About The Event

Nicolas Sauvage (SEP2018) is the President of TDK Ventures, with $350M AUM. TDK Ventures has invested in 37 startups, including unicorns like Groq, Ascend Elements and Silicon Box. Recognized on the Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist for five consecutive years, Nicolas has authored articles on Corporate Venturing and hosts the Corporate Venturing Insider podcast. Nicolas serves on the boards of Analog Inference, AutoFlight, Faction, Mach49, Metalenz, Virewirx, and TDK Ventures. Nicolas has been awarded the Corporate Director Certificate from Harvard Business School.

Anil Achyuta is the Investment Managing Director at TDK Ventures, and also Investment Director for Fund EX1. He is passionate about the energy and healthcare sectors. He believes these are the most impactful areas in building a sustainable future, a mission that is directly in line with TDK Ventures’ goals.

Of his eleven investments, he has secured two exits: GenCell IPO’d on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (GNCL:IT), and Origin, which was acquired by the #1 3-D printing company in the world, Stratasys, for $100M.

Prior to TDK Ventures, Anil held leadership roles at Fortune 500 companies including L’Oréal, Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, and Draper.

Anil was voted one of the Rising Stars in 2021 by Venture Capital Journal and was ranked the #2 Rising Star in 2021 out of 20,000 corporate venture managers globally. He was also voted as one of the Emerging Leaders of 2022 by Global Corporate Venturing. He is a published author in polymer science, neural engineering, microfluidics, and tissue engineering with 11 peer-reviewed publications, two book chapters, and six US patents.

He has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Northeastern University and received his M.B.A. from the University of Florida Warrington College of Business.

Anil was born and raised in Bangalore, India in a family of teachers, and speaks fluent Kannada, Hindi. He loves sports and music. He was a former cricket player, and currently plays tennis, table tennis, racquetball, and cricket occasionally. He loves playing guitar and listening to classic rock.

Meghan Sharp is Global Head and Chief Investment Officer of Decarbonization Partners, a BlackRock and Temasek JV investing in the next generation of innovative decarbonization solutions and businesses to accelerate global efforts to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Decarb Partners invests in climate technology companies in the late-VC / early-growth equity stage. In this role, she oversees a global team of 25+ professionals where she leads the overall vision and investment strategy for the business and its funds.

Dr. Sharp is responsible for deal origination, investment execution, and value creation activities for Decarbonization Partners’ portfolio companies, along with capital formation efforts and strategic partnerships Decarb Partners Fund I raised $1.40bn in capital and has been actively deploying capital since 2022. Prior to joining Decarb Partners in 2022, Dr. Sharp served as Global Head of BP Ventures, leading BP’s global corporate venture capital activities. During her leadership, the team made investments across the decarbonization sector including advanced mobility, bio and low carbon products, power and storage, and carbon management.

Dr. Sharp has significant experience in venture capital and operating experience, which includes her time serving as COO of Beyond Limits, a pioneering artificial intelligence company with applications for the energy transition. Meghan holds a PhD in microbial genetics from the University of California, San Francisco, an MBA from Columbia University, and post-doctoral experience from the University of Chicago and the Carnegie Institute, Stanford.

Nicolas Sauvage (SEP2018) is the President of TDK Ventures, with $350M AUM. TDK Ventures has invested in 37 startups, including unicorns like Groq, Ascend Elements and Silicon Box. Recognized on the Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist for five consecutive years, Nicolas has authored articles on Corporate Venturing and hosts the Corporate Venturing Insider podcast. Nicolas serves on the boards of Analog Inference, AutoFlight, Faction, Mach49, Metalenz, Virewirx, and TDK Ventures. Nicolas has been awarded the Corporate Director Certificate from Harvard Business School.

Tara leads cross sectoral analysis for North America, with a focus on long term decarbonization trends. Tara’s research at BNEF has covered economic, policy and company trends in US solar and renewables, as well as power markets.

Prior to BloombergNEF, Tara was a manufacturing engineer at an international carmaker. Her research experience includes anlyzing consumer preferences for electrification in developing countries and life cycle impacts of agricultural systems.

She is based in Boston.

Tina Tosukhowong is an Investment Director at TDK Ventures. She leads the cleantech and the advanced-material investment areas.

Her background spans two decades as an operator in biotech and material industries, as well as a deep-tech investor in multiple industries. Prior to joining TDK Ventures, she led the Corporate Ventures practice at GC Ventures America, a corporate ventures arm of PTT Global Chemical, where she invested in cleantech, biotech, and advanced materials.

Prior to her venture career, Tina spent a decade in the biotech and material industries and held numerous roles in research & development, scale up & technology transfer, application development, and business development.

Tina holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and a Certificate in Management of Technology from Georgia Institute of Technology. She is also a graduate of Harvard Business School’s Private Equity and Venture Capital program.

Tina has been recognized by the Global Corporate Venturing as Top 50 Emerging Leaders in 2021 and 2023.

Bernd Heid is the Co-Founder and Leader of the McKinsey Platform for Climate Technologies (MPCT), the global leader of the McKinsey Hydrogen Service Line and global leader of Commercial Vehicles Sector, has 20+ years of consulting experience and 12+ years within the hydrogen sector. He is an advisory board member of Center for Hydrogen Innovation (CHI) for Singapore hosted by the National University of Singapore (NUS), and a co-founder of the Hydrogen Council and strategic partner to the Hydrogen Council.

Bernd has extensive experience in hydrogen mobility and alternative powertrain solutions. He leads McKinsey’s partnership with the Hydrogen Council and has been instrumental in shaping hydrogen strategies through his work on various reports, such as the Hydrogen Scaling-up report, the Hydrogen Cost roadmap, and the Hydrogen Insights report. Bernd has also contributed to the development of regional and national hydrogen roadmaps for countries including France, Korea, Europe, and the U.S. He chaired the H2 Mobility Germany Initiative and has been involved in numerous hydrogen and fuel cell strategy projects for key players in the automotive and energy industries. His expertise spans across innovation strategies for alternative powertrains (including fuel cells and battery electric vehicles), assessments of energy storage and Li-Ion battery technology, as well as value chain optimization for battery manufacturers. Bernd has also led projects focused on CO2 strategy and hydrogen combustion engines.

Robert Stoner is the president of The Kendall Square Project, an energy technology development and investment firm based in Cambridge. He recently stepped down as director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), and founding director of the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design. A physicist, Rob is the inventor of numerous computational and ultrafast optical measurement techniques who earlier in his career built and led successful technology firms in the semiconductor, IT, and optics industries. He currently chairs the External Advisory Committee of the corporate venture capital firm EniNext, and serves on the Innovation Advisory Committee of Rio Tinto, in addition to the Science and Technology Committee of the Alliance for Sustainable Energy which oversees the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, NREL. Before coming to MIT, Rob lived and worked in Africa and India while serving in a variety of senior roles within the Clinton Foundation, including as the CEO of the Clinton Development Initiative, and director of the Clinton Climate Initiative for Africa.

David Delfassy, Investment Director, leads capital deployment from TDK Ventures’ Fund EX1 which focuses on accelerating energy transition and decarbonization.

David joins TDK Ventures from Ahren Innovation Capital, a deep technology globally focused investment firm, where he led the development of the firm’s decarbonization thesis and invested in venture and growth stage business across sectors including sustainable aviation fuels, green hydrogen, carbon dioxide removal, alternative proteins, and high-performance computing. Before Ahren, David was an investor at MTech Capital where he invested in early-stage Insurtech businesses across North America, Europe, and Israel. Prior to investing, David was a strategy and management consultant with McKinsey & Company based in Geneva, Switzerland, where he advised leaders of global businesses on corporate strategy and management. David started his career as a Flight and Ground Test engineer with Airbus in Toulouse, France.

David holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science from Duke University, with a specialization in Aerospace Engineering. At Duke, David was a researcher in Professor Earl Dowell’s Aeroelasticity group and conducted research on folding wings.

David is a dual national of the U.S. and France and greatly enjoys learning about and experiencing different cultures through food, language, music, and traditions.

Dr. Christina Chang is a Partner at Lowercarbon Capital, the VC firm backing kickass companies that make real money unf**king the planet. Most recently, Christina was a Fellow at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) within the U.S. Department of Energy, where she developed new research directions for sustainable manufacturing of commodities. Prior to ARPA-E, Dr. Chang was founder and CEO of the sustainable steel startup Abraze Engineering. Dr. Chang has a PhD in Physical Chemistry from Harvard, an MSc in Sustainable Energy Futures from Imperial College London, an MPhil in Chemistry from the University of Cambridge, and an A.B. in Chemistry from Princeton.

Amy Ostermeyer is the Chief Development Officer for Monolith and is responsible for identifying, planning and implementing the organization’s growth strategies. She began her career at Talent Plus before taking on roles as the director of human resources at Bryan Health and the chief operating officer at Tabitha Healthcare. Her passion for growing organizations through people caught the interest of Monolith, and she joined the organization as vice president of human resources in 2017.

Since joining Monolith, Ostermeyer led the transition of the company’s headquarters from California to Nebraska, executed successful strategies around meeting Monolith’s extensive yet specific staffing needs, provided clear guidance for Monolith’s continued growth through the COVID pandemic, and forged strong partnerships with local communities and regulatory entities. In doing so, she created the blueprint for which she is now taking Monolith’s environmentally advantaged technologies to market.

A native Nebraskan, Ostermeyer holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and a juris doctorate from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

Dr. Shreya Dave is the Co-Founder & CEO of Via Separations, an MIT spinout dedicated to reducing emissions in industrial manufacturing. Via is a venture-capital-backed company that was recognized as one of C&EN’s 10 startups to watch in 2019, and has received awards from ARPA-E, NSF, and MassCEC. Shreya was awarded Technology Review’s 35 Innovators under 35 in 2018. Shreya holds Bachelors, Masters’ and Doctoral degrees from MIT in Mechanical Engineering and Technology & Policy. She also enjoys serving on MIT’s Corporate Development Committee, formerly the board of directors for Greentown Labs, and teaching in MIT’s product design and development course, 2.009.

Natalie is a climate investor and finance professional with over 12 years of experience in sustainable infrastructure investing, principal investing, corporate strategy and capital advisory, with expertise in structuring creative financing solutions for climate tech companies.

Scott Clavenna is co-founder and CEO of Latitude Media, where he is leading its strategy and expansion into news, industry research, and events on the frontiers of climate technology. He occasionally contributes interviews and commentary pieces to the news site.

Most recently, Scott Clavenna served as Chairman of Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables, where he contributed to the strategic guidance of Wood Mackenzie’s work in the global energy transition. Prior to Wood Mackenzie, Mr. Clavenna was the co-founder and CEO of Greentech Media and helped develop it into the leading source of integrated news, industry research, conferences, and executive councils in the clean energy economy. Greentech Media was acquired by Wood Mackenzie in 2016 and in the subsequent 4 years achieved all the goals of the acquisition while expanding its reach and breadth through its integration with acquired organizations and Wood Mackenzie’s power markets and energy transition groups.

As Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Ally Yost drives the company’s strategic partnerships and fundraising, including leading its Series B funding, one of the largest private funding rounds in history. In addition to her role at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Yost advises climate tech and deep tech startups on entrepreneurship strategy and capital formation, and also advises on innovation ecosystem development and industry policy.

Prior to joining the company, Yost was a founding team member and Principal at The Engine, the venture capital fund spun out of MIT, focused on early-stage investing in Tough Tech startups. While there, she focused on investments in climate tech, and infrastructure, including leading The Engine’s investment in Commonwealth Fusion Systems. She also co-founded The Engine’s entrepreneurial curriculum focused on Tough Tech commercialization dedicated to scientists transitioning to entrepreneurs.

Yost worked with another MIT spin-out, Accion Systems, leading the R&D and manufacturing of key thruster components for the company’s novel electric propulsion for satellites. She also worked as a research scientist with GoogleX and on spacecraft propulsion for NASA.

Yost earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Hampshire, where she was also captain of the Division 1 women’s soccer team, and a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Raffi Garabedian is CEO and co-founder of Electric Hydrogen Co. Prior to Electric Hydrogen Raffi served as chief technology officer at First Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR). Mr. Garabedian joined First Solar in June 2008. Before First Solar, Raffi spent over 15 years developing and commercializing new technologies in industries ranging from automotive to semiconductor. He was the founding CEO of Touchdown Technologies, Inc. which was acquired by Agilent/Verigy, as well as of Micromachines Inc. which was acquired by Kavlico. Mr. Garabedian is named on about 30 issued U.S. patents. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering from the University of California Davis.

Raffi Garabedian is the CEO and Co-Founder of Electric Hydrogen. Raffi was most recently with First Solar, the pioneering thin-film solar company, where he served as CTO from 2012-2020. Before joining First Solar in 2008, he was founder and CEO of Touchdown Technologies. He has a long history of innovation and entrepreneurship in “hard-tech” ranging from automotive components to telecommunications subsystems. He holds over 20 issued patents and has learned a lot over the years about strategy, business development, product, manufacturing operations, leadership, and most importantly building great teams.

Aaron Pressman has been covering technology and business since before the dot com bubble. After many years writing for magazines including Fortune, Wired, and Businessweek, in 2021 he came home to the Boston Globe, where he covers tech news both local and global and writes the weekly “Innovation Beat” newsletter.

Nicolas Sauvage (SEP2018) is the President of TDK Ventures, with $350M AUM. TDK Ventures has invested in 37 startups, including unicorns like Groq, Ascend Elements and Silicon Box. Recognized on the Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist for five consecutive years, Nicolas has authored articles on Corporate Venturing and hosts the Corporate Venturing Insider podcast. Nicolas serves on the boards of Analog Inference, AutoFlight, Faction, Mach49, Metalenz, Virewirx, and TDK Ventures. Nicolas has been awarded the Corporate Director Certificate from Harvard Business School.

Nicolas Sauvage (SEP2018) is the President of TDK Ventures, with $350M AUM. TDK Ventures has invested in 37 startups, including unicorns like Groq, Ascend Elements and Silicon Box. Recognized on the Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist for five consecutive years, Nicolas has authored articles on Corporate Venturing and hosts the Corporate Venturing Insider podcast. Nicolas serves on the boards of Analog Inference, AutoFlight, Faction, Mach49, Metalenz, Virewirx, and TDK Ventures. Nicolas has been awarded the Corporate Director Certificate from Harvard Business School.

Geetha Dholakia is a Portfolio Program Manager at TDK Ventures. She is responsible for strategic engagements between Portfolio Companies and global TDK business groups. She is committed to identifying, enabling and nurturing nascent technical ideas to grow into successful business collaborations that improve lives and build a sustainable world.

She brings many years of scientific, technical program management and business development experience. In prior technology management roles, she has worked at NASA Ames Research Center, supporting NASA’s $200 million SBIR/STTR program and in enabling partnerships, business development and technology transfer of NASA Ames’ vast technology landscape. As a scientist, her deep research focus was in two areas, one at the cross-section of physics, materials science and electrical engineering in studying nanoscale systems and another in instrumentation for space missions.

She has a Ph.D. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Science and a Masters in Physics from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, driven by a lifelong curiosity to understand how nature works.

Nicolas Sauvage (SEP2018) is the President of TDK Ventures, with $350M AUM. TDK Ventures has invested in 37 startups, including unicorns like Groq, Ascend Elements and Silicon Box. Recognized on the Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist for five consecutive years, Nicolas has authored articles on Corporate Venturing and hosts the Corporate Venturing Insider podcast. Nicolas serves on the boards of Analog Inference, AutoFlight, Faction, Mach49, Metalenz, Virewirx, and TDK Ventures. Nicolas has been awarded the Corporate Director Certificate from Harvard Business School.

Geetha Dholakia is a Portfolio Program Manager at TDK Ventures. She is responsible for strategic engagements between Portfolio Companies and global TDK business groups. She is committed to identifying, enabling and nurturing nascent technical ideas to grow into successful business collaborations that improve lives and build a sustainable world.

She brings many years of scientific, technical program management and business development experience. In prior technology management roles, she has worked at NASA Ames Research Center, supporting NASA’s $200 million SBIR/STTR program and in enabling partnerships, business development and technology transfer of NASA Ames’ vast technology landscape. As a scientist, her deep research focus was in two areas, one at the cross-section of physics, materials science and electrical engineering in studying nanoscale systems and another in instrumentation for space missions.

She has a Ph.D. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Science and a Masters in Physics from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, driven by a lifelong curiosity to understand how nature works.

As Senior Product Manager at Metalenz, Janet leads a team of engineers focused on working with customer specifications, market, and technical knowledge to develop meta-optic solutions across consumer device, automotive, and robotics markets.

She has a demonstrated history of developing disruptive technologies for mass markets in major international companies. After beginning her career working on display optics R&D at Panasonic, she then worked for 10+ years at Osram Sylvania as Development Engineer for the light engines in LED light bulbs for the consumer market, taking the technology from the early stage of market disruption to commoditization. She then pivoted to Technical Product Manager of the Sylvania IoT portfolio before joining Metalenz.

Janet holds a master’s degree in physics from Télécom Physique Strasbourg, France, and a Ph.D. in optics from the College of Optics and Photonics/CREOL at the University of Central Florida.

Lie Shi has been the CEO of AM Batteries since July 2023. Prior, Shi served as President of Celgard, a world-renowned battery separator company that invented and commercialized a solvent-free process to produce microporous membranes for lithium-ion batteries. Over his twenty-six-year stint at the company, he worked his way from technical manager, leading its lithium battery material development, to Vice President of R&D, to Chief Technology Officer, to Chief Operations Officer, and ultimately, ascending to President. He also served as the Global Head of Separator Business Development for Asahi Kasei Corporation, Celgard’s parent company. Shi received his B.S. in Physics from Kyoto University, Japan, M.S. in Physics from the University of Michigan, and an MBA from the University of North Carolina – Charlotte.

Anil Achyuta is the Investment Managing Director at TDK Ventures, and also Investment Director for Fund EX1. He is passionate about the energy and healthcare sectors. He believes these are the most impactful areas in building a sustainable future, a mission that is directly in line with TDK Ventures’ goals.

Of his eleven investments, he has secured two exits: GenCell IPO’d on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (GNCL:IT), and Origin, which was acquired by the #1 3-D printing company in the world, Stratasys, for $100M.

Prior to TDK Ventures, Anil held leadership roles at Fortune 500 companies including L’Oréal, Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, and Draper.

Anil was voted one of the Rising Stars in 2021 by Venture Capital Journal and was ranked the #2 Rising Star in 2021 out of 20,000 corporate venture managers globally. He was also voted as one of the Emerging Leaders of 2022 by Global Corporate Venturing. He is a published author in polymer science, neural engineering, microfluidics, and tissue engineering with 11 peer-reviewed publications, two book chapters, and six US patents.

He has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Northeastern University and received his M.B.A. from the University of Florida Warrington College of Business.

Anil was born and raised in Bangalore, India in a family of teachers, and speaks fluent Kannada, Hindi. He loves sports and music. He was a former cricket player, and currently plays tennis, table tennis, racquetball, and cricket occasionally. He loves playing guitar and listening to classic rock.

Geetha Dholakia is a Portfolio Program Manager at TDK Ventures. She is responsible for strategic engagements between Portfolio Companies and global TDK business groups. She is committed to identifying, enabling and nurturing nascent technical ideas to grow into successful business collaborations that improve lives and build a sustainable world.

She brings many years of scientific, technical program management and business development experience. In prior technology management roles, she has worked at NASA Ames Research Center, supporting NASA’s $200 million SBIR/STTR program and in enabling partnerships, business development and technology transfer of NASA Ames’ vast technology landscape. As a scientist, her deep research focus was in two areas, one at the cross-section of physics, materials science and electrical engineering in studying nanoscale systems and another in instrumentation for space missions.

She has a Ph.D. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Science and a Masters in Physics from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, driven by a lifelong curiosity to understand how nature works.

Steven is the founder and CEO of Novalith Technologies, a lithium chemicals production company, which is leveraging cutting-edge technologies to address critical challenges facing the lithium industry. By reducing the environmental impact and cost of lithium chemicals production, Novalith will both enable and accelerate the transition to an electric future and contribute towards the fight against climate change.

Over his career, Steven has worked in the oil & gas, mining & minerals, and clean-technologies sectors. He founded and operated a global chemical engineering company, which specialised in the design & supply of process plant and equipment, including equipment for the lithium and battery chemicals industries. Steven specialises in commercialisation and scale-up of novel technologies and has worked with several clean tech start-ups to develop and commercialise their novel technologies in battery materials, hydrogen and other sustainable technologies.

Marty Tucker Neese serves as the Independent Director of the Company. Mr. Neese’s principal occupation is corporate director. He is also a co-founder of Nuvosil AS (silicon recycling). Previously, he was Chief Operating Officer of Velodyne LiDAR, Inc. (autonomous vehicles) from February 2017 to October 2017. Before that, Mr. Neese was Chief Operating Officer of SunPower Corporation (solar power equipment and services) from 2008 to 2017; responsible for Global Operations at Flextronics (electronics manufacturing services) from 2007 to 2008 following its acquisition of Solectron Corporation (electronics manufacturing services) where he was Executive Vice President from 2004 to 2007

Cameron Dales is president and co-founder of sodium-ion grid storage company, Peak Energy. Prior to Peak, Cam was an operating partner at Eclipse Ventures and was CCO of lithium-ion battery company, Enovix, where he led commercial strategy and execution from founding to public offering.

His first start-up was Symyx Technologies, which became a public company that developed high throughput robotic tools for the discovery of advanced materials. He started his career at Lockheed, where he developed spaceflight qualified hardware for several satellite programs.

Cam holds engineering degrees from Cornell and Stanford and is a named inventor on over 100 patents.

Nicolas Sauvage (SEP2018) is the President of TDK Ventures, with $350M AUM. TDK Ventures has invested in 37 startups, including unicorns like Groq, Ascend Elements and Silicon Box. Recognized on the Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist for five consecutive years, Nicolas has authored articles on Corporate Venturing and hosts the Corporate Venturing Insider podcast. Nicolas serves on the boards of Analog Inference, AutoFlight, Faction, Mach49, Metalenz, Virewirx, and TDK Ventures. Nicolas has been awarded the Corporate Director Certificate from Harvard Business School.