power & renewables summit 2018

Brian is the Vice President Energy Solutions, part of Shell’s New Energies business - which focuses on two main areas: new fuels for transport and building an integrated position in power markets.

Brian leads the team building customer facing businesses in power, including consumer retail energy and ‘behind the meter’ distributed energy solutions. The team also looks for commercial business models to provide power for the 1 to 2 billion people who don’t have access to power, or have unreliable access today.

Brian joined Shell Australia in 1988. During his career, Brian has held technical, operational, strategic and business leadership roles in Shell’s downstream, trading and shipping businesses with exposure to most markets around the world.

He most recently served as VP Group Strategy & Portfolio where he worked with Shell Executive Committee and Board on corporate strategy, including the shaping of New Energies, which he is now part of implementing.

Brian holds a Degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Sydney. He is married with twins and enjoys travel and golf.

Eran Mahrer serves as Vice President of Market, Utility and Government Origination. He joined First Solar in 2014 and leads the company's engagement with utilities on solar planning and programming. In this role, Mr. Mahrer establishes and maintains relationships with utilities, engages in strategic planning, integrated resource planning and program design initiatives.

Prior to joining First Solar, Mr. Mahrer served as the Executive Vice President of Strategy and Programs for the Solar Electric Power Association (SEPA). He joined SEPA in 2012 and led the organization's efforts in driving utility and solar industry strategies and practices in support of solar energy. His experience also includes serving as Arizona Public Service Company's (APS) Director of Renewable Energy and Resource Portfolio Planning. In his 11 years with APS, he led the company's renewable energy strategy, renewable and customer program resource planning, regulatory interface on many renewable matters and implementation of all renewable programs.

Mr. Mahrer received his MBA from the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, a Master of Science from Washington State University and his Bachelor of Science from the University of California, San Diego.

Louis Ting is the Director of Power Planning and Development for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. He is responsible for the overall Power System regulatory, resource, grid, and strategic planning. Since joined LADWP in 1992 after graduating from UCLA, he had the privilege of career diversifications and increasing responsibilities from Fleet Engineering designing utility-specific vehicles, Water System pipeline design and construction, including trunk line redevelopment projects. He then moved to the electric side of LADWP to manage major projects including renewables generation, hydroelectric, combined-cycle power plants, transmission line, and substation projects.

Jonathan Adelman has been employed by Xcel Energy since 2002 and has worked in a number of areas at the Company including Commercial Trading Operations, Finance, Human Resources and Marketing.  Jonathan is currently the Area Vice President for Strategic Resource and Business Planning.  In this role, he oversees the Company’s long-term generation strategy and business planning activities for Xcel Energy four operating utilities, which includes facilitating and developing asset and financial plans.   Xcel Energy, an electric and gas utility with service territory in eight Western and Midwestern states, serving 3.3 million electricity customers and 1.8 million natural gas customers.

Prior to joining Xcel Energy, Jonathan worked in public accounting.  He graduated from Washington and Lee University with a degree in Accounting with special attainments in Commerce and is an inactive Certified Public Accountant.

Gary is a Managing Director with CohnReznick Capital and is based in the New York office. He provides transaction management and advisory services for clients in the sustainable energy sector, including corporate M&A, capital raises, and structured finance solutions for wind and solar projects.

Gary was previously a Senior Vice President at GE Energy Financial Services where he led deal teams in the structuring, diligence, and negotiation of investments in renewable energy projects in the US and Canada.  While at EFS he closed equity investments in over 2,000MW of utility-scale and C&I wind and solar projects, including tax equity, cash equity, and sale lease-back transactions.  Prior to GE EFS, Gary worked at Standard & Poor’s developing models used by commercial banks for assessing the credit risk of C&I companies. 

Earlier in his career, Gary served as an officer in the United States Navy where he supervised the operation of the nuclear reactor plants on an aircraft carrier and taught college-level classes to university students enrolled in the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps.

Gary is a CFA charter holder and earned an MBA from Villanova University and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering with Highest Honors from the University of Florida.

Julia leads engagement on policy and regulatory issues related to Clearway Energy Group, formerly NRG's renewable energy development, including distributed solar, community solar, and utility-scale wind and solar. She currently serves on the boards of the Coalition for Community Solar Access and the Large-Scale Solar Association.  Prior to joining NRG in 2015, Julia was a Principal in Energy Finance at Climate Policy Initiative, where she co-authored numerous reports on clean energy finance and policy. Her previous work experience includes positions with the U.S. Department of Energy and the New York City Office of Management and Budget.  Julia holds a Master in Public Affairs from Princeton University and a BA from Brown University.

Dr. Shay Bahramirad serves as a strategic business leader at ComEd, the electric utility serving northern Illinois, including Chicago. She drives the company’s efforts to visualize and implement the 21st century power grid transformation and the new energy economy. She is responsible for ComEd’s vision of the grid of the future and communities of the future, system reliability, engineering and planning. Bahramirad also develops frameworks for emerging technology roadmaps and investment strategies to enable higher levels of resilience, sustainability and equitable economic development. To achieve this, she is driving an effort to reskill ComEd’s existing workforce to prepare for new challenges and possibilities. Bahramirad is an editorial board member of Electricity Journal, a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology and the IEEE/PES Vice President of New Initiatives and Outreach, overseeing the organization’s engagement with policymakers globally, and developing strategies for next generation of standards and frameworks, including smart cities.

Prior to her current role, Bahramirad was the Director of Distribution System Planning, Smart Grid & Innovation at ComEd, where she acted as technical lead for projects including the Bronzeville Community Microgrid, defined an energy storage roadmap and headed an effort to develop transactive energy models. In addition, she provided technical analysis for policy issues related to electrification, the Future Energy Jobs Act, and the Illinois Commerce Commission’s NextGrid process, while fostering a cross-organizational culture of innovation. Before joining ComEd, Bahramirad served in a number of engineering roles for over a decade. She has published extensively on subjects ranging from smart grids to smart cities and has served as an expert witness at the state and federal levels on issues including distributed energy resources, microgrids and advanced distribution planning.

Bahramirad serves on the Auxiliary Board of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Leader Council of Mercy Home for Boys and Girls, the Board of Directors of HFS Chicago Scholars, the Board of Directors of Chicago Architecture Foundation. and the Executive Board of Director of Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers/ Power and Energy Society. She fundraises for the Chicago Special Olympics, St. Jude Hospital, and the American Heart Association, among others. She is the founder and a member of the board of Power and Energy Society Women in Power.

Dr. Bahramirad holds multiple advanced degrees, including a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology and an M.Sc. in both electric power engineering and computer science from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. She is a graduate of Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern Women’s Senior Leadership program and Finance for Executives.

Marc is responsible for Shell’s Solar activities globally and heads up the Shell New Energies office located in San Francisco, California. The office is active in a diverse range of operation, including New Fuels, Connected Energy, Shell Technology Ventures and Solar. Prior to joining Shell, Marc served as the Regional Vice President, Africa, Europe, and Turkey at First Solar. As part of his role he led a multi-national team that covered business development and sales operations from offices in Germany, Turkey, Belgium, Morocco and South Africa. Marc joined First Solar in 2011, where his responsibilities included the incubation of new business models and market segments globally, the leadership of the Company’s strategic marketing functions including the Company’s corporate development activities, as well as the development and implementation of a global accounts sales strategy and team.

Before his transition to First Solar, Marc was the Chief Executive Officer of Q-Cells North America where he built a turnkey solar power plant business in the distributed generation market serving Utilities and IPP’s. He was also part of the founding team of Solaria, a solar technology startup. Earlier in his career, he was responsible for an Upstream Oil & Gas business segment at GE and spent four years with Chevron Geothermal, where he developed large scale geothermal power production projects in Asia and Latin America.

Marc currently serves on the Shell Foundation “Energy Company of the Future” Advisory Board. He previously served on the Boards of Powerhive and Clean Energy Collective as well as the Solar Energy Industries Association and Solar Power Europe.

Julia leads engagement on policy and regulatory issues related to Clearway Energy Group, formerly NRG's renewable energy development, including distributed solar, community solar, and utility-scale wind and solar. She currently serves on the boards of the Coalition for Community Solar Access and the Large-Scale Solar Association.  Prior to joining NRG in 2015, Julia was a Principal in Energy Finance at Climate Policy Initiative, where she co-authored numerous reports on clean energy finance and policy. Her previous work experience includes positions with the U.S. Department of Energy and the New York City Office of Management and Budget.  Julia holds a Master in Public Affairs from Princeton University and a BA from Brown University.

Gary is a Managing Director with CohnReznick Capital and is based in the New York office. He provides transaction management and advisory services for clients in the sustainable energy sector, including corporate M&A, capital raises, and structured finance solutions for wind and solar projects.

Gary was previously a Senior Vice President at GE Energy Financial Services where he led deal teams in the structuring, diligence, and negotiation of investments in renewable energy projects in the US and Canada.  While at EFS he closed equity investments in over 2,000MW of utility-scale and C&I wind and solar projects, including tax equity, cash equity, and sale lease-back transactions.  Prior to GE EFS, Gary worked at Standard & Poor’s developing models used by commercial banks for assessing the credit risk of C&I companies. 

Earlier in his career, Gary served as an officer in the United States Navy where he supervised the operation of the nuclear reactor plants on an aircraft carrier and taught college-level classes to university students enrolled in the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps.

Gary is a CFA charter holder and earned an MBA from Villanova University and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering with Highest Honors from the University of Florida.

Philip Bassil is Senior Vice President and Country Manager for Marathon Capital, LLC in Canada. He is focused on the Canadian energy and infrastructure sectors. Philip has over 15 years of international business, finance and energy experience in Canada, the US and Europe.

Before joining Marathon Capital, Philip was a Managing Director with BSM Global Partners, Inc. focused on delivering investment banking, merger and acquisition (M&A), capital raising, corporate finance and strategic advisory services to clients in the power, energy and infrastructure sectors across Canada. He earlier served as a respected equity analyst covering the power, utility and the energy services sectors in Canada with a boutique investment bank, as well as an equity research associate covering the technology sector at Scotia Capital on Bay Street in Toronto.

Philip is a sought-after thought-leader and speaker at industry events and conferences including the Euromoney Renewable Energy Finance Forum and the Canadian Clean Energy Ontario Feed-In-Tariff Forum.

Philip earned an MBA from the Rowe School of Business at Dalhousie University and a Bachelor of Computer Science with the Electrical Engineering stream from TUNS. He has also successfully completed Level 1 and 2 of the CFA designation, and the Canadian Securities Course (CSC) as well as the PDO.

Vanessa is a Renewable Energy Strategist at Microsoft’s Cloud Infrastructure and Operations,  working on energy strategy, renewable energy procurement and investment. She counts on 10 years+ of experience in unlocking capital for renewable energy and environment projects in EMEA and emerging markets. Vanessa has experience across the public and private sectors, and she was a former senior adviser on climate finance and negotiations at the French Ministry of Finance. A French and Indian national, Vanessa holds a masters from Sciences-Po Paris and the ENA - Ecole Nationale d'Administration.

Melissa is the Director of Policy, Northeast for Cypress Creek Renewables - one of the largest utility and community-scale solar and storage developers in the US. She has over a decade of experience in the renewables market, including extensive government policy, regulatory, and political work, all scales of development experience, and technical expertise. She has experience advocating for and developing solutions on many key topics including ISO wholesale market structures and revenue streams, state RPS structures and REC systems, carbon pricing, compensating distributed clean energy resources based on value, and interconnection processes and standards, as well as experience with siting and property tax issues. She holds a BS from Princeton University.

Laura E. Stern is the President of Nautilus Solar Energy, LLC, which she cofounded in 2006. Under her leadership, the company has grown to become one
of the leading solar developers and third-party asset managers in the US. With over twenty years of finance and power industry experience, Ms. Stern has sourced, structured and executed over $3 billion of power, energy and infrastructure investments. During her banking career, she specialized in originating and structuring renewable energy debt financings in the wind, hydro and biomass sectors. Ms. Stern has also sourced and executed senior debt financings for greenfield power development and acquisitions of distressed assets.

Ms. Stern began her career as a consultant, advising the Philippine Government on the privatization of its power, water and wastewater sectors. She holds an AB
with honors from Harvard University and a MA from the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies.

She has been an Elected Director on the SEIA Board of Directors since 2014, currently serving as Treasurer.

Michael has worked in the power and utility industry for nearly ten years. His experience started managing the supply chain for San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E). During his time at SDG&E Michael focused on the sourcing and contracting for utility and community energy storage, substation and transmission construction, aviation and utility owned solar generation. After spending four years with SDG&E, Michael moved to Sempra U.S. Gas & Power where he led the strategic supply chain for utility scale solar, wind and energy storage for nearly 4 years. In late 2016, Michael joined Origis Energy as their Director of Procurement. He is currently leading the global sourcing and contracting efforts to support the development and construction of the Origis Energy solar and energy storage pipeline, which currently exceeds 1GW+ of projects through 2021. Michael has also completed research engagements for General Atomics into the feasibility of algae to oil facilities in the Pacific.

Michael has Master of Business Administration in Supply Chain/Operations Management from San Diego State University, a Bachelor of Science in Business Management and a Bachelor of the Arts in Philosophy both from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He also is a Certified Professional in Supply Management (CPSM) from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM).

Rafael Belda Marin joined the ENGIE group in 2017 as Renewable and Infrastructure Director. During his more than 17 years of professional experience he has been leading infrastructure and energy assets both in Europe and LATAM, with direct participation in their development, structuring, execution and operation.

In recent years he has been focused on the promissing Mexican energy sector triggered by new energy Reform acting as ABENGOA's México Business Development Director. Throughout his carrer, he has served leading positions with CINTRA, Iberdrola and Acciona. Rafael holds an MsC. Civil Engineer by Universidad
Politécnica de Valencia. He obtained an MBA from IESE Business School and has specialized in corporate finance, financial modelling, capital markets and
liquidity risk with several modules at Wharton, CEIBS and IEB.

Victoria joined Prelude Ventures in 2016 upon completing her MBA and MS in Environment & Resources at Stanford University.  During her time at Stanford, Victoria worked at the Boston Consulting Group and started an agriculture supply chain company.  For her MS Capstone, Victoria authored a comparative feasibility study evaluating utility-scale solar across various Sub-Saharan African markets.

Prior to graduate school, Victoria was Director of Finance at Suniva, a venture-backed solar manufacturer and one of Prelude’s portfolio companies.  At Suniva, Victoria was instrumental in raising capital, expanding manufacturing globally, and executing sales.  She was also a Special Projects Leader at d.light, a designer, manufacturer and distributor of solar lighting and power products.  During her time at d.light, Victoria worked across Sub-Saharan Africa to develop the company’s asset financing solution to allow low-income customers to pay over time.  Victoria began her career in investment banking at Cary Street Partners.

Victoria holds an MBA, MS in Environment & Resources, and Certificate in Public Management & Social Innovation from Stanford University, where she was an Arbuckle Leadership Fellow and a Financial Women’s Association of San Francisco Scholar.  Victoria also holds a BS in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a Copland Scholar.

Victoria serves on the board of directors of Yerdle and is actively involved in the firm's investments in Scoop, ClearMetal, Sense Photonics, Powerhive, Pivot Bio, Ripple, Nyriad and Metalenz.