofuels and advanced batteries. His strengths are in market research and analysis, business development and due diligence for investors. He frequently consults for energy startups and Silicon Valley's premier venture capitalists.

Ray Barbee is now Director of Channel Development for the Americas at Schneider Electric.

Jim MacMaster, former EVP and COO at Yokohama Tire, joined Lehigh's Board of Directors. Lehigh Technologies produces micronized rubber powder as raw material for tires. Investors include Leaf Clean Energy and Kleiner Perkins.

David Eisenbud, previously of TSMC Solar and SunPower, was named VP of Sales at Solar Grid Storage. The startup develops battery-based energy storage that is co-located with solar, but is owned and maintained by Solar Grid Storage.

Opower's advisory board now includes Carol M. Browner, former director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy and former administrator of the EPA.

Amyris (AMRS), a renewable chemicals and fuels firm, named Paulo Diniz, currently President of Amyris Brasil, as interim CFO, following the decision of current CFO, Steve Mills, "to step down for personal reasons."

Two scoops from Dan Primack of Fortune covering greentech VCs: Shirish Sathaye, a GP at Khosla Ventures, has left the firm. His deals at Khosla Ventures included Bidgely and LightSail Energy. David Wells, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, has joined KP portfolio company RRTC, "a stealthy additive manufacturing systems startup," as CEO.

President Obama announced his decision to nominate Marc Kastner as Director of the Office of Science and Franklin Orr as Under Secretary for Science and Energy, both at DOE. Kastner is the Dean of the School of Science at MIT. Orr is the Director of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University.

The Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems named Dr. Christian Hoepfner, the Center’s current Scientific Director, to the position of Center Director, succeeding Nolan Browne, the center's founder and director.

The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) elected Christopher B. Curtis, President and CEO, North America, Schneider Electric, as Chairman of the 2014 Board of Governors.

LDK Solar (LDK), a China-based, U.S.-traded vertically integrated builder of PV products, named Dr. Shi Chen to its board of directors. Chen is currently a director of Mountain China Resorts, a mountain resort developer based in China.