About CTLR’s #HumansOfCleantech

Modeled after the New York Times' Humans of New York series, this is an idea by Peter Kelley and the RenewComm team for us to showcase our members!

Follow #humansofcleantech on LinkedIn for more in this series. #climatetech #energytransition #cleantechleadersroundtable 

Meet David Magid

“I EVENTUALLY ENDED UP GETTING THE SERVER, BUT THEN SENT IT TO A COMPANY TO CO-LOCATE AT THEIR DATA CENTER. I PAID THEM, AND THEY TOOK IT, AND DISABLED MY ACCESS. MY SERVER WAS GONE. IT WAS DEFINITELY A USEFUL EXPERIENCE AT THAT YOUNG AGE, KIND OF EXPERIMENTING AND SEEING HOW THINGS OPERATE.

“In high school I was distracted. I certainly enjoyed the social environment, but I was not as productive as the earlier years when I taught myself C++ and Visual Basic.

“When I was in college some friends and I started reselling iPhones on the Internet. I came up with another business idea to sell solar panels and renewable energy products. My mind just clicked: ‘You make electricity from the sun.’ 

“I knew nothing about solar, nothing at all. I printed out flyers and went door-to-door for nine hours a day through Queens, New York. I got my friends to help, and we’d get calls from people who were interested. We had no idea what to do because we knew nothing about this. We called another company that did solar and tried to get them to bridge the gap. It was a little challenging. 

“THEN AN ENERGY-EFFICIENCY COMPANY IN BUFFALO HIRED ME TO START UP THEIR SOLAR BUSINESS AND FIGURE IT OUT. OH, PERFECT! I'M IN COLLEGE, BUT I'D LOVE TO DO THAT.

“We had a residential project where the wife just had a baby. They were redoing their home with geothermal, solar, all these great items. The company that we hired to do the geothermal ended up taking about 70% of the project money and vanishing. The couple’s heating system was taken out and I'm like, ‘Oh my God, what do we do?’ 

"In our first year, without any prior experience in drilling geothermal wells or setting up HVAC systems, we had to dive right in. We started from scratch: watching Youtube videos, cutting holes in the floor, constructing a duct system, and piecing it all together. One individual had experience operating equipment. We found a NJ company to rent us a drill rig, it was all-hands-on-deck. We got it done with creativity, to overcome the hurdles and adapt to our surroundings.

“I’m excited about the technological advances in renewable energy, in electric vehicles, in every single thing we're doing in cleantech. These are very complex problems. I know that I and a lot of other people were attracted to the challenge. We are problem solvers and there’s a good chance that some things that we try are not going to be successful. Just keep doing it, to find that path.”

David Magid, Managing Partner and Founder of YSGSolar, is a serial entrepreneur who’s never afraid to get his hands dirty if it means he will learn more about his business. In 2018, he was named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list for energy.

Meet Rich Kassel

“I’D COME OUT OF THE PARK AT FIFTH AVENUE AND 59TH STREET, WHERE I WOULD HIT A WALL OF DIESEL BUSES, TRUCKS, AND CABS. THAT TRAFFIC WENT FOR ABOUT 40 BLOCKS TILL I GOT TO THE NRDC OFFICE. 

“I'd leave the park feeling like a million bucks, and get to the office cursing every diesel bus and truck in the way. Often I would say, ‘Why doesn't somebody do something about those darn buses?’ The light bulb went off one day, and I said, ‘I can do something about those buses.’ That is how the NRDC’s Dump Dirty Diesel campaign was created. 

“The public health story of the toxicity of diesel exhaust was just starting to be understood. I saw a chance to expand our work into a new area that would be more and more important as time went on. I convinced the NRDC to let me create a campaign that included ads on buses that read, ‘Standing behind this bus could be more dangerous than standing in front of it.’ 

“The funny thing about this strategy was that we didn’t have money for an ad campaign that most New Yorkers would ever see. But we had a team of lawyers, communications experts, and advocates. And they put together a great strategy that would generate the media attention we needed to actually solve the problem.

“WE HAD FUNDING TO PAY FOR 30 BUS ADS, BUT NO MONEY TO DESIGNATE ROUTES, THE TIME OF DAY, OR DAYS OF THE WEEK THAT THESE ADS WOULD RUN. SO THERE WAS A CHANCE THE MTA WOULD ACCEPT OUR ADS, RUN THEM IN INDUSTRIAL NEIGHBORHOODS AT THREE IN THE MORNING ON A SUNDAY, AND THERE WAS NOTHING WE COULD DO ABOUT IT. 

“We hoped they would overreact. We hoped that they would refuse to run the ads when they got them, giving us the opportunity to file a First Amendment lawsuit that would force them to run the ads and be the kind of story that every reporter within 500 miles would want to cover. 

“That's exactly what happened. We paid for the ad but never showed them the ad until we delivered it on the day that it was supposed to be put on the bus. The person in charge there said he couldn’t run the ad. He would get in trouble for letting it run. 

“We put our strategy to work within minutes. We filed a First Amendment lawsuit that got us media coverage in every major newspaper, and every major magazine. We were on all the morning news shows. It was a crazy success. That led to the MTA’s first fleetwide Clean Fuel Bus plan. And ultimately, it helped lay the foundation for a national program to clean up all buses and trucks. Today’s diesel trucks and buses are more than 90 percent cleaner, and our campaign was a catalyst for bringing attention to the problem of diesel pollution and how to solve it. 

“I LATER CO-FOUNDED ANOTHER ORGANIZATION THAT TACKLED THE PROBLEM OF DIESEL POLLUTION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, AND LED THE EFFORT TO ELIMINATE LEADED GASOLINE IN AROUND 100 COUNTRIES. 

“All of that comes back to those bike rides down Fifth Avenue cursing dirty diesel buses, saying why doesn't somebody do something about it and then realizing, maybe I can do something about it.”

Rich Kassel grew up riding bikes and rooting for the Islanders on Long Island. After experiencing illegal dumping firsthand during a summer in Maine, he became an environmental advocate. He went on to co-found three non-profits and become a senior attorney at NRDC. He is now a partner at AJW, Inc., which advises startups and other companies and institutions on decarbonization solutions. He was recognized as one of New York’s “50 over 50” in 2019 and has been listed among the “Energy and Environment Power 100” every year since then. 

Meet Meghan Nutting

I’VE BEEN IN THREE MURDER MYSTERY PLAYS, AND EVERY TIME I’VE BEEN THE KILLER.

I actually entered Cornell as a theater major, but I still had to figure out what I wanted to do.

The first couple years of my life, my parents ran a motel near Moosehead Lake, in a town called Greenville, Maine. My mother likes to joke that I saw a moose before I ever saw a cow. My favorite thing to do always as a child, and even now, was reading. I would go find a book series and just take out the whole shelf.

I also really loved horseback riding. My horse was named Shalom and was really patient with me. I spent a lot of my time at the barn. My parents would drop me off and I would spend the whole day there. 

MOST OF MY CHILDHOOD, I WAS PART OF AN ORGANIZATION LIKE A VERSION OF GIRL SCOUTS BUT NATIVE AMERICAN-FOCUSED. 

We had a little one-room cabin in northern Maine, with no running water or electricity, up on a hill. We called it ‘the shelter’ or ‘The Last Resort.’ 

When I was little, my aunt and my mother would play a game they called Hansel and Gretel. They would drop my cousin Aaron and me off in the forest, then they'd run away and we would have to find our way back to the shelter.

I think they just needed a break, so they figured we'd be fine. The forest is pretty safe, right? There's only mosquitos and moose and black bears! They didn't even let us drop breadcrumbs — we just had to find our way back. 

ONE OF THE SEMINAL MOMENTS OF MY LIFE WAS IN FOURTH GRADE, WHEN I LEARNED THAT THE RAINFOREST IS BEING CUT DOWN.

I remember feeling really stressed out about that, thinking, ‘Could they just wait till I get older, then I'll go and fix it.’

Eventually, I decided to focus on environmental biology. And with a bunch of friends, we started a group called Kyoto Now! With an exclamation point — we were very serious. And we really pushed Cornell to divest from funds that weren't in line with what the Kyoto Protocol said.

When I eventually applied to grad school, it was pretty clear that I was very interested in public policy. Years later, I met the guy who founded Rainforest Action Network, and I told him this story.

He said, ‘Yeah, we sent out curriculum workbooks to teachers all over the country. And I never knew if anyone used them.’ And I was like, ‘My teachers obviously did! And that is why I pursued the career I pursued.’

ONE OF MY FAVORITE PARTS ABOUT BEING IN THE ENERGY INDUSTRY IS THE PASSION AND INTELLIGENCE AND DRIVE OF THE PEOPLE IN THE FIELD.

One thing that frustrates me is an assumption that the status quo is the best and only option. We need to decarbonize our grid. That's very clear. We're already behind.

My husband, Taylor Dodson, also works in solar. I met him at a solstice party thrown by Andrea Luecke of Cleantech Leaders Roundtable. He's six-four, has a huge red beard and long red hair, and wears really loud shirts, so he's always noticeable at CTLR events.”

Meghan Nutting, Executive Vice President of Government & Regulatory Affairs at Sunnova Energy International, and previously at SolarCity, is one of the top renewable energy lobbyists in America. She is a member of the Board and Executive Committee of the Solar Energy Industries Association. She once ran for the state legislature in Colorado and has learned six languages.

Meet Chris Mathey

…Been hoping for another World Series title since 1986.

My goal growing up was to be a professional baseball player. Baseball was really my true passion, but I was good but I wasn’t great, so I focused more on swimming. I played water polo in the Empire State Games, which is kind of like New York State’s version of the Olympics, and even started a water polo club in college. After high school I went to Clemson University, so I’ve got orange in my blood. Diehard Tigers fan. And then you know, I love watching my Buffalo Bills, the only true New York football team. So I guess you could say I’m a glass half full kind of guy, an eternal optimist. I think one of these days, hopefully in my lifetime (knock on wood), I’ll see them win a Super Bowl.

I am a very social person (my kids say I talk too much).  I love being around family and friends. I did not have a job coming right out of college, but knew I wanted to be in DC and work on “The Hill”. 

SO I CAME UP HERE AND LITERALLY WALKED THE HALLS OF CONGRESS PASSING OUT MY RESUME.

Back in high school, I interned for our local congressman, Congressman Amo Houghton.  He was someone I really looked up to, a true consensus builder, and someone who put country above party.  My political leanings are like that. I want to see things get done for the greater good. To me, compromise is not a negative word and doesn’t mean capitulate.  Fortunately, for me, Amo introduced me to Congressman John McHugh who gave me my first paid job on the Hill.

Ironically, the Congressman wasn’t on any of the energy committees, but he was on Intelligence and was a senior member on the House Armed Services Committee. I was actually on the Hill on 9/11 - forever etched into my head. 

DURING MY TIME ON THE HILL, ENERGY SECURITY WAS A TOPIC THAT CAME UP A LOT.

It’s something I really started gravitating towards.  After seeing the reelection process kind of up close and personal, I said, you know what, I think I’m good being the behind the scenes guy and never putting my name on a ballot. I left Capitol Hill to go to Constellation Energy, and that’s where I started to cut my teeth in energy efficiency and renewable energy. 

IN THIS INDUSTRY, WE’RE AT THIS AMAZING INFLECTION  POINT WITH THE PASSAGE OF THE INFLATION REDUCTION ACT (IRA).

For really the first time ever, our industry has policy certainty and the CleanCapital team is ready to provide the “rocket fuel” to our developer partners  to help get renewable projects built and  more clean electrons on the grid. That’s our mandate, and it’s a really exciting time to be working in the sector.

Meet Pat Sapinsley

I was very lucky to have been born into a loving family that valued family life and education. My father was an industrialist and my mother was a stay at home mom, but she was entrepreneurial. She volunteered for political campaigns, hospitals, and libraries, and she was on every board on earth.

When I was seven, she started organizing campaigns for John Chafee, who won the race for governor. He appointed my mother to the Rhode Island Board of Regents, and soon after she worked her way up to being the chairman. Then, she ran for office. She became a state senator, and she was the only female in the State Senate.

My father and grandfather started a family business, the Carol Cable Wire Company, which made wire for the automotive industry. Everything was being electrified in the 1940s. At age 42, he decided he no longer wanted to work at a desk in a factory, so he sold his company and went back to graduate school. He became a professor, and he started wearing corduroy jackets with little leather patches and smoking a pipe. 

After graduate school, I slipped a disc working for an architect because I was leaning over a drafting table 24/7. In those days, the treatment was just a lie-down,

“…BUT I WAS TOO IMPATIENT TO JUST LIE THERE, SO I STARTED MY OWN FIRM FROM MY BED.  

In New York City, if you have a small architectural firm, you don't do big buildings. You do renovations. When I was pregnant with our second child,

I decided my values were pretty screwed up if I was going to the office every day to design for the 1%, specifying cabinet knobs when I had two kids who were only going to be babies once. My husband completely supported my wish to close the office and to stay at home with the kids. 

Motherhood gave me the wonderful opportunity to have a break in life and to think about what I wanted to do, and it wasn't designing rich people's apartments or restaurants or stores.  

While I was at home with the babies, I had to keep busy while they were in school, so I got active in a local environmental organization. I was able to study renewable energy, and I attended conferences when they came to New York. 

I met Richard Kauffman through a friend. Richard was starting a venture capital company called Good Energies that was only investing in renewables. He understood that renewables could generate as many clean electrons as they wanted, but the electrons would be sent to buildings that would waste them. He needed an architect who understood building energy efficiency, and he hired me.  

The learning curve was very steep and terrifying. I knew nothing about spreadsheets and the financial world. But I was useful because I was a domain expert in something they wanted to invest in. 

At the Urban Future Lab we offer a course through the Professional Studies program, at night and on weekends, which helps mid-career people put their talents to work in the sector. We can bring in anybody and use their skills to work on climate. If you're a banker, an accountant or an architect, you can come and learn about project finance or building energy efficiency or how energy is traded. 

If you’re crunching numbers all day for a big bank, you could, instead, do the same for a little startup that is pulling CO2 out of the air and turning it into useful projects or products, and then you can feel much better about yourself. I changed careers, my father changed careers, my mother changed careers, my husband changed careers, all in our 40 or 50s. There’s no reason not to be working on the climate. 

LIFE IS SHORT — I TRY TO FIGURE OUT WHAT BRINGS ME JOY.

This December, I took a staycation: I promised myself I would sleep 10 hours a night, go for long walks and read. In a week I read four books. I chopped a hole in the ice and jumped in the lake every day for three minutes. I did a walk in the woods after that, had dinner with friends, and was in bed by 9:30. It was the most wonderful vacation ever.

Meet Chante Harris

“I come from a family of public servants. My childhood was informed by the idea that anyone can have an impact, that there is an opportunity to come up with solutions to problems, and not just talk about the problems.  

“My dad and uncle were firefighters, my mom was a caretaker in the medical field, and my grandmother was a nurse and civil rights activist. I grew up hearing stories of my grandmother’s courage at a young age and her commitment to standing for what she believed in.

SO I FELT THIS BOLD ENERGY FROM THE TIME I WAS A LITTLE GIRL. 

“I thought I'd be a lawyer. I remember arguing about Social Security privatization at 13 years old. As a 14-year-old, I got accepted into a summer program at Yale, and realized I wasn’t as interested in law as I thought: I was more interested in policy. 

“My introduction into energy and the climate space was by way of seeing my family and community disproportionately impacted by it. I knew that I cared about civic engagement. And in particular, how policy can solve for problems like the ones I saw communities experiencing firsthand. 

“I think a part of me always knew I wanted to go to D.C. What was so beautiful about American University was that our professors included former Congress members, lawyers who argued before the Supreme Court, and leaders at the World Bank. I had at least four internships across the city.  

“On the finance side, I interned with the stock exchange in Madrid, and I also helped launch and run a service learning program at my university. It started out pretty small. Before I knew it, folks could receive course credit for their participation. I helped design that experience specifically for students interested in leaving the bubble in Northwest D.C., and experiencing the rest of the District. 

“TODAY, I SIT AT THE INTERSECTION OF BUSINESS, CLIMATE, FINANCE,
AND IMPACT.

I always tell people that working in this space overcomes many of the challenges you see in other areas of tech and creates a platform for people who care about the planet and people. I am the co-founder of the Women of Color Collective in Sustainability, the only global digital collective and community that is 100 percent dedicated to advancing women of color. We host in-person meetups and also have our own digital community. 

“I have been living between New York City and Mexico City for the past few years. Recently, I have also been focused on more creative things—painting, sculpting, using that other side of my brain. I write poetry and I also meditate. My grandmother has been writing poetry her whole life and it’s great to know that this passion is intergenerational.

Meet Patty Wright

I WAS THE TYPICAL GEN X KID:

We raised ourselves. I rode my bike all day, leaving early in the morning and coming home for dinner. I loved to dig in the dirt. I was passionate about plants and loved to cook. I’d stand on a stool with my mom making cookies, eclairs, bagels, and bread. We ended up buying 80 acres in a tiny town in Florida. Our family planted food which we ate, and every year I would get a calf, bottle-feed it, take it to market, and keep the money I earned.

My parents’ expectation was that I would just graduate from high school, get married and have kids. I didn't go to a four-year college because that wasn’t in the narrative growing up. It was, “What job are you going to do until you get married and have a family?” I went on to spend years doing real estate development as a paralegal. I did some big deals that in hindsight were terrible, like big housing developments killing the Everglades. I realized that wasn't what I wanted to do.

My husband and I bought a bicycle hobby business in Fort Myers to get out of the rat race. Then 2009 came along and we lost it all. So we packed everything: kids, dog, goldfish, and our stuff, and drove to Asheville. I began working in a law firm again, just doing what I could to survive. I went back and got my two-year degree and learned about renewable energy, and I thought, ”I want to be a part of this. This is going to change the world as we know it.”

I started working in the legal department of FLS Energy. My real estate background transferred easily into Project Development and tax equity transaction closings, and I just fell in love with it. I'm doing something important every day.

I now have a pollinator garden, and deadfall branches for bugs and creatures to live in during the winter. I’ve always been a good steward, and as I’ve gotten older I’ve started asking, “How do we keep it this way? What do we have to do to preserve these things?” I volunteer with Asheville Greenworks, which is a local conservation group. I’m focusing on, “How do we make it sustainable and continue the progress?”

The industry mantra used to be “We’re going to make solar mainstream!” And we have, but what's next? The trend recently is commercial PPAs with the Amazons and Googles, with different  complex ways of structuring and financing. When are everyday people going to be able to plug into the outlet in their homes, and know that’s coming from a renewable source? That seems like the next milestone for our industry — building renewable electricity that is available to everyone, everywhere.

Meet Kevin Doffing

Kevin Doffing is Chief Commercial Officer of Clean Energy Services, which provides cranes, operation, and maintenance for renewable energy. He’s an organizer of Leadership-Houston, interim director of VetsEnergySeminar, and a member of CTLR.

It all started when…

I grew up as a much younger sibling, with brothers 6 and 8 years older. So I was always part of something very familial, but also isolated because of the age gap. That’s been part of my drive—I just wanted to build something that brought people together and helped others.

My dad was in the Army, then ran a small business that I would later run with him, selling personal protective equipment to oil & gas companies. I used to make $1 sweeping the floor for him when I was 6, although having kids myself now, I’m pretty sure he had to go back and clean up after I swept! 

My mom was a schoolteacher. She never met a cause she didn’t want to sacrifice for. She dealt with the most difficult kids, a lot of whom had learning disabilities as well as criminal records. There'd be an arrest at least once a year in her classroom. They couldn’t have been more different from each other, except they had the same character of integrity and hard work, and they loved each other.

I went to Texas A&M, mostly because my older brothers had gone there. Going to a school that makes fun of itself for being stupid and then joining the infantry gave me a great mindset in humility.

I enlisted in 2005 after graduating, when the military was so desperate they let me be an officer. After leading a lot of combat patrols and securing the region I began running contracts. I brought this American attitude to contracting in the Middle East, where it's really about relationships more than anything. Even pre-Saddam, there was no taxation system in Iraq. It's a kickback system that's informally conducted among the neighborhoods and tribal areas.

I quickly learned that if I just gave contracts to the low bidder, I was isolating different groups and they weren’t getting access to resources. I was creating a scarcity mindset that was leading to conflict. So I had to map it out: these are the regions, the sub-tribes. It took me months to figure out who the key players were and how I had to spread money around. 

Eventually my contracting method and resource allocation became a better deterrent to violence than any raid or operation we executed as an infantry platoon. That’s the moment I learned that commerce is more powerful than brute force.

My real value throughout my career is that I make hard things easy to understand. Again, being an Aggie and an infantry guy, I know I’m not that bright: If I can understand it, I can explain it. I break things down in a way that’s communicable, and a message with handles that makes it so someone can carry it to others.