Dr. Morgan DeFoort is the co-founder and Managing Principal of Factor[e] Ventures, a venture development firm which supports early-stage disruptive technologies in the areas of energy, agriculture, mobility, and waste. Morgan has a background in technology development and entrepreneurship. Before starting Factor[e], Morgan was a Co-Director of the Energy Institute at Colorado State University, leading R&D programs in a wide range of technology areas including engine systems, biofuels, and cookstoves. He also serves on the Board of Directors for Odyssey Energy, and Homer Energy; Factor[e] portfolio companies.

Jamie Doyen is the Director of Finance at Factor[e] Ventures. Jamie’s primary responsibilities are to oversee financial management and reporting, manage and track established KPIs, oversee corporate governance requirements, manage risk and compliance, and oversee HR.

Prior to joining FACTOR[e], Jamie worked as a consultant for a regional finance and accounting consulting firm based out of Los Angeles. There she worked closely with Finance executives within several companies to complete large divestiture and acquisition transactions, restructure accounting teams to better align with corporate objectives, refine and update accounting processes, and manage external audits. Before working as a consultant, Jamie was the Associate Director of Finance for a group of communications agencies where she helped oversee financial management and reporting for multiple business units both in the US and Canada. Jamie started her career at Deloitte & Touche in San Francisco and is a Certified Public Accountant in California.

Jamie has Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Accounting from the University of Southern California.

Tim Sherwood is a Principal at Factor[e] Ventures. Tim’s primary responsibilities are to help source and develop investment opportunities as well as working with Portfolio Companies to fulfill their fundraising needs. In addition, Tim works with the investment community on co-investment opportunities.

Prior to joining FACTOR[e], Tim worked as the Managing Director for International Business for Lightning Hybrids. Tim was based in Oxford, England, where he was responsible for the international operations for the Colorado-based start-up company.

Tim has over 25 years’ experience in international business, including more than 10 years working for a British-based property company, DTZ. Tim spent three years working in Moscow, Russia and one year working in Chongqing, China. He has also spent time as the Investment Coordinator for the Colorado Angel Investors.

Tim has a Master’s Degree in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC.

Seth Silverman seeks tractable solutions to knotty problems and is passionate about innovative and scalable approaches to big challenges. In pursuing such opportunities, he has built leadership experience in climate change policy and as an international development practitioner and impact investor in energy access and agriculture development in East Africa, South Asia, and Central America.

As a Principal with Factor[e] Ventures, Seth is responsible for sourcing, working up, and managing our investments. Seth has led the development of our agricultural investment theses and investments and opened Factor[e]’s office in Nairobi, Kenya. Concurrent to this role, Seth co-founded Factor[e] portfolio company Apollo Agriculture. Previously, Seth managed Kenya operations for the One Acre Fund, a social enterprise that supplies smallholder farmers with the financing, inputs, and training they need to grow their own way out of hunger and poverty.

Seth has a J.D. from NYU School of Law, M.Sc. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University, and B.A. from Stanford University. Seth loves to run, be in the outdoors, and travel.

Jit Bhattacharya is a Principal at Factor[e] Ventures. Based in Nairobi, Kenya, Jit leads investments in the areas of energy access and mobility. Jit has a background in engineering, product development, and cleantech entrepreneurship. Prior to joining Factor[e], Jit served as CTO at Fenix International, one of the leading lease-to-own solar home system companies in sub-Saharan Africa. Jit also served as CEO of Mission Motors, a Silicon Valley company developing breakthrough powertrain technology for electric and hybrid vehicles, and as a manager in Apple’s Special Projects Group. Jit holds an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.

Amanda is an Associate at FACTOR[e] Ventures. She applies her scientific background and experience with a wide array of technologies to perform due diligence, advance internal projects, and provide technical services for portfolio companies. Defying the laws of physics, Amanda realizes an endless source of energy to work on projects that seek to mutually satisfy environmental and economic considerations for markets that would experience significant positive impacts as a result. Amanda enjoys drilling down into the gritty deals of how a technology works as well as considering the bigger picture, which necessarily includes human behavior and socio-economic factors.

Previously, Amanda worked as an environmental consultant for a multi-national organization where she consistently worked in the power, agricultural, and pharmaceutical sectors. Amanda obtained a B.A. in Physics, a Mechatronics Minor in Engineering, and a graduate degree in Sustainable Engineering with a power systems focus from Villanova University. In the last five years, Amanda has spent a considerable amount of time designing and installing both stand-alone and grid-tied small home solar systems, developing an appropriate headlamp solution for rural medical attendees in developing communities, and working with IEEE to make advances in open-source hardware.

Amanda prefers cycling over walking and driving. She has been known to spend many a vacation exploring by bicycle, and conducts bikepacking clinics for beginners. Amanda enjoys swimming, perfecting select recipes, and traveling.

Michael is an Associate at Factor[e] based in Nairobi. Prior to Factor[e] he worked in product management in the Solar Home System sector, validating new products and taking them to market across East and West Africa. He is now busy applying the lessons learned from these endeavours in his new role unearthing and supporting a new wave of entrepreneurs across a wide range of problems. When not working, Michael enjoys learning a little about a lot and will happily debate chess, solo travelling, mixing vinyl records, CrossFit and many things in between, all in an afternoon.

Michael holds a First Class Honours BEng degree in Mechanical Engineering from Southampton University and an MEng degree in Geological Engineering from the University of British Columbia.

Jordan Westerberg is an industrial designer specializing in design for manufacturing. He has 5 years of experience building and innovating upon products for start-ups to fortune 500 companies across a wide range of product markets including consumer electronics, tactical gear, sporting goods, lifestyle consumer goods, soft goods, and transportation design.

At Factor[e] Ventures, Jordan’s primary role is that of a design consultant to Factor[e]’s portfolio companies. He provides traditional design support in the form of product development, CAD modeling, graphic and marketing materials. He also integrates with the companies to help them with their branding and design strategy.

Jordan has a B.A. in Industrial Design from Iowa State University as well as having studied Product Engineering at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm Sweden.

His collaboration on products and research have acquired accolades internationally such as the Red Dot Award, iF Product Design Award, Good Design Award, Red Star Award and CES’s Best Of.

Belle is the Platform Manager at Factor[e] Ventures. Belle’s primary roles are designing and implementing Factor[e]’s post-investment support program to support each venture’s growth as well as manage Factor[e]’s professional service provider network.

Prior to joining Factor[e] Ventures, Belle supported the growth of early-stage companies at a technology startup incubator by conducting in-depth market and access to capital research for founders in the fields of cleantech, medical device, and agri-tech. She has also been contracted by startups to assist with designing and executing on projects such as customer discovery and communications. More recently she worked in communications for the Energy and Resource Markets branch of the New Zealand government promoting investment into their energy markets.

Belle has a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Organization and Innovation Management from Colorado State University. She enjoys trying new Jamie Oliver recipes, going to museums, and spending time outside.

Tom is an emerging market specialist based in London. He is focused on funding and de-risking innovative projects at the intersection of agriculture and energy development that demonstrate the exciting opportunity this represents across sub-Saharan Africa.

Before Factor[e], Tom spent 4 years in Dar es Salaam running the Tanzanian operations of BIMA, launching and scaling its first mobile money paid, mass-market insurance service using mobile technology. Before that, he was a management consultant with PwC focusing on strategy, market entry and operating model design in the healthcare, financial services, and energy sectors.

Tom enjoys running, following niche sports and reading. He also maintains an unhealthy interest in current affairs.

Nick Goddard trained to Chartered status as both a scientist and an engineer, followed by ten years’ experience working in the oil & gas, power generation, aerospace and defence industries. Starting in technology development roles, over this period he migrated progressively into strategic planning, techno-economic analysis and business development. In 1997, he switched track and became an investment banker in the City of London, mainly raising equity funding for high growth companies in the pan-European technology sector. He left banking in 2005 to pursue a portfolio career as an investor/interim executive in multiple technology start-up companies and a consultant to a mix of investors and government agencies. Most of this work focused on environmental technologies (typically low carbon energy) and sustainable technologies for deployment in the developing world. In 2012, he was a founder investor in Spinetic Energy Ltd which was set up to exploit a novel community scale wind energy capture technology. Over the next six years, Nick devoted most of his time to serving as the CFO/Commercial Director of Spinetic, in the course of which he raised three funding rounds and developed an extensive knowledge of the access to energy sector. Since 2018, he has served Factor[e] as its UK Venture Partner. Nick has a MA in Physics from Cambridge University and a PhD in Engineering from Imperial College London.

Aditi leads investments for Asha Impact. She strongly believes that for-profit enterprises are the engines of access creation at scale. Her prior experience includes Co-Founding Contrarian Capital, an early stage investment fund focused on technology led businesses built for the mass markets. At Contrarian, she led investments in consumer and enterprise technology businesses across finance, healthcare, education, and enterprise SaaS. She previously worked with Motilal Oswal Private Equity and Yes Bank. At Yes Bank, she managed the microfinance and affordable housing corporate lending book as part of the Development Banking team. She has also done short term assignments with IFAD and Fino PayTech in the past. Aditi holds an MBA in Finance from FMS, Delhi and a Bachelors in Technology from Indraprastha University.

Paul is the Stone Family Foundation’s Director of WASH and has been working over the last three years to design and deliver a five-year growth strategy for the Foundation in its flagship portfolio.

This has included a complete strategy refresh and the inclusion of a mixture of philanthropy, impact investment and start-up / enterprise development principles into the portfolio of organisations the Foundation works with.

Paul connects people, ideas and financing with a focus on water, waste, health and livelihood impacts.

He brings 15 years’ experience in the global water and sanitation sector building diverse portfolios in rural and urban programming, linking in-depth technical knowledge to resources from a range of philanthropic and financial sources.

Prior to joining the Foundation Paul spent seven years at the innovative multisector partnership Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) where he was the Director for Partnerships & Development.

A strong network in the development and philanthropy sectors (private and corporate foundations as well as bilateral and multilateral development agencies) ensures Paul has extensive experience influencing decision makers across philanthropic, corporate and government sectors.

Mark is a senior adviser to investors, companies, and institutions in the Front Range of Colorado tackling the world’s energy and resource sustainability and access challenges. Mark has nearly four decades of experience launching and building new businesses and social enterprises in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Asia, including 26 years growing international practice groups as a Senior Partner at McKinsey and Company. In addition to chairing Factor[e]’s board and managing his own portfolio of early-stage impact companies, Mark applies his extensive business experience to non-concessionary seed investments as an operating partner at Blackhorn Ventures and philanthropic/non-profit organizations as a Director in Residence at Redstone Strategy Group.

Mark holds both a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

After graduating from Oxford University in 1983, Sam worked for six years in the agrochemical industry, with a focus on Latin America. After 18 months working as a volunteer with street children in Sao Paulo, Sam returned to business with 11 years at UK commodity trading company, ED&F Man Holdings, becoming Managing Director of the company’s Asian business in 2001. In 2002, Sam returned to the development sector becoming Organisational Development Manager at the International Save the Children Alliance.

In 2006, Sam joined Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) as its first CEO. WSUP is a not-for-profit company, a private sector-NGO hybrid, which empowers local providers of water and sanitation services to reach low-income urban consumers on a commercially viable basis. By 2014, the WSUP programme had provided over two million low-income consumers with improved water and sanitation services and five million with improved the hygiene. In the process, WSUP has contributed valuable learning for the WASH sector on how to leverage private sector know-how to provide sustainable benefits to the BOP.

Jordan works across Shell Foundation’s Access to Energy and Sustainable Mobility programmes. He is also responsible for driving Shell Foundation’s strategy in relation to energy enabled products and services.

Jordan currently works across a range of partners spanning Africa, India, and Latin America and enjoys the variety of collaborating with social enterprises at each stage of their development. Before joining Shell Foundation, Jordan worked in a number of key commercial roles within the Shell Group in Europe & Africa. Most recently Jordan has been serving as the Global CRM Channel Manager within Shell’s Retail Business. Jordan has a degree in Software Engineering from Oxford Brookes University and spent a number of years working in the tech sector before joining the Shell Group in 2008.

Tim has focused much of his career on accelerating the development and adoption of new approaches for controlling and optimizing the transmission and delivery of electric power, particularly in the context of high renewable generation penetrations.

Prior to joining BEV, Tim was Deputy Chief Scientist at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) where he led technology development R&D programs in the areas of electric utility data analytics and grid cybersecurity. Prior to joining NRECA, Dr. Heidel served as a Program Director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), where he managed a portfolio of over 75 research projects in the areas of electric power systems engineering and power electronics. Tim began his career as the Research Director for MIT’s “Future of the Electric Grid” study, coordinating research efforts from economics, policy, and electrical engineering on the most important challenges and opportunities that are likely to face the U.S. electric grid over the next several decades.

Tim Heidel holds S.B., M.Eng., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and an M.S. in Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Emma Miller joined Shell Foundation in September 2015 and is working across the Access to Energy portfolio, with a specific focus on mini-grid and waste to energy. She is also developing Shell Foundation’s strategy in China.

Emma has a BA in International Economics, an MSc in Economics and Finance and is almost CIMA qualified. She spent three years working in Finance within the Shell Group before joining Shell Foundation. Previously she worked at Qualcomm Ventures, then in a few London tech start-ups to gain a better understanding of the start-up industry.

Robert Trezona is an investor in clean technology hardware businesses based on outputs from scientific research. Background in materials science with technical roles fuel cell start-ups. Then worked as a strategy consultant, and for the last decade, an investor in breakthrough science protected by strong intellectual property.

Dr. Bryan Willson is a professor of mechanical engineering and Director of Colorado State University’s Energy Institute. Byan is founder of CSU’s Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory (EECL), a world leader in the study of internal combustion engines, natural gas technology, algae biofuels, intelligent electric grids, advanced building technology, technology for the developing world, and clean cookstoves. He is active in technology commercialization and is founder and board member of Envirofit International Ltd., a non-profit corporation that develops clean energy technology for the developing world.

In 2009, Bryan was recognized by Scientific American, joining President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Michael Bloomberg, in its inaugural list of the “Scientific American 10” — ten individuals who have made significant contributions to guiding science to serve humanity on a global basis.