Advisory Board

The Advisory Board is a distinguished group of industry leaders for the purpose of advising the executive director on the strategic direction and effectiveness of the Institute’s efforts. All members of the Advisory Board participate in their personal capacity.

Colton Ching

Colton Ching

Colton has responsibility for planning Hawaiian Electric’s 100% renewable energy grid and integrating needed new technologies into the system. He previously served as Vice President of Energy Delivery as well as Vice President of System Operation and Planning and has over 29 years of experience in the utility industry. He holds a BS, Mechanical Engineering from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and attended the Executive LEAD Program at Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Colton was also one of 13 inaugural cohorts in the Omidyar Fellows Leadership program.

Jennifer Davidson

Jennifer Davidson

Jennifer Davidson is Chief Financial Officer, Finance and Business Planning of Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD). She oversees the accounting, treasury, and pricing departments and is also responsible for enterprise and commodity risk management, strategic planning load research and forecasting, enterprise performance management, and developing SMUD’s budget. Before joining SMUD, Jennifer held management positions with Southern California Edison and software services provider Amdocs. She holds a BS from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Phil Keogan

Phil Keogan

Phil Keogan is General Manager Asia Pacific Region for Sunverge Energy, a distributed energy storage solution provider. Phil leads Sunverge’s Australia, New Zealand and Japan operations and is responsible for strategic and market development. Previously, he was General Manager Energy Sustainability & Market Development at Ergon Energy and earlier at Jemena (Australian utility subsidiary of Singapore Power). Phil holds a BA Philosophy from Liverpool University and a Masters, Applied Finance from Kaplan Business School.

Richard Schomberg

Richard Schomberg

Richard Schomberg is Vice-President Smart Energy Standardization at EDF Group (Electricité de France). Richard is responsible for EDF’s global standards efforts and several strategic initiatives. He has a particular focus on Asia. Richard is also an IEC Ambassador to represent the interests of the IEC in the sector of Smart Energy. Previously, he has held a number of management positions at EDF Group Research & Development, including responsibility for EDF R&D activities in North America. Earlier, he was a Professor of Systems Engineering at Ecole Superieure d'Electricite (Paris). He is a recipient of EPRI’s Chauncey Starr Award and recipient of the IEC 2011 Lord Kelvin award.

Ryan Hanley

Ryan Hanley

Ryan Hanley was recently General Manager of Royal Dutch Shell’s Energy Platform business. Before Shell, Ryan served as Chief Product Officer at AMS, where he led strategy, product and engineering. Before AMS, Ryan led Tesla and SolarCity’s grid services businesses, where he drove efforts to aggregate, optimize, and monetize portfolios of energy assets. Prior to Tesla, Ryan managed Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s emerging technology and smart grid portfolios for electric distribution. Ryan holds a BS in Civil Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, an MS in Civil Engineering from Trinity College Dublin, and an MBA from UC Berkeley.

Ron Renzini

Ron Renzini

Ron Renzini is the President and Chief Executive Officer at Corporate Systems Engineering, a leader in the direct load control industry since 1983. He also has previously served on the Advisory Board of Trove Predictive Data Science. Ron has over 35 years experience in the electric, gas and water utility verticals. He has worked in the global smart grid market since its inception. He has held various key management positions, including Vice President and General Manager, Smart Grid Modernization & Solutions at Itron, Vice President of Sales, Itron and Vice President of Sales at Schlumberger Electricity. He began his career with Westinghouse Electric. Ron holds a BS in Marketing and Communications, MBA from Clemson University, and Certificate in Negotiations from the University of Notre Dame.

Val Jensen

Val Jensen

Mr. Jensen formerly was senior vice president for Strategy and Policy for the Exelon Utilities. In that role he was responsible for developing the board-approved strategy for Exelon’s six distribution utilities. Prior to that role he led strategy for Commonwealth Edison, and also served as senior vice president for Customer Operations where he led ComEd’s customer service, billing, smart meter and energy efficiency organizations. Prior to his roles at Exelon, Val was a senior vice president for ICF International and has served at U.S. DOE and the Illinois Department of Energy. He is the founder of the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance and has served on the boards of the Alliance to Save Energy, the Energy Foundry, the Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind, the Consortium for Energy Efficiency and the Association of Energy Service Professionals.

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