Our People
We bring together diverse experience from investing in, advising, and operating companies seeking to be resourcient, those involve in policy and government, and those from academic appointments and thought leadership.
Stephan Dolezalek is the founder of Resourcient Group, LLC. He is a highly experienced investor, entrepreneur, board member and counsel across the technological disruption of the agriculture, biotechnology, clean energy, communications and software industries. He has been a Managing or Executive Director of six private equity funds since 2000, with more than $4Bn in capital under management.
Stephan is an Executive Director of the Wheatsheaf Group, LLC, a private investment arm of the Grosvenor Estate – the family office of the Duke of Westminster. Wheatsheaf Group directly operates, invests in and helps to develop businesses in the food and agriculture sectors. It actively manages a $500 million portfolio with one of the largest investment teams in the ag-tech venture investment space, having made investments in roughly 20 different businesses in that sector. Stephan is also the Chairman of Aerofarms, a leading controlled indoor agriculture business.
Stephan has been a private equity investor since 1999. He served as Senior Advisor to the members of the Gates organization responsible for forming the Breakthrough Energy Ventures (“BEV”) fund, helping develop and communicate BEV's initial strategy, areas of investment focus, initial investment theses, organizational structure, and identification of investment team members. Prior to that Stephan was a Managing Director at VantagePoint Capital Partners, founding and leading one of the largest clean energy venture funds for almost two decades. Collectively, the VantagePoint group made 42 clean technology investments totaling roughly $1 billion. Under his leadership the Firm’s CleanTech practice was several times named CleanTech Investor of the Year.
He has co-founded three companies, been a board member of numerous venture-backed and publicly traded companies and has personally led more than two dozen private equity investments. He has built a strong investment track record in the software, biotechnology, clean energy and agricultural sectors.
Stephan is a graduate of the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia (BCP) and was a founding member of the School’s Foundation Board of Trustees. He also holds a Juris Doctorate from the University of Virginia School of Law.
Martin Lagod co-founded Firelake Capital Management in 2002 and built and led the Firm’s private investment practice. Through two funds, Firelake deployed more than $175M into two dozen portfolio companies.
Marty’s investment experience includes solar and energy storage, food security, water, carbon markets, refrigerants, biochemical/fuels, and industrial materials and metals. Marty has spent the last two years developing new investment models to address financing and execution risk through improved governance and investment structures.
He served as Co-Chair of the Clean Economy Network and on the Board of the Advanced Energy Economy. Previously, Marty was the co-founder and CEO of Solo Energy Corporation which developed technology for distributed generation of power for the commercial and light industrial sectors.
For the previous 19 years, Marty was an intellectual property attorney based in Silicon Valley, first as a partner in the Palo Alto office of Phoenix-based Brown and Bain, and then at Cooley Godward in Palo Alto. He holds two patents related to the distributed generation of power. Marty holds a BA in Economics, with Honors, from the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) and a JD from Vanderbilt University.
Donnie Fowler helps younger tech ventures expand their markets and navigate opportunities, especially where they intersect with the public sector. With a law degree, White House experience, and 18 years in Silicon Valley, he has a strong and eclectic record in tech business development, as a founder, and as a national political strategist.
Since 2016, Donnie has led Tech4America, a bridge between Silicon Valley and public leaders that includes a partnership with the National League of Cities. He is co-founder of Democracy Labs, a workshop for techies, creatives, and politicos to put better tools in the hands of groups and candidates. Donnie also teaches at the University of San Francisco and is a founding member of the Silicon Valley Blockchain Society.
For four years starting in 2012, Donnie was VP of business development at big data start-up PredPol, Inc., a result of collaboration between the LAPD and UCLA to better predict crime. While there, he recruited the company's largest investor and delivered a majority of the company's worldwide revenue while closing deals with local, state, and national police departments.
Donnie's political background includes staff on eight presidential campaigns, including on-the-ground work in 17 states. He was an advisor for Hillary Clinton and the DNC Chairwoman in 2016, a battleground state leader for Barack Obama in 2008 and John Kerry in 2004, General Wesley Clark's first national campaign manager for the 2003-2004 cycle, and National Field & Delegates Director for Al Gore from 1999-2000. Among the many wins and losses he's been through, Donnie has a perfect 3-0 record leading presidential battleground states for Bill Clinton, John Kerry, and Barack Obama.
Debbie Mesloh helps companies, elected officials and non-profits communicate effectively with the right audiences in order to achieve their goals. Her experience in local, state and federal government as well as the private sector has shown that success depends on being attuned to changes in the external environment, staying focused on top priorities and keeping an eye on the bigger picture.
Debbie has served as a lifelong advocate of advancing women both in electoral politics and in the workplace. Debbie currently serves as a communications consultant, assisting clients with communications strategy, crisis communications and message refinement.
Debbie served as transition co-chair for Senator-elect Kamala Harris (D-California); she worked in the Obama Administration as a White House Political Appointee to the Office of the United States Trade Representative and she served as a spokesperson in the 2008 Obama for President and 2012 Obama for re-election campaigns.
Debbie’s private sector experience includes five years as Vice President of Global Government and Public Affairs for Gap Inc. where she ran communications for the company’s corporate social responsibility work as well as the strategy for Gap Inc.’s international, national, state and local government affairs.
Debbie is immediate past president of the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women and is a founding member of the Emerge America program, which seeks to recruit and train qualified women to run for office and is former President of the San Francisco Women’s Political Committee.
Debbie holds a Bachelor of Science in Journalism from the University of Kansas and remains a committed Jayhawk fan.
Founding Members
Andrew Shapiro, founder of Broadscale Group, has spent the last two decades working at the nexus of new technologies and societal transformation -- with a focus over the last 15 years on energy and environmental innovation. Broadscale works with a network of some of the largest energy companies to accelerate innovation through strategic partnerships with the most promising new companies in the sector. He has invested in, advised, and served on boards of more than twenty start-ups.
In 2000, Andrew founded GreenOrder, a strategic advisory firm that worked with more than 100 enterprises to make energy and environmental innovation a source of competitive advantage. Highlights include working with GE's leadership on its multi-billion dollar ecomagination initiative; counseling GM on strategic issues including the launch of the Chevrolet Volt; and serving as the green advisor for 7 World Trade Center, NYC’s first LEED-certified office tower. Other clients included Alcan, Allianz, Bloomberg, BP, Bunge, Citi, Coca-Cola, Dell, Disney, Duke Energy, DuPont, eBay, Hines, HP, JPMorganChase, KKR, McDonald’s, Morgan Stanley, NASDAQ OMX, National Grid, NBC Universal, NRG, Office Depot, Pfizer, Polo Ralph Lauren, Simon Property Group, Staples, Target, Tishman Speyer, TXU, and Waste Management. Andrew also co-founded the US Partnership for Renewable Energy Finance (US PREF).
Earlier in his career, Andrew wrote The Control Revolution (1999), an Amazon.com bestseller, was a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, ran the Aspen Institute’s Internet Policy Project, and was named one of 100 top young innovators by MIT's Technology Review. Fortune has described him as “green business’s go-to guy.” Andrew is a graduate of Brown University (Phi Beta Kappa, 1990) and Yale Law School (1995).
Dr. Stefan Heck is CEO and co-Founder of NAUTO, a smart car and urban mobility company. NAUTO’s proprietary, computer vision-enhanced system is an affordable way to upgrade any car to get network and safety features previously only available in high-end luxury cars.
Dr. Heck is also Consulting Professor at the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University, and directs the Energy Transformation Collaborative (ETC) a new program applying the talent of the Stanford community and Silicon Valley to develop and deploy novel solutions to the world’s most vexing energy problems.
Previously he was a Director (senior partner) at McKinsey and co-founded and led the Cleantech and Sustainability practice. Stefan has worked extensively with Global 100 technology, industrial, infrastructure, building systems, retail, utility and energy companies across the US, China, Korea, Japan, India, and Europe.
Stefan is on the Innovation Advisory Board of United Technologies, the board of the Biomimicry Institute, the advisory boards of New World Capital, Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, and the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford and has published a book Resource Revolution: How to Capture the Biggest Business Opportunity in a Century.
Stefan received his Ph.D. in Cognitive Science from UCSD and a B.S. with honors in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University. His research focused on deep learning.
Major Contributors
Our thinking has been and continues to be influenced by the following indivduals and their teams, who have shown ongoing leadership in how they approach the transition to a resourcient economy:
Jules Kortenhorst and the team The Rocky Mountain Institute
Jeremy Leggett and the team at The Carbon Tracker
Dan Reicher and others on the team at the Steyer-Taylor Institute at Stanford University
Lee Burrows and Stephen Gray at VantagePoint Capital Partners
Peter Shannon at Firelake Capital