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Meet The Team
Ajay Gupta
Ajay has been a venture investor in deep tech and climate tech startups in the valley for last 10 years. He co-leads the Climate and Sustainability SIG at Stanford’s Distinguished Careers Institute. Ajay had a career in equity trading for over two decades and ran the Equity Trading business of Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Asia Pacific. He co-founded NZVC, an early stage VC fund in New Zealand.
Jon Carter
Jon has been a senior partner at Egon Zehnder International over the last 30 years. He founded their Technology Practice in the US and established the Silicon Valley office. Jon has recruited Board members, CEOs and senior executives for companies such as, Alphabet, Intel, Microsoft and a host of earlier stage growth companies. He is now working with the Doerr School at Stanford promoting sustainability in the boardroom.
Radhika Malpani
Radhika was a Senior Engineering Director at Google from its early days for over 20 years, starting with leading Google Ads in 2000. She founded Google Images, growing it to over 1B queries/day. She also started Google Local Search, and co-led Google Travel Search. A prolific climate investor, Radhika co-teaches entrepreneurship classes at Stanford including Hacking for Climate and Sustainability, and Lean Launchpad.
Kirk Liu
Kirk served as a Technology to Market Advisor at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), where he helped prepare innovative energy technologies for transition from the agency-funded lab to the commercial market. Kirk’s career has focused on commercialization and growth of early-stage startups.
Cassandra Xia
Cassandra was a software engineer at Google Research and Google AI for 5 years before leaving to work in the climate sector. She co-founded workonclimate.org, a 20k+ member climate work movement. She now works on grid interconnection at Pearl Street Technologies.
Ty Jagerson
Ty has decades of experience as a Sustainable Energy Executive. He started the Google X Tapestry project, a grid energy DERS technology. Led V2X @ GM Energy and led biz dev at Xerox PARC. Board Member Phoenix Energy and UC Merced.
Our Advisors
Tom Baruch
Senior Advisor to Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) and founder of Baruch Future Ventures, his family office that invests in resources, and resilient and sustainable products. Tom previously founded Formation 8 (now 8VC) and CMEA Capital, where he led investments resulting in 18 IPOs and 8 acquisitions, with 10 unicorn exits. Tom and BEV have co-invested in leading climate startups such as Fervo Energy, Aeroseal, Kobold Metals, and LuxWall, Inc.
Pat Byrne
Former CEO of GE’s Onshore Wind business and CEO of GE Digital, leader in grid automation software. With 30 years in technology and strategic business development, Pat has held senior positions at Fortive, Danaher, and Tektronix. Pat began his career at Hewlett-Packard. He serves on the boards of Diebold Nixdorf, GXO Logistics, and Verra Mobility, and has been a board member for Micron Technology.
Armando Martinez
Former CEO of Iberdrola, Europe’s largest utility, where he oversaw €40B in global investments and deployed €13B annually across electrical infrastructure, delivering large-scale operational and digital transformation. Over several decades, he drove the company’s international growth and clean energy expansion. His career includes senior leadership roles spanning utility operations, strategy, and large-scale energy infrastructure development.
Joyce Dickerson
Former Global Lead, Google Data Center Sustainability, driving projects that saved millions of dollars while reducing carbon footprints. Joyce brings two decades of experience in sustainability, strategy, and operations, in data center sustainability. She is a VP of Global Sustainability at Ada Infrastructure, a leader in sustainable data centers. Joyce is a double Stanford alum and a published author.
Patrick Decker
Former CEO of Xylem, led the company from 2014 to 2024, driving significant advancements in smart water infrastructure and data analytics. Under his stewardship, Xylem expanded its global footprint and bolstered its commitment to water sustainability. Decker previously held notable leadership roles at Harsco Corporation, Tyco International, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.