At Energy Vault, we envision a planet where science and deep respect for our natural resources herald creative technological advancements in sustainable, clean, renewable energy. Our Board of Directors and Executive Management Team consist of experienced industry professionals with deep technical backgrounds in mechanical energy storage as well as energy storage market and customer requirements.
At Energy Vault, our vision is to be the most effective and sustainable energy storage company of the 21st century.
At Energy Vault, our mission is to accelerate decarbonization of our planet by introducing the most sustainable and economical energy storage technologies.
Energy Vault stakeholders and employees have a shared passion to combat climate change through innovation in energy storage technologies. With our vast global network in leadership, management, and contribution, Energy Vault is well positioned to meet the large and currently unmet demand for sustainable and economical energy storage for renewable energy generation worldwide.
Energy Vault is honored to have established strong governance that will allow us to best serve customer needs while accelerating adoption and deployment of the technology.
Chairman, Co-Founder & CEO,
Energy Vault
Robert Piconi is Chairman, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Energy Vault, responsible for the overall vision, strategic direction and operational performance of the company. Robert’s experience includes prior Executive leadership roles in Fortune 100 public companies across various industries including Diversified Energy (Amoco/British Petroleum), Telecommunications (Bell Labs Lucent Technologies), and Security/Network Management Software (Danaher Corporation). Within the private sector, he also founded and developed several innovative Healthcare service and medical device companies within the European market which were later acquired by Private Equity funds and/or large industry conglomerates. Robert completed his BS/BBA undergraduate studies at the University of Notre Dame and his graduate MBA studies at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
Co-Founder, Energy Vault
Idealab Studio
Bill Gross is Co-Founder of Energy Vault and Founder and Chairman of leading technology incubator Idealab. Currently, Bill is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Idealab Studio, a new venture that builds upon the storied legacy of Idealab. Over the last 23 years, Idealab has created and operated more than 150 companies, created more than 10,000 jobs, and had more than 45 successful IPOs and acquisitions in the areas of renewable energy, software, online advertising, Internet services, robotics, social media, and transportation. Among the companies begun at Idealab (Overture Services, Internet Brands, RayTracker, and Picasa). Many of these companies were among the first to introduce new business ideas to the market and have helped to shape the technology landscape. Bill received his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from California Institute of Technology, where he serves on the board of trustees.
General Partner at Prime Movers Lab
Zia Huque is a General Partner at venture capital firm Prime Movers Lab where he focuses on growth stage investing. Zia brings vast experience in finance and operations to his role on the Energy Vault board, having held executive, strategic, and operational roles across multiple businesses and regions of a top-five global investment bank where he managed tens of billions of dollars and thousands of employees.
Zia served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., the U.S. Broker Dealer of Deutsche Bank, from early 2018 until his departure from Wall Street in 2019. At Deutsche Bank, Zia was also Head of Equities, Fixed Income & Currencies for the Americas from 2016 to 2018 and Global Co-Chief Operating Officer of Corporate Banking and Securities from 2012 until 2016. During Zia’s 30-year finance career on Wall Street, he held multiple executive positions in the United States, Europe and Asia while leading investment banking, sales and trading functions spanning many industries, products, and clients.
He received his BA in Economics and in Political Science from Williams College. He resides in Wyoming with his wife and two daughters, is active in the community and serves on multiple private company boards and on select public company boards.
Founder & CEO,
Helena
Henry Elkus is Founder and CEO of Helena, a global problem solving organization. Helena’s purpose is to identify solutions to critical societal problems and implement them through individual projects. Helena’s past and current work has addressed elements of climate change, governance reform, exponential technologies, existential risk mitigation and more. Helena works alongside a small group of exceptional leaders throughout the year and around the world called Helena Members. The members include Four-Star Generals, artificial intelligence experts, Fortune 100 CEOs, Nobel Peace Prize and Scientific Laureates, Academy Award Winners, former CIA Directors, leading Academics, NGO Leaders, explorers, and more. Outside of Helena, Henry serves as Social Entrepreneur in Residence at The Boston Consulting Group and a Special Advisor to the Berggruen Institute. He was named to the 2020 Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
Chief Executive Director
Onyx Renewable Partners
Mary Beth Mandanas will join the Combined Company Board upon the consummation of the Business Combination. Since July 2021, Ms. Mandanas has served as an Independent Director, Audit Chair, on the Board of TortoiseEcofin Acquisition Corp III. From August 2020 to August 2021, she consulted and served as Chief Investment Officer for Sol Systems, LLC, a renewable energy infrastructure and impact investment company based in Washington, DC. Previously, from the fall of 2015 to May 2020, Ms. Mandanas held the position of Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer, of CleanChoice Energy, Inc., a company engaged in renewable energy retail supply and community solar, where she led strategic planning and was responsible for raising capital, banking/investor relations and establishing protocols for risk management and financial reporting. Prior to joining CleanChoice Energy in 2015, Ms. Mandanas worked in corporate and investment banking for more than 20 years, principally focused in the power and utility sector and executing across multiple facets of corporate finance/strategic advisory transactions, which included capital raising, structured financings, liability/interest rate/commodity risk management, treasury operations, capital allocation strategies, dividend policy and mergers and acquisitions. From 2013 to the fall of 2015, she served as Head of the Power/Utility Group in Corporate Banking at RBC Capital Markets, LLC, where she helped form the renewable tax equity business and grow the renewable loan portfolio. Prior to RBC Capital Markets, Ms. Mandanas served as Managing Director in Citigroup’s North American Power/Utility Corporate and Investment Banking Group from 2007 to 2013. From 1998 to 2007, Ms. Mandanas held various roles at Credit Suisse in the Power and Utility Investment Banking Group and in the Leveraged Finance/Financial Sponsors Group. She has worked across many industries, including companies in the power and utilities, textiles, chemicals, general industrials and education sectors. Additionally, Ms. Mandanas also spearheaded various diversity initiatives at Credit Suisse and was successful in establishing an annual leadership conference for female clients. Prior to joining Credit Suisse, she was a Vice President at NationsBank in New York. Additionally, Ms. Mandanas served on the Board of Trustees for the Business Partnership Foundation for the University of South Carolina for five years. Ms. Mandanas earned her M.B.A degree from Vanderbilt University and graduated, magna cum laude, with a B.S. from the University of South Carolina. We believe Ms. Mandanas is well qualified to serve as a director because of her significant experience and knowledge in finance, risk management, investment banking, business and work with companies involved in renewable energy and other areas of the energy industry.
Chief Accounting Officer
Strada Education Network
Thomas Ertel will join the Combined Company Board upon the consummation of the Business Combination. He was a Partner at Ernst & Young, LLP, an accounting firm, from June 2002 until his retirement from full-time employment in June 2017. Prior to that, Mr. Ertel spent 25 years, including 13 years as Partner, with Arthur Andersen, LLP, an accounting firm. Since October 2017, Mr. Ertel has served as Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer of Strada Education Network, a nonprofit organization that strengthens America’s pathways between education and employment. From December 2017 through September 2021, he served as a director on the board of directors of Blackbaud, Inc. He holds a BS in Accounting from Ball State University and has maintained an active CPA license in the State of Indiana since 1980. We believe Mr. Ertel is well qualified to serve as a director because of his management skills and because of his knowledge and experience in accounting and corporate transactions.
Director
Larry Paulson has served as Novus’s non-executive Chairman since its inception. Mr. Paulson co-founded Novus Capital Corporation and has served as its Chief Executive Officer and a director since its inception in March 2020 until its business combination with AppHarvest, Inc. in January 2021. Mr. Paulson has served as a managing member of Novus Capital Associates, LLC since its formation in October 2020. He has also served as principal and founder of Rancho Santa Fe Solutions, a wireless industry consulting company he founded in February 2010. From 2013 to January 2020, Mr. Paulson was with Qualcomm (Nasdaq:QCOM) where he served as Vice President of Product Management (2013-16), Vice President and President India and SAARC (2016-2018) and Vice President Sales NA and Australia (2018-Jan 2020). Prior to Qualcomm, he served as Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Brightpoint, Inc., a provider of worldwide distribution and integrated logistics services to the wireless communications industry, from 2011 to 2013. Prior to that he served with Nokia (NYSE:NOK) from 1987 to 2009 where he had numerous roles including global Senior Vice President and General Manager CDMA Product line. Mr. Paulson holds a BA in Communications from Point Park University. We believe Mr. Paulson is well qualified to serve as a director because of his more than thirty years of global senior management positions in the tech industry with expertise in wireless communications.
Energy Vault's global management team is focused on accelerating the adoption and deployment of our technology in order to provide flexibility to deploy, at scale with customized solutions for our identified target customers.
Chairman, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Robert Piconi is Co-Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Energy Vault, responsible for the overall vision, strategic direction and operational performance of the company. Robert’s experience includes prior Executive leadership roles in Fortune 100 public companies across various industries including Diversified Energy (Amoco/British Petroleum), Telecommunications (Bell Labs Lucent Technologies), and Security/Network Management Software (Danaher Corporation). Within the private sector, he also founded and developed several innovative Healthcare service and medical device companies within the European market which were later acquired by Private Equity funds and/or large industry conglomerates. Robert completed his BS/BBA undergraduate studies at the University of Notre Dame and his graduate MBA studies at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer
Andrea Pedretti is Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer of Energy Vault, responsible for technology innovation. Energy Vault creates highly disruptive and innovative solutions for long duration, utility-scale energy storage that, for the first time, enables renewables to deliver baseload power 24/7 below the cost of fossil fuels. Prior to Energy Vault, Andrea founded and served as Chief Technology Officer in multiple solar and renewable technology companies. Andrea holds over 25 patents worldwide for a variety of applications in energy storage, solar thermochemical science for solar fuels, and civil engineering. Andrea completed his Masters of Science (MS) in Engineering at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, Switzerland.
Chief Financial Officer
David Hitchcock is interim Chief Financial Officer of Energy Vault responsible for all internal and external financial functions, the oversight of Energy Vault’s public company accounting and financial reporting, as well as capital markets activities.
David brings more than three decades of operational financial leadership experience, including significant capital markets and M&A expertise. David most recently served as Chief Financial and Administrative Officer of Syniverse Technologies (Syniverse), a leading global services provider to the mobile telecom industry. During David’s eight years as CFO, Syniverse, he supported them making the successful transition from a public company (NYSE) to private company through the 2011 sale to The Carlyle Group. Syniverse revenue increased from over $300 million in 2007 to more than $900 million in 2014 through a combination of organic and inorganic growth while maintaining strong, consistent margins and significantly expanding its workforce and revenue base outside of North America, having played a critical role in the Company’s sale to The Carlyle Group in 2011. Prior to Syniverse, David held senior finance and operational roles at Lucent Technologies, including Corporate Controller and Business Vice President for Lucent Worldwide Services, CFO for the Global Supply Chain Network organization ($6B+ scope in manufacturing and procurement), and CFO of North America for the post-merger combination of Alcatel-Lucent.
David currently serves as an Advisor to Astra Capital Management and is a Board Member and Chair of the Audit Committee for Communications Technologies Services, LLC, an Astra portfolio company. David earned a BS in Accounting and an MBA from Wake Forest University and is a Certified Public Accountant.
Chief Product Officer
Marco Terruzzin is Chief Product Officer of Energy Vault, responsible for product vision and strategy. Marco is a product innovator and internationally recognized expert in climate change mitigation strategies (200+ renewable energy projects, $3 billion in power purchase agreement), with proven track record of growing businesses at the intersection of clean-tech (renewable energy + environmental markets) and digitization. Founding advisor (Energy Block chain Consortium), Diversified Energy Sector (E.ON Climate & Renewables, GE, Evolution Markets, Roland Berger Management Consulting). Marco holds an MSc in Mechanical Engineering and a PhD in Energy Economics from the University of Padua (Italy), and earned his MBA from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business.
Chief Marketing Officer
Laurence Alexander is Chief Marketing Officer of Energy Vault, responsible for global deployment of the marketing communications strategy for the company. Laurence has held Board positions and Executive Leadership Roles leading global brand strategy across a range of business sectors. His professional experience includes Marketing/Sales Enablement (Early WMC); Platform CMO – Security/Network Mgmt. (Danaher Corporation), Telecom (Emblaze, World Online, Genie, British Telecom, o2, SAB). Laurence is renowned for his relentless energy, delivering unparalleled rates of commercial and investment growth for multiple business. He has led and successfully managed several businesses from start up, M&A, and IPO into public companies and into trade sales. Laurence studied in Brighton (UK) and obtained an HND in Business Studies.
Chief Operating Officer
Chris Wiese is Chief Operating Officer of Energy Vault, responsible for Product Realization. Chris’s experience includes prior executive leadership roles in Fortune 100 public companies across various industries including RFID Barcode Scanning/Mobile Computing (Zebra Technologies), Network Emulation & Testing (Spirent Technologies), Security/Network Management (Danaher Corporation), and Telecommunications (Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, Alcatel). Chris completed his undergraduate and post graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin with a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering, and then entered into Doctorate studies at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken NJ.
Chief People Officer
Gonca Icoren is Chief People Officer at Energy Vault responsible for global people strategy including culture and employee experience, talent and performance management, learning and development, as well as compliance.
Gonca’s experience includes prior executive leadership roles in Biotech and Pharmaceuticals industry (Amgen, Actavis, Pfizer) and human resources consultancy work in the Financial sector (PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Turkey).
Gonca completed her Bachelor's degree in International Relations at Middle East Technical University - Ankara, TR and earned her Executive MSc, International Human Resource Management at Cranfield University - Cranfield School of Management - London, UK.
President, EVSTM
Energy Vault welcomes John G. Jung as the President of Energy Vault Solutions responsible for developing and building the company's business and capabilities in system integration and AI.
John's prior experience includes as Founder, President, and CEO of Greensmith Energy, a turn-key systems integrator responsible for delivering over a third of the total US capacity of energy storage in 2016. Deploying over 100 systems in twelve countries with a 100% safety record, Greensmith provided industry-leading technologies including a battery-agnostic platform and proprietary software using Al to some of the largest utilities, independent power producers and industrials globally, and was acquired by Wärtsilä in 2017. Prior to Greensmith, John led several VC-backed B2B startups in distributed computing and vertical marketplaces including Pantellos which served 21 of the 25 largest electric utilities in North America, and served on the Board of the Energy Storage Association. John also led a strategy practice for A.T. Kearney and is a Partner at Cota Capital and an Independent Director at Elum Energy.
John holds a B.A. in Pure Science and Economics from Western University, and an MBA in Strategy and Finance from Ivey Business School.
Chief Engineering Officer, EVSTM
Energy Vault welcomes Akshay Ladwa as the Chief Engineering Officer of Energy Vault Solutions responsible for technology innovation and creating customer centric solutions.
Akshay’s experience includes executive management roles in Energy Storage, Integration, project management and Engineering (BrightNight, Wärtsilä, and Greensmith), Mechanical Systems Engineer (GE Energy Storage), and PV System Design and Development Engineer (Solar).
Akshay holds a Masters of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Laurence Technological University, and a Bachelors of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University.
Senior Vice President of Corporate Development
Kevin Keough serves as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development responsible for working with the executive management team to set the strategic plan and to drive all M&A activities.
Kevin has led corporate development at Danaher, Tektronix, Netscout, and Inet Technologies across a broad range of high growth segments. At these businesses, he was responsible for their long-range growth strategies and driving complementary mergers and acquisitions that accelerated and amplified execution success.
Kevin applied his knowledge of the rigorous Danaher Business System, DBS, to successfully deploy more than $5B of capital to achieve numerous accretive transactions that expanded addressable market sizes, exploited white space opportunities, consolidated attractive segments and added key growth technologies and business assets.
Kevin holds a degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia.
Chief Legal Officer
Josh McMorrow is Chief Legal Officer of Energy Vault responsible for overseeing Energy Vault’s legal, regulatory, IP and compliance functions, as well as all legal aspects of its strategic and commercial partnerships as the company continues to scale its operations and expand its global footprint.
Josh joins the Energy Vault leadership team as a Senior Legal Executive with broad international experience in the energy, industrial gas, construction, and chemicals industries. Josh has been recognized as one of the top 100 GCs in three countries (United States, Switzerland, and Germany) as well as being named General Counsel of the Year for Energy. He has managed legal teams on six continents and is focused on building, and being part of, powerful legal teams that partner with the business. Most recently, Josh led the IPO of Atotech Limited on the NYSE in February 2021, and subsequently led the sale of the company to a strategic buyer in July 2021.
Josh McMorrow graduated with Honors from the University of Texas School of Law and completed his undergraduate degree in International Business at Trinity University, graduating cum laude.
Prior to Launch
Initial investment procurement and technology principles validation via 1/3 scale demonstration unit in Biasca, Switzerland.
Energy Vault announced commercial availability of transformative, utility-scale, gravity energy storage technology.
Including seismic analysis (CalTech), lifetime and reliability studies, and continued further software testing, simulation, and optimization.
Energy Vault wins World Changing Idea Award 2019 from Fast Company in the energy sector.
CEMEX Ventures invests in Energy Vault to support rapid deployment of energy storage technology using composite bricks.
Energy Vault Closes Series B Funding With $110 Million Investment from Softbank Vision Fund.
CEMEX research & development lab testing confirmation of sustainable composite block materials.
3rd party validation testing for EPA compliance of mobile masses produced with coal combustion residuals.
Energy Vault Named Technology Pioneer by World Economic Forum as It Offers an Economic Way to Store Clean Energy and Deliver Dispatchable Power.
35 MWh Commercial Demonstration Unit construction completion and connection to the Swiss National Grid.
EVx™ product development and validation prospecting with commercial engagements.
Helena investment and partnership is focused on further expansion of Energy Vault’s circular economy value proposition.
Energy Vault announces investment from SAEV with focus on deployment of new EVx™ energy storage technology within Aramco.
Energy Vault announces Series C Funding investment led by existing investor Prime Movers Lab, with additional participation from other new and existing investors.
Through merger with Novus Capital Corporation II (NYSE: NXU)
We are partnering with organizations across the globe, who share our mission to accelerate the decarbonization of our planet, and our vision for a world where renewable energy can replace fossil fuels 24 hours a day.
Join us in introducing the most effective and sustainable energy storage solutions to your market.