Me in 15 seconds:

I’ve been a startup founder, consulting firm CEO, non-profit Executive Director, wilderness guide, and home remodeler.

I love to follow my curiosity and learn.

I dedicate time every day to read, write, and exercise.

I grew up in St. Louis and have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 20 years.

I aim to help investors, policymakers, and corporate leaders invest in better energy solutions.

I’m an energy entrepreneur, writer, and speaker.

I lead business development at Oklo, a startup developing next-generation nuclear technologies that deliver reliable low-cost clean energy 24/7.

I led business development at Reach Labs to deliver long-range wireless power in industrial, asset management, and supply chain applications.

I founded a software company, backed by Y Combinator, to instantly show homeowners how much money they could save by installing solar panels or upgrading air conditioning and heating systems.

I was the CEO of a consulting firm (acquired by Frontier Energy) specializing in clean energy to commercialize new technology in buildings, vehicles, and power plants.

I was the Executive Director of Build It Green, a nonprofit aimed at mainstreaming green building, where I built a network of 2,500 building industry stakeholders including contractors, suppliers, realtors, lenders, utilities, and public agencies.

I’ve loved the outdoors since I was a teenager: I led mountaineering expeditions in Alaska, spent months backpacking in the Rockies, and climbed in national parks across the country.

My wilderness experiences led me to want to do something to protect these beautiful areas and dedicate my adult life to protecting our environment.

I thought renewable energy was the best way of doing that, and I spent 20 years promoting it.

I worked in construction building homes that were energy efficient and solar-powered, and started a company to manufacture industrial-scale composting systems. I went on to become executive director of a nonprofit to educate builders, architects, realtors, lenders, and governments on solar energy and the benefits of green building.

By 2009 I was CEO of a company that ran energy efficiency programs for utilities and was commercializing fuel-cell vehicles and carbon capture systems at power plants. At that time the Obama administration had earmarked billions of dollars in federal funding to create jobs in the energy sector, and my company won multi-year contracts valued at over $60M. Overnight, we grew from fifteen to fifty employees.

But the results were underwhelming. Government agencies continued spinning success stories, but in reality, the mazes of regulatory requirements and bureaucratic processes made real progress impossible.

I became disillusioned with my work. I was surrounded by phony bureaucrats who claimed they cared about the environment but who really only cared about job security. And most of the people who really did care about the environment—people like me—remained as blind to the limits of energy efficiency and economic realities of renewable energy as I had been.

My instincts were right: energy has an outsized impact on the environment. If we’re concerned with protecting the environment, we need to think carefully about the ways we generate and use energy. But I wasn’t thinking deeply enough or critically enough about different sources of energy. I was just following a crowd. I took other people’s ideas for granted without examining whether those ideas were actually true. Worse yet, I was willfully blind to any information that might challenge them.

In retrospect, I understand why I acted as I did. Those ideas are very romantic. They tie mundane human actions like flipping a light switch, starting a car, or disposing of trash, to the fate of the larger world. They invite you to see yourself as a hero in a cosmic struggle, and create a sense that you’re fixing the world in a meaningful way. When I was young and impressionable, those ideas gave me a sense of purpose and identity. They made me feel like I was on a mission that really mattered in a deep moral sense. They made me feel like I was one of the good guys.

But feeling like you’re a good guy doesn’t mean you are. Little by little I encountered evidence that I was wrong. I just couldn’t admit it. My sense of identity was too bound up with feeling like I was doing the right thing. It was unthinkable that I might be part of the problem; unthinkable that the policies I promoted might have the opposite of their intended effects; unthinkable that they might be hurting the environment instead of healing it; and unthinkable that they might be causing human suffering—especially for the poorest and most vulnerable among us.

Today I see many leaders in the developed world making the same mistakes I made. Politicians, corporate leaders, and investors are promoting policies that hurt both people and the planet. I wanted to share what I’ve learned in hope that we might do better.

If I had to distill the most important lesson I’ve learned into a single slogan it would be More energy and better energy. If we’re going to combat human suffering around the globe, we need more energy, and if we’re going to protect the environment in the process, we need better energy. Let’s work together to make wise decisions about the kinds of energy technologies and policies to support—ones that promote the well-being of both people and the planet.

Principles serve to guide our decisions and interactions with other people. I value the process of writing down and thinking about my core principles, which I describe here.