Charging Up: Climatetech career moves at FERC, Form Energy, Arcadia, DCVC, CarbonQuest and ESS

Canary Media’s Charging Up column chronicles gender diversity in the climatetech sector. Please send feedback and tips to wesoff@​canarymedia.​com. Canary thanks CleanCapital for its support of the column.

Job moves in cleantech venture capital

Rachel Slaybaugh is now a principal at DCVC, an early-stage ​“deep tech” venture fund with over $2 billion under management. Slaybaugh is chair of the board of directors at Good Energy Collective and was previously a division director at Berkeley Lab. DCVC’s portfolio includes micro-fission-reactor startup Oklo.

Tani Brown joined climatetech venture investor MUUS Climate Partners as VP of operations and platform. Brown was previously part of the leadership team at Jopwell. With Tani joining, the venture firm’s full-time team is now 50% women, according to the company.

Rachel Payne is now a venture partner at Elevation Ventures, an investor in seed to Series A climate and sustainability companies. She is chair and founder of FEM Holdings, a holding company and innovation incubator, as well as a climate adviser to X Earthshot.

Cleantech career moves

Sarah Bray, founder and former president of Innovant Public Relations, joined Form Energy as VP of communications. Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, recently revealed that it plans to install Form’s novel iron-air battery to provide long-duration energy storage, as covered by Canary Media.

Nicole Sitaraman, previously at Sustainable Capital Advisors and before that Sunrun, is now deputy director of the Office of Public Participation at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The OPP provides assistance to members of the public to facilitate participation in commission proceedings.

Betty Cremmins, previously with the World Economic Forum, is now serving as director for sustainable supply chains within the Office of the Federal Chief Sustainability Officer in the White House Council on Environmental Quality. The U.S. federal government is the largest purchaser in the world and has committed its $650 billion in annual procurement to achieve net-zero emissions no later than 2050.

Silfab Solar, a North American solar module manufacturer, hired Wendy Arteaga as director of finance. Arteaga joins Silfab after more than 20 years with Husky Injection Molding Systems. The U.S. currently has 7.5 gigawatts of solar module production capacity, according to consultancy Wood Mackenzie, out of a global capacity of nearly 400 gigawatts, according to Solarzoom.

Rosalind Jackson was promoted to senior program director of strategic communications at Energy Foundation, which aims to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy by supporting policy solutions that create robust competitive markets. Prior to Energy Foundation, Jackson was at Vote Solar.

Sarah Linden, previously with Apple, is now project development manager at solar developer Lightsource bp. Last month, Lightsource bp started construction on Ventress Solar, the largest solar farm in Louisiana.

Anna Pavlova, previously with Schneider Electric, is now VP of strategy and market development at CarbonQuest, a company looking to decarbonize urban buildings.

Maya Rao was hired as managing director of investments at Greenbacker Capital. Rao most recently served as VP and head of the partnerships and transactions team for RWE Renewables Americas. Greenbacker connects investor capital with sustainable infrastructure and energy-efficiency projects.

Moving toward gender balance on cleantech boards

Claudia Gast joined the board of directors of ESS, a U.S. manufacturer of long-duration iron flow batteries for utility-scale and commercial energy storage applications. Gast currently serves as CFO and board director of Global Technology Acquisition Corp., a blank-check company. She is also the co-founder of Greentrail Capital, an investment firm focused on publicly listed and growth-stage companies.

Arcadia appointed Jennifer Dulski to its board of directors. Dulski is currently the CEO and founder of Rising Team, and serves on the boards of WW and the Change.org Foundation. Arcadia raised a $100 million Series D round in 2021 and acquired several cleantech companies (Real Simple Energy, Nanogrid, Genability and iSolar). Most recently, it launched the Arc technology platform.

As we’ve noted before, Catalyst, a nonprofit that champions women in leadership roles in business, has compiled research on the benefits of gender-balanced boards and reports that adding just one additional woman to a company’s board, while keeping the overall board size unchanged, produces a return on investment of 8 to 13 basis points.

An inspirational artist

The still lifes and figurative paintings of Calgary-born, New York–based artist Anna Weyant pair a decidedly modern sensibility and a dark sense of humor with techniques and palettes drawn from the Dutch Golden Age. Follow her on Instagram.

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