Our Team
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John Ganzi
Founder and CEO See John's Resume
[PDF:369K]John is a start-up expert with over 30 years of experience working in the energy, finance, and environmental areas. Currently he is the President of Environment & Finance Enterprise and Treasurer of the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association. In 2008 he successfully launched and became CEO of the Biofuels Center of North Carolina, a well funded quasi-governmental agency focused on establishing a multi-billion dollar biofuels industry in NC. Other start-up operations John has led this decade include The Finance Institute for Global Sustainability, a 501(c) 3 non-profit and Eco Inn Experiences, a for-profit. Before establishing Environment & Finance Enterprise in the early 1990’s John was a banker at Salomon Brothers and Citicorp. He has two masters degrees, an MBA from Michigan and an MS in Environmental Studies from NYU, to go along with an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University.
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Franz Knecht
CEO of CONNEXIS - CSR See Franz's Resume
[PDF:134K]Franz has been working in the field of sustainability since 1991 when he established the environmental management unit at Swiss Bank Corporation (now UBS). During the 1990’s he established the bank’s environmental credit risk management system, socially responsible investment product line, and wrote their first sustainability report. In 1999, he founded CONNEXIS whose clients include international NGOs, governmental agencies, financial firms, manufacturing and service sector companies. He is an expert on corporate sustainability reporting, has extensive experience in performing environmental due diligences for capital transactions and corporate restructuring activity, and has experience in corporate education, strategy development and implementation. He was a visiting scholar at Cambridge University and Imperial College (UK), Lund University (Sweden), and Helsinki University (Finland). He has a Masters in law from Basel University, Switzerland and holds several diplomas in banking and communication. Franz is a Swiss citizen based in Basel, speaks five languages, and works in Europe, the Middle East and North America.
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Melissa Shackleton Dann
President, Endurance Consulting See Melissa's Resume
[DOC:114K]Melissa Shackleton Dann has over twenty years experience in international environmental policy and program strategy. For over twelve years, she was in private philanthropy with the Wallace Global Fund, serving as Executive Director for three years. She developed all aspects of the Fund’s environmental portfolio, including early engagement on climate change, commodity certification, reform of international financial and trade institutions. She spearheaded it's first PRI, raising the profile of using capital markets to drive environmental and social change within NGO and foundation communities. Ms. Dann is a recognized leader as demonstrated through board memberships and leadership positions, including the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity (Chair of the Board); Fauna & Flora International (Chair, U.S. Board); Forest Stewardship Council Global Fund and RARE. Earlier, she directed programs for the US-Asia Environmental Partnership, a $100 million dollar USAID-funded initiative and held senior positions with several global NGOs.
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Donna G. Chlopak
Senior Executive Performance Management Services See Donna's Resume
[PDF:69K]Donna has been a performance management consultant for over 30 years, focusing on the areas of Marketing and Management. Research drives her strategic consulting and she has worked in various industries in both the public and private sectors. Her keen sense of what consumers and businesses want and need helps her to work with clients and improve their business outcomes. In addition, she has been able to help start-ups by identifying innovators and early adopters to help firms to shape their offerings. She has taught both management and marketing at the university level. Her Master’s and Doctorate decrees are in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Ohio State University.
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John Cusack
President of Gifford Park Associates See John's Resume
[PDF:52K]John is President of Gifford Park Associates (GPA), a consulting firm specializing in corporate environmental, operational, technical and financial performance. Clients include the Chicago Climate Exchange, Energy East/Iberdrola, PSEG, Duke Energy, Israel Chemicals, Toyota, Marsh & McLennan, World Environment Center, and the Governments of Connecticut, the UAE & US Federal. He also currently teaches “Sustainable Finance” at Iona College and is the part-time Executive Director of the NJ Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability. Before GPA, he was the CEO of Innovest (an environmental and financial rating/research firm); a senior executive at Asea Brown Boveri (ABB), where he was the founder of several subsidiaries in the US and Europe, and the liaison with ABB’s venture funds, and at Combustion Engineering managed strategic R&D. He has a MBA from NYU, plus an Environmental Engineering and Science MCE and a Civil Engineering BCE from Manhattan College.
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Argelio A. Maldonado
Principal at Praxxis, LLC See Argelio's Resume
[PDF:153K]Since 2002, Argelio has focused his efforts on Conservation, Climate Change, and Eco-Tourism by working for the World Wildlife Fund as a Visiting Senior Fellow, and most recently, by developing Eco Hotels & Lodge Collection. He was also part owner and marketing director for Isla Monita Lodge, a premium fly fishing lodge which he created in Patagonia. He has extensive marketing, finance, technological, and start-up experience having helped start several new businesses while working for Charles Schwab, IBM, Citibank, and Procter & Gamble in Latin America and the US. At Charles Schwab, Argelio was the SVP for International Marketing and Web Development; at IBM he was the head of the Banking and Insurance Solutions Unit for all of Latin America; and at Citibank he was the Country Head for Chile. Argelio was born in Cuba, speaks three languages, has an MBA from Columbia University and currently lives in Miami.
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Philip A. Mickelson
CFA Principal of CleanFocus Advisors, LLC See Phil's Resume
[PDF:72K]Phil has been a long-time successful growth analyst and fund manager focusing on growth technology investing. He began his career as a member of American Express Financial Advisors' Growth Equity portfolio management team in 1995 focusing on technology and communications. He subsequently was a Senior Equity Analyst for JPMorgan Securities in San Francisco specializing in enterprise software and business services sectors. As an analyst with a San Francisco-based hedge fund, Phil was responsible for research and investment decisions in the US technology sector including the emerging clean technology sectors: solar, wind, electric grid management, alternative transportation and power storage. As a Principal with CleanFocus Advisors, Phil has worked with numerous Clean Technology companies providing strategic direction and locate growth capital. Phil is a long-standing member of the San Francisco Chartered Financial Analysts society.
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Bob Reuss
Vice President of Vaco Raleigh, LLC See Bob's Resume
[PDF:51K]Bob has a long history in creative deal design and financing. He was the CFO for International Dairy Queen and Standard Fabrics during their successful IPO’s, and has assisted in structuring and financing numerous acquisitions and start-ups. He was the SVP for M&A at Maven Securities, a NASDAQ member firm, VP for M&A at Northstar Industries, and President of Lingate Financial Group. He has functioned as the CFO or been a senior financial advisor for numerous North Carolina based firms including North American Video, Endacea, Arius Pharmaceuticals, Ivis, Maverick BioFuels and ROGO. He served as Chairman of the Members in Industry for the Minnesota Society of CPA’s. Bob is a graduate of Purdue University with a BS in Electrical Engineering, and a MS in Industrial Management from the Krannert School of Business at Purdue. He has also attended the Advanced Management Program at Wharton.
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Lil Sparks
Senior Consultant at The Jervey Group See Lil's Resume
[PDF:99K]Lil is an expert in the fields of environmental management, environmental finance and conservation. She began working in these fields 30 years ago. Besides managing the creation and implementation of the Environmental Risk Program for Wachvoia Corporation (now Wells Fargo/First Union), Lil has successfully led the development of several major environmental management programs and projects. Additionally, she has supported the creation and management of many national and international compliance and training programs. Previous work found Lil being the first in history to research, inventory and provide significant support for the security of unique lands for perpetuity via acquisition by the Nature Conservancy, state government funding and other means. Lil’s perceptive sense of her clients needs, along with her expertise has allowed her to make significant changes in the industry. Her easy business style can betray her deep knowledge and business sense.
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Sabine Vlaming
Owner of Sabine Vlaming Consulting & Coaching
Sabine is an experienced executive consultant and coach. Over the past 10 years, she has headed the Corporate Sustainability Reporting steering group of a major Dutch financial institution, and worked as an international strategy advisor for EU based banking and insurance firms and networks. During these years she has gained profound experience as a strategy advisor on a wide range of international and domestic sustainable innovation projects. She currently works with think tanks and businesses on an individual and team basis to help strengthen their entrepreneurial and leadership skills to help them innovate beyond traditional system and paradigm restraints. She specializes in mindstretching, business innovation, and personal leadership. As a pragmatic thinker and developer she is able to help her clients convert strategic risks and threats into innovative and concrete solutions. Sabine resides in Amsterdam and is fluent in Dutch, German, French and English.
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Karen Seeh
Consultant See Karen's Resume
[DOC:175K]Karen brings 15 years of experience in the public, private, and non-profit sectors focused on advancing sustainability. Karen started her career with the USEPA, where she led a range of marketing and communications efforts for the Design for Environment Program, a government-industry partnership which promotes cleaner production. It was EPA where she developed her integrated focus and passion of IT, building multi-stakeholder partnerships and CSR. After leaving EPA she joined Commerce One, where she led cross-functional teams in creating and marketing websites for environmental non-profit clients. She continued her focus on CSR and IT working with numerous for-profits and non-profits, where she has created and marketed various Web sites. Presently, Karen continues to push the envelope applying her multi-sector background, IT expertise, program development, and communications skills to help grow green ventures and programs worldwide.
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Justin Tyler Wiley
Web Application Developer - Cisco Systems, Inc. See Justin's Resume
[PDF:53K]Justin is a Comp-TIA certified Information Technology Project Manager and application developer. He has over ten years of experience helping public and private sector clients to evaluate their information technology needs, design and deploy state-of-the-art software, and implement agile development practices. Examples of commercial projects he has worked with include Near-Time, an enterprise class collaborative content management system, and Prepchamps.com, a social networking site serving 50,000 high-school athletes nation wide. As a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer, he helped raise awareness of Open Source technology, and helped create and obtain funding for SME.Net--an E-commerce market place for small and medium businesses based in the central Philippines. Justin has created applications using the Ruby/Rails framework, PHP, Java and a variety of other technologies.
Frederic Fontes Gerards
Renewable Energy Associate See Fred's Resume [PDF:297K]
Fred is completing his degrees in Business Administration and Economics at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School. While carrying out his studies, Fred has worked on several consulting engagements for a number of different firms. Early in 2009, he led a team of students on a four month project supporting a cutting edge wind energy start-up. The team aided the firm in researching market viability, developing appropriate business documentation, and writing a green energy grant application. Previous to his work in the renewable energy sector, Fred worked for a number of small businesses in the hospitality space using a wide range of marketing tools and data driven models to improve sales and customer relations. A native of the Canary Islands (Spain), he speaks fluent English, German, and Spanish, plus basic Portuguese and Chinese.