Dan BatesChief Executive OfficerMr. Bates has spent the last 10 years as President, CEO and Founder of WindStream Technologies, a recognized leader in hybrid renewable energy systems. Under Bates’ guidance the Company has deployed projects of all sizes in over 35 countries and established manufacturing facilities in the United States and in India. The Company has won international awards for product design, efficiency and sustainability and has developed strong relationships in the international renewable energy community.
Prior to starting WindStream Mr. Bates spent 15 years in the technology sector and has launched successful technology ventures in both hardware and software. Mr. Bates’ first technology venture, Extreme Audio Reality (EAR) was the first provider of multi-channel, interactive audio, designed for the PC and set-top box gaming arena. EAR successfully licensed its products to all major game publishers including Electronic Arts, Activision, Id Software, Ubisoft and many others. After EAR, Mr. Bates started Avant Interactive, which was the Leadership first provider of an interactive or clickable video solution for content owners, publishers and advertisers. Avant was the market leader in this emerging sector, holding licenses and/or contracts with many of the Fortune 100 companies.
James YoungChief Technical OfficerJames Young has more than 20 years of software development experience specializing in stream video network design, social game development, and online advertising. He has been a part of three successful startup acquisitions but also has large enterprise experience working at Cisco. He is familiar with the token launch process and wishes he could go back to school and get a degree in blockchain.
John R. OwenChief Financial OfficerJohn Owen has 30+ years of CFO/COO experience in various
companies and industries: manufacturing, entertainment and
software. John played critical role in the sale of Varitel Video to
Electronic Data Systems (EDS), and the exit for the principals of
The Ant Farm to DDB, a subsidiary of Omnicom, Inc.
Mr. Owen is a graduate of UCLA and earned an MBA from Loyola Marymount University.
Venkat Kumar TangiralaInternational Business Development LeadVenkat Kumar Tangirala is a graduate in Electronics & Communications Engineering from Vellore Institute of Technology in India. He has more than 19 years of experience in the renewable energy and IT sectors and has held management roles in various industries, including information technology, defense, manufacturing, and alternative energy. Mr. Tangirala is currently President of WindStream Energy Technologies India Pvt. Ltd., managing the company’s operations in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. He is also a Director for Syaton Global Services Inc., a software company with offices in India and the U.S. (www.siyaton.com). He has held positions as Head for Green Products Division and Defense Electronics at HBL Power Systems Ltd. in Hyderabad, India (www.hbl.in) and President for Sensorgrid, Inc., heading up Indian Operations.
David MillerProject Development LeadDavid Miller is a technology lover who has always been intrigued by the relationships between technology, security and economics. He has decades of experience implementing technology solutions in public and private organizations including Cisco and Microsoft. He is a practicing CISSP and enjoys music, travel and automating crypto/ FX trading. David has been focused in the crypto startup space since 2014.
Austin BatesCommunity LeadHailing from Los Angeles, Austin Bates has been involved in the renewable energy space for the past 3 years. With an educational background in physical geography/GIS from UCLA, he was a member of the Windstream Technologies team based in Hyderabad, India, helping to oversee construction of their manufacturing facility and manage their international accounts. He made the transfer over to ImpactPPA to continue these efforts on a global scale. For 10 years, Austin has also worked for the LA County Fire Department as an ocean lifeguard and paramedic. He brings with him this diverse skillset and his strong desire to serve others.
Jeff Giery Chief Growth Officer Jeff has spent the last 7 years in business development roles across multiple industries in both major corporations and startups. He has experience negotiating large scale contracts with high level Executives at some of the worlds largest financial institutions as well as fortune 500 companies. He is leveraging his business development knowledge and background to help build out ImpactPPA’s robust pipeline of power projects around the world.
Vinay GuptaVinay Gupta is a technologist and policy analyst with a particular interest in how specific technologies can close or create new avenues for decision makers. This interest has taken him through cryptography, energy policy, defence, security, resilience and disaster management arenas.
He is the founder of Co-Founder of Mattereum, which is creating the Internet of Agreements™. He is known for his work on the hexayurt, a public domain disaster relief shelter designed to be build from commonly-available materials, and with Ethereum, a distributed network designed to handle smart contracts.
Michael K. Dorsey
Dr. Michael K. Dorsey is a recognized expert on global energy, environment, finance and sustainability matters. In 1997, in Glasgow, Scotland, Dorsey was bestowed Rotary International’s highest honor, The Paul Harris Medal for Distinguished Service to Humanity. Dr. Dorsey is a “Full member” of the Club of Rome and in 2013 the National Journal named him one of 200 US “energy and environment expert insiders”. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Yale and the Johns Hopkins University, presently Dr. Dorsey is also a co-founder, limited partner and the sole arbitrating board member of the Hyderabad, India based Univergy/ThinkGreen.
In the scholarly world, for the first decade of the 21st century Dr. Dorsey was a professor in the environmental studies program at Dartmouth College. He has also been guest faculty at Wesleyan University (USA), the University KwaZuluNatal and the University of Witwatersrand (South Africa); Kungl Tekniska Högskolan (Sweden); and Erasmus University’s Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM) Sustainability & Climate Change Research Unit (The Netherlands).
Dr. Dorsey’s significant government engagement began in 1992 as a member of the U.S. State Department Delegation to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, “The Earth Summit.” From 1994-96 Dorsey was a task force member of President William Jefferson Clinton’s Council on Sustainable Development. From April 2007 until November 2008 Dorsey was a member of Senator Barack Obama’s energy and environment Presidential campaign team. In 2010 Lisa Jackson, the US Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA) Administrator, appointed Dr. Dorsey to the EPA’s National Advisory Committee (NAC) and was reappointed in 2012 and 2014.
Edward CotlerEdward Cotler is a corporate finance expert with a career that spans over two decades. Until recently, he was Vice President at Goldman Sachs, focusing on new business development within the Investment Banking Division.
Matt McKibbinMatt McKibbin has been a blockchain evangelist since 2013. From 2013 to 2017, he coordinated the DC Blockchain Meetup and was heavily involved in the BitAngels investment group. While the blockchain space was still young, he worked with companies such as BitPay and Factom by leveraging his network to educate the community about the potentials of decentralized applications.
He later went on to co-found Ubitquity, the world’s first blockchain-based title transfer company, and D10e the first and leading conference on decentralization. He serves as an advisor to Network Society Labs, Humaniq, Securrency, and Social Evolution and has been involved in several early-stage blockchain startups, including Ubiquity, Trive.news, and Propy. In 2017, he founded DecentraNet, a consulting and advisory firm, in order to provide real world business experience for the nascent blockchain entrepreneurial world.
Matt has spoken as an expert on decentralization at premier conferences worldwide. He has been featured in dozens of media publications, including Bloomberg, Nasdaq, TechCrunch, CoinDesk, CoinTelegraph, Bitcoin Magazine, and more. Matt received his Bachelor’s of Arts in physics from West Virginia University and currently lives in Washington DC.
Margaux AvedisianMargaux Avedisian is a New York based publicist, entrepreneur, investor and advisor in the Bitcoin and Blockchain industry since 2012.
Most recently she was EVP at Transform PR, the leading blockchain public relations firm which has represented more than 100 blockchain companies and over 60 ICOs including Ethereum, Augur, Golem, Maidsafe, Wax, Gnosis, Bancor and Unikoin.
Prior to that, Margaux cofounded MonetaGo (a blockchain value transfer company), and Tradehill (the first Bitcoin exchange in America) as well as AlphaPoint (a white label exchange software solution). She was featured in the documentary “The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin” and is a standup comedian.
Prior to that, Margaux cofounded MonetaGo (a blockchain value transfer company), and Tradehill (the first Bitcoin exchange in America) as well as AlphaPoint (a white label exchange software solution). She was featured in the documentary “The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin” and is a standup comedian.
Scott Holmes
Investor, incubator, and seasoned marketing executive, Mr. Holmes is a visionary with deep expertise in technology, entertainment, and mobile commerce initiatives with Fortune 100 brands and start-ups alike. An accomplished leader for over 20 years, he founded United Future 2005, a digital media agency, and led initiatives for Microsoft, Autodesk, Western Digital, and T-Mobile before exiting in 2014. Mr. Holmes has incubated several startups, including Liberated Intelligence (LIAAPP), Realm Blazer (Rally Health), and most recently IMMORDL. He has been recognized in the Wall Street Journal, Wired magazine, and Los Angeles Business Journal, and was named Mobile Ambassador by the Mobile Excellence Awards Association in 2012/13.
Ben Mendelson
For over 25 years Ben Mendelson has been a leader in new media technology and an innovator in interactive sponsor-based programming, multi-platform distribution and Interactive Television. For the past 15 years, he has been president of the Interactive Television Alliance (ITA), a non-profit trade association representing the broad interests of the ITV industry. He is also Sr. Partner at 2degree Partners, a boutique consulting firm specializing in Interactive Television, Virtual Reality (VR/AR/MR), blockchain based platforms, and cryptocurrency. Previously, Ben was the founding executive of various early on-line companies (Interactive Center, Internet Imaging, Internet Outfitters), head of the Internet division of a magazine publishing company (Curtco Freedom), VP of Internet Development for the Electronic Retailing Assoc. (ERA) and SVP of Interactive Strategies at an investment bank (Winterberry Group). As Ben is married to a senior Brazilian diplomat, he has an international footprint and will be based in Asia for the next three years. He’ll be focusing on sustainable energy and environmental projects, along with initiatives supporting underserved communities in Asia, South America and around the world.
Carmine Farnan
Mr. Farnan is a proven and experienced energy professional with diverse global experience in the energy sector, specializing in new project development, asset acquisition/management, and maintenance and construction management. His experience spans the sector through; gas-fired generation, thermal generation, solar (CSP, PV and Power Tower) geothermal generation, biomass, and waste to energy projects.
Mr. Farnan has been responsible for the overall asset management and operations of a global portfolio of 5,000 MW consisting of various generation resources across (6) countries. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management from Strayer University and is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Renewable Energy and Sustainable Policies at Pennsylvania State University.
Rage AdanRage Adan is a highly motivated individual and an experienced consultant, he has worked in a variety of positions for the past 15 years. He advises on several products and services from Main Frame Servers to managed services, for vendors from IBM to Microsoft. He finds business ventures that are stimulating and rewarding at the same time as he is capable of understanding the significance of business and technology ideas as well as analyzing problems in the required manner. He makes original contributions to the IT world, have developed problem solving strategies, mad helpful and astute contributions to group discussions, well able to apply business concepts in a variety of contexts which has made him successful in all his previous and current roles. Excellent listening and communication skills, multilingual and people skills have enabled him to gain associates’ and clients’ confidence, trust and comfort level very quickly globally. Having worked with ‘Start-Ups’ has given him a rich experience in understanding the 'big picture'. Planning both for strategic and tactical objectives, positive attitude, following a realistic and practical approach, managing and often exceeding expectations, delivering the right value proposition and negotiating win-win situations, has enabled him to manage his engagements on time and to satisfaction.