Leadership

Dan has extensive experience building and leading global technology and software, energy services, and industrial manufacturing businesses.

He has held leadership roles, including serving as executive chairman of ServiceChannel and Viridity Energy; CEO and board member of Hara Software; advisory partner with private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice; COO of Invensys Energy Management and co-COO of its parent company, Invensys plc. He was also chairman and CEO of Enron Energy Services, where following Enron’s bankruptcy, he led teams that managed the liquidation of Enron’s retail and wholesale businesses. Prior to that, Dan was COO of Enron Energy Services following its acquisition of an energy services company that he co-founded. Dan also served as CEO of a NYC-based energy services company, and prior to that, he was with United Technologies Carrier Air Conditioning in domestic and international assignments.

Dan enjoys contributing his knowledge and experience by serving as an investor, board member, and advisor to a number of businesses and non-profit organizations.

As a co-inventor of Ambri’s liquid metal battery, David received the TR35 award from Technology Review, rated as one of the world’s top 35 innovators under 35.

David leads the technical team to develop the battery technology, with a determined focus on creating a low cost and effective storage technology to meet the strenuous performance and cost demands for bulk-energy stationary storage applications.

David has earned a B.Sc in Engineering Physics from Queen’s University, and an M.Eng. and PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Adam’s career has spanned over three decades advancing new battery and fuel cell products for energy storage, consumer electronics, military and industrial markets.  Adam led Duracell’s OEM sales and consulting group.  He was president of Millennium Cell and CEO of Acumentrics, fuel cell technology developers and manufacturers.  Most recently as the Chief Commercial Officer of NEC Energy Solutions, he led the capture of grid scale energy storage projects for that leading energy storage integrator for a four year period.

Adam’s experience in the introduction of new battery products has been instrumental in guiding Ambri towards energy storage markets and partnerships.

Nora has extensive experience in finance services, corporate and management advisory, and operational financial roles. She began her career as an investment banker at JPMorgan and was later a co-founding member of successive merchant banking firms where she combined her entrepreneurial interests and her institutional skills raising capital and managing relationships with clients and investors across the full range of equity, debt and tax-oriented capital. Nora is a graduate of Georgetown University and holds an MBA from Columbia University.

Donald Sadoway, PhD, has been a professor in the department of Materials Science at MIT for over 40 years.  His GroupSadoway lab has pioneered battery technology for Ambri as well as mobile and automobile applications. He is recognized as the world leader in battery technology.

After teaching freshman chemistry for over 25 years, he now lectures in classes on energy and other subjects.   He is author of over 170 scientific papers and holder of 30+ U.S. patents. Sadoway pioneered the development of MOE (molten oxide electrolysis), and co-founded the company Boston Metal that is producing metals with no CO2 emissions.

He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Toronto.  In 2012 he was recognized as one of the 100 Most Influential People of the year by Time Magazine for his work on the Liquid Metal Battery. His TED talk has been viewed over 2,000,000 times.

Dr. Sadoway’s TED talk      donaldsadoway.com

Jim Prueitt has worked in a variety of roles and positions with over 40 years’ experience in engineering roles in energy storage, fuel cell, consumer electronics, photographic film and military industries. Prior to joining Ambri, Jim was VP of Engineering for NEC Energy Solutions, A123 Energy Solutions, MTI MicroFuel Cells and Polaroid Corp. At NEC/A123 for over 10 years, his team was the first to deliver battery energy storage for grid applications and developed 5 different generations of energy storage systems over that time. These platforms were all scalable to support large scale projects, with the largest deployment at 250 MW/ 800 MWh of energy storage capacity.

Ben Hemani began working with Ambri’s Board of Directors when he joined Cascade in 2016. At Cascade Ben was primarily focused on managing Bill Gates’ self-directed venture capital portfolio across a variety of deep-tech verticals including autonomy, robotics, drug discovery, food, energy and telecom. Prior to Cascade, Ben was on the investment team at Braemar Energy Ventures, an East Coast-based energy venture capital firm and worked as an energy economist with Charles River Associates. Ben has a Master of Engineering Management (MEM) and a BE in Environmental Engineering from Dartmouth College.

Lewis “Lou” Von Thaer became President and CEO of Battelle on October 1, 2017. Lou began his technology career with AT&T Bell Laboratories, spent a number of years at General Dynamics, then joined Leidos, Inc. as President of the company’s National Security Sector. Before joining Battelle, Lou served as CEO of DynCorp International. Lou holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Kansas State University and a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Rutgers University.

He serves as board chair of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, co-chair for UT-Battelle (operator of Oak Ridge National Laboratory), and on the boards of the Defense Science Board, the National Defense Industrial Association, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, National Veterans Memorial and Museum and TAPS (Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors). Lou is a member of the Ohio State University Board of Trustees where he serves on three committees: Audit and Compliance, Finance, and the Talent and Compensation Committee. He also serves as a trustee of the Kansas State University Foundation. He also is a member of the Ohio Business Roundtable and the Columbus Partnership Executive Committee.

Sanjay has been with Reliance since 1981, when the first polyester project in collaboration with DuPont was being set up at Patalganga. Thereafter, he has been associated with almost all of Reliance’s subsequent projects, including various petro-chemical plants, refineries as also telecom projects. Sanjay was also deeply involved during the creation of Reliance Jio Infocomm and has been responsible to build and then manage the entire telecom Network. He is presently Managing Director and Board Member of Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited, India’s’ largest mobile and fixed line telecommunication company. Sanjay did his under graduate studies in Mechanical Engineering at IIT, Mumbai and graduate work in Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Charles D. Bryceland serves as a Managing Director at Fortistar and is a member of Fortistar’s management and investment committees. Mr. Bryceland is actively involved in the firm’s growth strategy and is responsible for originating and stewarding investments focused on sustainability and decarbonization. Mr. Bryceland has over thirty years of financial services experience and has held several senior leadership roles in both large and small investment firms including, but not limited to JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Bessemer Trust.

Bethany Mayer currently is the Chair of the board of Box Inc. and Chair of compensation. Mayer also serves on the boards of Sempra Energy where she is Chair of the Safety, Sustainability and Technology committee, Lam Research, EFI Inc and previously served on the board of Marvell Technologies. In addition, Mayer is an Executive Advisor with Siris Capital Group LLC. Mayer is the former President and CEO of Ixia (NASDAQ: XXIA), a publicly traded global company and the market leader in test, visibility, and security solutions. During her tenure at Ixia, she drove its growth in key new markets, culminating in a successful sale of the company to Keysight Technologies Inc. in 2017 for $1.7B. Prior to Ixia, she was Senior Vice President and General Manager of the $2.5B Networking Business Unit of HP Inc, which included the former 3Com, HP ProCurve, Tipping Point, and H3C, a Chinese subsidiary. Mayer served as Senior Vice President, Marketing and Product Management, for Blue Coat Systems. Previously Mayer held leadership roles in product development at Cisco Systems and Apple. Mayer holds a BS from Santa Clara University, an MBA from CSUMB, and an MS in Cybersecurity from NYU.

Sylvia Acevedo is an experienced independent board member, currently serving on two public boards, Qualcomm Inc, and Credo Technologies and a privately held company, Ambri Battery Inc. Sylvia has a proven track record as a CEO and has been highly awarded for her accomplishments in a variety of industries, technology, education, federal government and national non-profits.

In 2020, Sylvia joined the Board of Directors of Qualcomm Inc, a leading Fortune 150 company, where she is a member of the governance committee. During this time, the board has overseen a CEO selection and transition, several major strategic acquisitions, critical global supply chain strategies and record levels of profitability.

In December 2021, Sylvia joined the board of Credo Technologies and serves as the Chair of the Governance Committee. In January 2022, Credo was the only tech company to successfully go public. In September 2022, Sylvia joined the board of Ambri Battery Inc, a non-Lithium liquid storage battery for solar and wind farms. Currently, Sylvia is on the board of advisors for an early-stage company, Quark.AI, a purpose a built generative AI platform for automating customer support. Quark.AI’s is an enterprise solution that is highly secure, low cost and with 100% traceability and high accuracy levels.

Sylvia served on the board of Dynamic Signal, Inc., a privately held SaaS platform company that merged with Social Chorus through a private equity deal funded by Sumeru Equity in 2021. From 2014-17, Sylvia served on the board of Synergis Education, Inc., a higher education services company. During this time, the company successfully repositioned its services for the healthcare education licensure market. Sylvia has served on multiple nonprofit boards, including 8 years on the national board of the Girl Scouts of the USA where she served on the executive committee before becoming the CEO. As CEO, Sylvia led the introduction of 126 new STEM badge programs and overhauled the iconic cookie program by improving the supply chain and partnering with FiServ to move $500,000,000 to online payments processing. More than 1 Million STEM badges were earned by Girl Scouts during her tenure, with over 180,000 in cybersecurity alone.

Prior to becoming CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA, Sylvia held executive roles at Apple, Dell, IBM and Autodesk and was a White House Education Commissioner in the Obama administration. Sylvia started her career as a rocket scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs where she worked on the Voyager 2 mission. A trailblazer in the tech industry, Sylvia had P&L responsibility in global and domestic markets and was known to lead organizations to higher levels of revenue, profit and increased market share. An entrepreneur, she was a co-founder of REBA Technologies, an Austin, TX software company that was acquired.

Marcelo Kim is a Partner at Paulson & Co. Inc., where he covers the firm’s macro-economic and natural resource investments across public and private markets. He is a graduate of Yale University and is also the Chairman of Perpetua Resources and International Tower Hill Mines