Denver, Colorado, United States
Retired corporate and business lawyer, entrepreneur, and investor - practiced global technology and complex administrative law for 30 years, focusing on advanced technology. Represented global clean energy developers, national lab research scientists, and the Department of Energy. Former partner at Denver's oldest law firm and partner in the international law firm of Squire Patton Boggs, now with 48 offices in 22 countries. Listed: “SuperLawyers”, “Who’s Who in American Law”, Martindale Hubbell’s “Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers” Serves as a principal advisor to national labs and advanced technology interests. Advanced Tech: Founder and CEO of Innovation Corridor Investments (IC), a technology and business acceleration platform. IC is a consortium of national labs, Fortune 500 companies, academic research institutions, and federal agencies. IC assists national labs and third parties to design and deploy high-impact technologies. Principal Advisor, Studio X - (Shell Corporation) Chair Thea Energy - plasma fusion: spinout from Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory Co-Founder grid-tied battery energy storage company Board of Governors “2030 Districts Network” Investor in a premier digital, evidenced-based, evaluation platform Electric utility experience includes being part of the team that created the nation's then third largest investor-owned electric utility holding company in the U.S., encompassing post-merger work focusing on nuclear power stations and electric transmission assets. Broad telecom experience included serving as a Regional General Counsel for one of the globe's largest wireless companies with $80 billion in annual revenue. Represented Department of Energy’s $32 billion Section 1705 Loan Program. Lead counsel in the financing and construction of the then-largest High Concentrating Solar Photovoltaic generating facility in the world and the diligence of a first-of-its-kind biofuel facility now providing jet fuel for F-18 Hornets and commercial aircraft. Capital Markets: Former Chair - “Colorado Venture Capital Authority” (10 years on the Bd, $150 million AUM) Founding Director and Treasurer- “Collective Clean Energy Fund” (sub-recipient $5 billion) Co-Founder, Principal Advisor, Finance - “Energize Colorado” (EC Gap Fund - $43 million deployed) Former Mayor in Colorado (Fodors and Smithsonian Mag “Best Small Towns in America”), Bd of Directors of the 17 member Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments Co-Founder: NIST-GCTC: “Supercomputer Modeling and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Cluster for Smart Cities and Regions”
As a former Vice-Chair of Innosphere, lead Co-Wy Engine partner, and one of the initial 20 Core/Senior Personnel on the Colorado-Wyoming ASCEND NSF Grant Application, I am pleased to announce that I have agreed to be the Chair of the $160 million ASCEND Co-Wy Engine Governance Board (ASCEND - Advanced Sensors and Computation for Environmental Decision-making). Along with my global innovation and investment work with Onward, and cutting-edge work at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (more to come), as well as my position with Thea Energy, I see the critical environmental and energy issues we will address regionally and nationally through the Co-Wy ASCEND Engine as an integral component of designing, deploying, and collaborating on climate tech solutions intended to advance global innovation and investment, and address existential problems: "The U.S. National Science Foundation has announced the Colorado-Wyoming [ASCEND Engine] as an inaugural NSF Regional Innovation Engine (NSF Engines). The Co-Wy Engine will initially receive up to $15 million for the next two years. Through the NSF Engines program, NSF aims to expand the frontiers of technology and innovation, spur economic growth across the nation, and transform entire geographic regions into world-leading hubs of innovation."
Led by Dr. David Gates, Senior Research Scholar at the Andlinger Center and Managing Physicist at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, our nation's premier federally funded plasma physics lab, which is managed by Princeton University, Princeton Stellarators, Inc., (PSI) is deploying cutting-edge strategies and technology to accelerate the commercialization of fusion energy. "Princeton Stellarators is leveraging recent breakthroughs in stellarator physics and engineering developed at Princeton University and elsewhere." Launched June 2022, PSI has quickly assembled a highly respected group of post-doc researchers and engineers to develop advancements in stellarator design leading to a faster, simpler, and less costly approach to fusion. I have joined this cutting-edge enterprise as the founding Chair of the Strategic Advisory Committee, understanding that the stellarator is considered to be the only fusion architecture that can create all required magnetic fields using highly efficient superconducting coils.
Innovation Corridor Investment, LLC (IC), is a unique technology enhancement and commercialization platform. Where product development, sophisticated modeling, time to market, risk analysis, and optimization is critical, we connect our partners and clients with "leadership-class" high-performance supercomputing resources, big data analytics, and AI to deploy and scale innovations. As a member of the NYC 2030 District Network, and the international, 2030 Districts Network, Innovation Corridor Investments (IC) utilizes research scientists and staff at our national lab partners, and inhouse Silicon Valley-based IoT engineers, to focus on the development of Smart Cities and Regions, Climate, Digital Twin/Cyber-Physical Systems, Cyber-Security, Grid Optimization, Edge-of-Grid Solutions, Advanced Mobility Solutions, Resilience, and Emerging Technologies. The IC is a multi-sided technology enhancement and investment platform resting on four pillars 1) co-anchor national labs, 2) Fortune 500 and other enterprise companies, 3) Tier I Academic Research Institutions and entrepreneurs, and 4) select federal government agencies. We accelerate technology commercialization and streamline third party access to national labs. We align business models, world-class technologies, capital, and technical experts with the needs of the market, creating robust and efficient pathways to success. Our lab partners include the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), our nation’s only federally funded laboratory dedicated to the research, development, and commercialization of advanced energy and energy efficiency technologies, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), our nation’s premier federally funded research laboratory in the areas of weather forecasting, climate analysis, and earth sciences. Our platform is a force multiplier designed to scale innovation, leverage investment and, foster economic and business development.
I have been hired to serve as a Principal Advisor to Princeton Plasma Physics Lab (PPPL) to assist in conducting a feasibility analysis designed to develop the nation's first national lab supported plasma manufacturing and strategic innovation center. PPPL is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory managed by Princeton University and a "longstanding leader in the science and engineering behind the development of fusion energy - a clean, safe, and virtually limitless energy source." The lab is "dedicated to developing the scientific knowledge and advanced engineering to enable fusion to power the U.S. and the world; advancing the science of nanoscale fabrication for technologies of tomorrow; and furthering the scientific understanding of the plasma universe from laboratory to astrophysical scales." In 2023, PPPL assembled a team from the lab and SRI International in Menlo Park, California (developers of SIRI, and co-developers of GPS and the Internet) to assess the feasibility of designing and developing a plasma-based manufacturing center that can leverage the unique resources and capabilities of PPPL and private industry, and support the development and scaling of both startups and existing businesses advancing plasma fusion, microelectronics, quantum information sciences and devices, and sustainability-related technologies.
I am a Co-Founder, Director, and Principal Advisor to Energize Colorado, Inc. (ECI). In addition, I am a Director who sits on ECI’s Finance Committee. ECI is focused on “Energizing Colorado to Drive the Economic Recovery". March 2020, I accepted an appointment to the Governor's Emergency Council for Economic Stabilization and Growth, and worked with a stellar group of business owners and stakeholders to design and deploy Energize Colorado, Inc. ECI was launched to support the stabilization and long-term economic growth of Colorado's economy as a result of the pandemic - a "nonprofit designed to help Colorado's entrepreneurs, small businesses, and nonprofits recover and rise from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic." We are a collaboration of innovators, entrepreneurs and business leaders, who have come together to "scale the best ideas and develop new ones where they are needed.” One of our centerpiece programs is the $25 million Gap Fund, which provides grants and loans to Colorado’s small businesses, and in approximately 24 months deployed $43 million.