Advisory Board

Allen Chen, Senior Associate, BMW i Ventures
Allen Chen is an Investor at BMW i Ventures, where he focuses on early-stage investments across mobility, supply chain, manufacturing, and sustainability. On the side, he is the writer of Urban Tech Digest, a recurring publication on the intersection between cities and emerging technologies. Prior to joining venture capital, he spent time at Uber and Lilium in scaling their operations and commercial partnerships. He began his career as a strategy consultant at L.E.K. Consulting, where he advised private equity and corporate clients in their M&A and growth strategy. Allen holds a BBA in Finance and Strategy Consulting from Emory University.

Chris Claxton, Principal, Volta Energy Technologies
Mr. Claxton is an Investment Principal at Volta Energy Technologies, a hard tech venture capital firm specifically focused on batteries, energy storage, and related technologies. He has nearly 20 years of experience in early-stage technology commercialization. He has been on the founding team of several technology start-up companies and has worked as a commercialization consultant to various government agencies including the NIH, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Energy. Before joining the Volta team in early 2020, Chris spent seven years as Sr. Business Development Executive for Argonne National Laboratory, leading business development and technology licensing for the Lab’s advanced electrochemical energy storage R&D program. While at Argonne, he worked alongside the Lab’s scientists and engineers to successfully lead and close deals with companies across the energy storage value chain, including raw material suppliers, battery material manufacturers, cell and pack manufacturers, system integrators, and automotive OEMs in North America, Europe, and Asia. He holds a B.S. in Finance and Marketing from Indiana University.

Sam Jaffe, Senior Director, Business Development at Addionics
Sam Jaffe is the Senior Director of Business Development at Addionics, an Israel-based manufacturer of current collectors for batteries. Sam has more than two decades of experience in the battery industry as an analyst at IDC Energy Insights, Navigant Research (now Guidehouse), Cairn ERA (a battery market research company he founded in 2015) and E Source. Sam’s expertise ranges from battery cost modelling and battery market forecasting to due diligence for battery-related investments. At Addionics, he is tasked with helping to establish a U.S.-based factory by 2025. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Jeffrey Mathews, Managing Director, Investment Banking, Barclays Bank
Jeffrey Mathews is a Managing Director at Barclays covering Battery Technology for the Investment Banking Division. He has nearly 20 years of experience across energy and infrastructure sectors with a focus on M&A, capital raising and project financing. Jeff’s clients include large-cap and emerging growth corporates as well as growth equity, private equity and private credit sponsors. Jeff graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in Business and Psychology.

Pavel Molchanov, Managing Director, Energy Equity Research, Raymond James & Associates
Pavel Molchanov joined Raymond James & Associates in 2003 and has been part of the energy research team ever since. He became an analyst in 2006, the year he initiated coverage on the renewable energy/clean technology sector. In this role, he covers all aspects of sustainability-themed technologies, including solar, wind, biomaterials, electric vehicles, hydrogen, power storage, grid modernization, water technology, and more. Within the energy research team, he also writes about the broader topics of geopolitical and regulatory issues, climate change, and ESG investing. He graduated cum laude from Duke University in 2003 with a Bachelor of Science degree in economics, with high distinction. In the broader community, he is a member of the board of visitors at the University of North Carolina; a member of the advisory board at Cool Effect, an environmental project funding charity; the sponsor of the Molchanov Sustainability Internship Program at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London; and the sponsor of the Molchanov Climate Communications Prize at the American Geophysical Union.

Girish Nadkarni, Strategic Advisor, Clean Energy Ventures, Advisor, Stanford High Impact Technology Fund, Venture Partner, Alchemist Climate Ventures, Senior Advisor, OGCI Climate Investments
Over the last two decades of driving investments in critical climate technologies, Girish Nadkarni has served as the President of TotalEnergies Ventures, President of ABB Technology Ventures and Director of OGCI Climate Investments. With a deep background as an operator and investor, Girish has an insightful perspective on building global venture capital groups and scaling early-stage climate technologies for material impact. In 2023, he was appointed to the Strategic Advisory Board of Clean Energy Ventures (CEV), a leading venture capital firm funding climate tech startups, to slash carbon emissions at the gigaton-scale. In addition, Girish remains an active advisor to a number of funds, including OGCI Climate Investments. He is on the board at Gentari, the clean energy solutions arm of Malaysian state oil company, Petronas; led the creation of Hy24, the $2B hydrogen infrastructure fund; and sits on the Advisory Committee at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Institute for Carbon Management. He brings critical experience in many sectors, including renewable energy, green hydrogen and derivative fuels, and grid technology. Girish has long had his finger on the pulse of the ecosystem – playing a role in many successful climate tech exits – and brings a critical market perspective that will help us to grow and scale decarbonization technologies globally.

Kamal Shah, Former Senior Director, Intel
Kamal Shah recently retired from Intel Corp. after multiple decades of distinguished career where in his last role he managed archiecture execution for next generation of servers for AI and non AI workloads. Prior to that, in Intel's Client Computing Group, one of the key areas of his responsibility was leadership of the Extended Battery Life Initiative for the mobile PCs as well as leadership of an industry wide battery life consortium. In this role for over twenty years, he led the enabling of many innovative power saving technologies which cumulatively have led to thin and light and 8-10 hours battery life laptops we use today. Working with Intel Capital, he also led investments in many promising power savings and power sources technologies. Over his many years in this role, he evangelized the need for longer battery life through ingredient power reduction and innovation in power sources technologies at hundreds of industry conferences. He is a charter member of Oregon TiE organization and acts as a mentor for startups in India.

Jesse Teichman, Partner, MacKinnon, Bennett & Co. USA
MacKinnon, Bennett & Co. is a specialist climate tech growth equity firm, headquartered in Montreal. MKB’s investment focus centers on power, mobility, the built environment, and industrials. Jesse joined MKB in 2022. He leads investments in the power and industrial domains as Partner, based in Houston. Jesse has worked to enable energy innovation for over 20 years, both as an investor and in senior commercial roles with startups and global companies including GE and Chevron. His early experience includes technical management for marine propulsion and power generation projects. With Chevron Technology Ventures, he was a founding member of Chevron’s climate-tech focused Future Energy Funds—$100m Fund I and $300m Fund II—and led numerous investments. These investments in Series A through E companies included EV infrastructure, energy storage, and advanced power generation. Jesse also spearheaded the deployment of a range of novel technologies within Chevron and its partners. Jesse’s community engagement centers around inclusive access to youth soccer, and mentorship of clean energy leaders and early career professionals. He earned a U.S. Soccer Federation National-C coaching license, and is a past board member of Westbury Soccer Club in Houston. Jesse holds a B.S. in Marine Engineering from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin. He served 11 years in the U.S. Naval Reserve, completing service with the rank of lieutenant commander.

James Trevey, Co-founder, Chief Technology Officer, Forge Nano, Chair of the Go-Forward Operating Model Committee, Li-Bridge
James Trevey PhD, CTO of Forge Nano, is an expert in Li-ion batteries and supply chain, a thought leader in materials science and technology scaling, and an advocate for energy sustainability. He is an Officer of NAATBatt, Founder and Vice President of the Military Power Sources Consortium (MPSC), and a Chair of Li-Bridge, among numerous other advisory boards in the sustainability sector, where he is an active supporter and enabler of collaborative industry and government relations focused on energy security.

Tem Tumurbat, Managing Partner, Nomadic Venture Partners
Tem is the Co-founder and Managing Partner of Nomadic Venture Partners, where he focuses on fund strategy, fundraising, portfolio construction, valuation, and financial analysis. Prior to co-founding NVP, Tem was an investment professional at Resource Capital Funds (RCF), a mining-focused private equity investment firm, managing early- to late-stage investments. He de-risked companies, commercialized their businesses and successfully completed M&As that delivered hundreds of millions of dollars to investors. Prior to RCF, Tem worked for Newmont Mining Corporation as a mining engineer and then project engineer. Tem also co-founded MNG Summit, a non-profit organization supporting Mongolian students and early career professionals. He started his professional career as an entrepreneur where he started and operated a transportation company in college to help pay for college tuition and support extended family. He served as board member and treasurer of the Colorado Chapter for the Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration (SME) as well as a board member of the Ulaanbaatar-Denver Committee for the Denver Sister Cities. Tem received his BS in Mining Engineering from Colorado School of Mines. During his free time, he likes to golf, hike, cycle, and spend time with his wife and two kids.