2027 Advisory Board

Anil Achyuta, Partner, Energy Impact Partners
Anil Achyuta is a Partner at Energy Impact Partners’ Frontier Strategy, where he spearheads global investments in early stage climatetech startups. He oversees fund strategy, portfolio development, and high-impact investments that align financial returns with climate innovation.

Previously, Anil was one of the founding members and Managing Director at TDK Ventures, a global frontier tech corporate venture capital fund. While at TDK, Anil spearheaded numerous investments and exits and served as an Observer on seven Boards.

Anil was voted one of the Rising Stars in 2021 by Venture Capital Journal and was ranked #2 Rising Star in 2021 out of 20,000 corporate venture managers globally, in addition to being voted as one of the Emerging Leaders of 2022, which represents top 0.5% in the industry.

Prior to TDK Ventures, Anil held leadership roles at Fortune 500 companies including L’Oréal, Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, and Draper. He has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Northeastern University and received his MBA from the University of Florida – Warrington College of Business. He has authored over 15 peer-reviewed journal publications and holds five U.S. patents.

Ryan Bayliss, PhD, Operating Partner, Venture, Leitmotif
Ryan Bayliss is a Partner at Leitmotif, where he invests in deep technologies across energy, electrification, advanced materials and industrial technology. Prior to venture capital, Ryan held senior innovation and commercial roles at Corning, where he helped scale new technologies from R&D through manufacturing and commercialization in the automotive industry, contributing to more than $1 billion in new sales. In parallel, he established Corning's solid-state battery product group. Earlier, Ryan co-founded the Faraday Institution, the UK's national battery research institute, helping raise more than $100 million to establish and scale the organization. Ryan began his career as a solid-state chemist focused on energy technologies, with research experience at Imperial College London, the University of Illinois Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Oxford.

Sidd Bhat, Executive Director, Debt Investments IFM Investors
Sidd is an Executive Director, Debt Investments based in London, and leads IFM Next Generation Infrastructure Credit, the firm’s dedicated investment strategy focused on providing scale-up capital in the form of credit to the world’s most promising companies building the next generation of industrial and infrastructure solutions across sectors such as clean energy, industrial decarbonization, transportation, circular economy, amongst others.

Sidd has wide commercial experience having worked as an operator in start-ups across high tech industrial manufacturing for solar and sustainable food retail. From 2012 onwards, Sidd has worked in private capital markets across Citibank and Jefferies, providing non-standard private debt financing to borrowers across infrastructure, real estate, lending platforms when traditional sources of capital were limited.

Sidd holds a Bachelor of Technology in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering from University of Pune, and an MBA from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill as a Fulbright scholar researching entrepreneurship and sustainability.

Cameron Dales, Co-Founder Peak Energy
Cameron Dales is co-founder of sodium-ion grid storage company, Peak Energy.  Most recently, Cam was an operating partner at Eclipse Ventures where he focused on technology investments in the $8T industrial economy. Previously, Cam was CCO of lithium-ion battery company, Enovix, where he was responsible for commercial strategy and operations. He navigated the company from lab start-up through successful public listing and built a $1.5B sales funnel including strategic relationships with all six worldwide “mega-cap” technology companies.  Prior to Enovix, Cam served as VP/GM for Symyx Technologies, a $150M revenue public company that developed high throughput robotic tools for the discovery of advanced materials for the world’s leading energy and materials companies. He started his career at Lockheed, where he developed spaceflight qualified hardware for several spacecraft including the first commercial high resolution imaging satellite. Cam holds engineering degrees from Cornell and Stanford and is an inventor on 103 patents.

Brian Dow, CEO, Amperesand
Brian Dow is currently the chief executive officer of Amperesand. Previously, Brian led Tesla's Powerpack and Megapack product lines and spearheaded the 4680 cell formation pilot at Fremont. His 14-day overhaul of the Model 3 battery line doubled throughput to hit Tesla's 5,000-vehicle-per-week target. Previously SVP Engineering at Generac, with earlier roots at Yaskawa-Solectria Solar.

Kenneth Hoffman, Founder/CEO, Traubenbach Associates
Kenneth Hoffman is with Traubenbach Associates. Ken, CFA, CIM has been a strategy and thought leadership leader in the critical metals and battery sectors for over 30 years.

He recently left McKinsey & Co after 8 years of heading the firm’s battery value chain work. He has worked with dozens of senior management, boards, and large investors to navigate strategies and outlooks for the constantly evolving world of batteries. He recently founded Traubenbach & Associates to provide advisory services to a select group of industry-leading companies.

Sungkwon Kang, Investment Director, LG Technology Ventures
Sungkwon Kang is a Director with LG Technology Ventures. Sungkwon has held various roles within LG Group, including global business development at LG Chem and open innovation and business development at LG Technology Center of America. Sungkwon was also a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group. Sungkwon received his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Cornell University and B.S. in mechanical engineering and applied computational mathematics from Virginia Tech.

Chetan Krishna, Principal - Head of Research and Dilligence, Third Derivative
Chetan is a Principal and Head of Research & Diligence at Third Derivative (D3), RMI's global climate tech accelerator and innovation engine, where he advanced RMI's work on battery technologies, and been responsible for evaluating innovative companies in cell manufacturing, new chemistries and components globally for the D3 program. Prior to joining D3, Chetan was a venture capital investor with 3i Partners (a technology-for-impact fund in India), and has previously worked with both the World Bank and IFC, and with the Harvard Business School's Laboratory for Innovation Sciences. He holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and a master's in Technology Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jeff Johnson, General Partner, B Capital
Jeff Johnson has nearly 25 years of investment, entrepreneurship and corporate experience across climate and technology. Jeff is a General Partner at the global multi-stage investment firm B Capital where he leads the firm’s growing climate investment team.  He most recently served as a Managing Director at Temasek leading the sustainable investing team for the global investment firm. Prior to Temasek, Jeff ran a boutique advisory business focused on scaling of sustainable businesses. He also co-founded and was on the Board of Xpansiv, the world's leading provider of market infrastructure for environmental commodities. Jeff worked in innovation business development at ABB between 2012 to 2014, leading growth initiatives for new sustainable products and services. Earlier in his career, he held several leadership and business development roles at various companies, including Better Place, Vendavo, and Intel Corporation. Jeff holds a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from University of Florida and a Master of Science in Engineering Systems from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Alexandra Manoloff, Head of Battery Coverage for North America, Barclays Investment Bank, Energy Transition Group
Alex Manoloff leads up Barclays’ efforts to cover the battery industry, within the Investment Bank’s Energy Transition Group. She covers battery companies across the value chain ranging from materials processing, through active material, cell manufacturing and assembly. Before covering the battery space, Alex covered various aspects of climate technology, healthcare and leveraged finance within investment banking, and prior to that she worked in various government positions including NASA. She holds a Bachelor of Science & Engineering from Princeton University.

Ulderico Ullissi, Advisor, Breakthrough Technology Ventures
Currently Ulderico is an associate at the University of Oxford’s ZERO Institute. Previously, Dr. Ulissi was the manager of technology assessment and system analysis at 21C Lab, part of Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL). Before, he worked in consulting and market research. He held technical roles as Battery Research Engineer at Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. (technical lead for energy storage technologies, AMIEO region) and as Senior Scientist at OXIS Energy Ltd. (technical manager and team lead, cell design of pre-A-Sample Li-S batteries). He was awarded his doctorate (chemistry) in 2017 from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany) and holds both BSc and MSc (industrial chemistry) from Sapienza, University of Rome (Italy). He authored several scientific publications, five patents and one book on energy storage technologies.