Outside Board of Directors and Advisors

Mr. Robinson is Executive Director of the Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship and E-Business (PACE). Born and raised in Durban, South Africa he was an internal consultant at the national electricity utility and responsible for job redesign, quality programs, and culture change in a successful turnaround project. In 1987 he co-founded the management consulting company Work and Life Change before completing a Ph.D. in social psychology at Stanford University in 1991. From 1991 to 2001 Mr. Robinson was a faculty member of the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration in Boston, Massachusetts. He was a 2001 visiting professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management when offered the position of Weinman Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship and E-Business at the University of Hawaii, College of Business Administration. Dr. Robinson is currently Chairman of Hawaii Angels investment group and a Partner at Kolohala Ventures.

With over twenty years of experience as an entrepreneur and operating executive, Bill Reichert is Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures which he joined in 1998. He focuses on early-stage information technology and materials science companies and sits on the Boards of CaseStack, WhiteHat, ClearFuels, and cFares. Mr. Reichert was a co-founder or senior executive in several venture-backed technology startups, including Trademark Software, The Learning Company and Academic Systems. Early in his career, he worked at McKinsey & Company, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., and the World Bank after earning a B.A. at Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Stanford University.

Mr. Barrier is the Director of Metropolitan Energy Systems, Inc. and of Bio-Fuel Systems Inc. in Cincinnati, Ohio. Metropolitan leads efforts to deploy innovative, commercially superior technology for liquid fuels production from renewable resources. He has extensive management experience in bioenergy and waste utilization research and development programs, including 20 years as Director of the BioEnergy Program at the Tennessee Valley Authority, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. EPA.

Mr. Overend joined the Solar Energy Research Institute/ National Renewable Energy Institute (SERI/NREL) in 1990 to provide technical leadership in biomass, including field management to DOE’s Biomass Power program, after 20 years with the National Research Council of Canada, as manager of Canada’s Bioenergy Program. He has been involved from bench scale to large-scale biomass gasification systems, such as the 60 MW Vermont Gasification project, an indirect gasification system attached to the McNeil station in Burlington, Vermont. Mr. Overend served as Chairman of the American Chemical Society Cellulose Division 1993-94, he edits the journal, Biomass and Bioenergy, and the biomass section of the journal, Solar Energy. He has also served as a United Nations, World Bank, and FAO lecturer/advisor in the USSR, China, Pakistan, and Mexico. Mr. Overend has received significant recognitions for outstanding scientific contributions in biomass and bioenergy including: Fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada, 1990; Johannes Linneborn Prize, 1996; H.M. Hubbard Award, 1997; R&D 100 Award, 1998; NREL Research Fellow, 2000; the Thomas R. Miles Award, 2001, and the World Renewable Energy Network Pioneer Award, 2002. He holds a MSc. Physical Chemistry, University of Salford (Manchester, England, UK) and a Ph.D. Physical Chemistry, University of Dundee (Dundee, Scotland, UK)

Mr. Howard has twenty-five years of experience in construction and finance industries. He is currently CEO of Noble Environmental Power. He was most recently Senior Vice President at American Water. He has served as President, Chief Executive Officer and a Director of Poseidon Resources Corporation; Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financing Officer of the J. Makowski Company; and Executive Vice President of the U.S. Generating Company. He was Senior Vice President of Industrial Project Financing at General Electric Capital Corporation where he was responsible for numerous new project financings and has served as Business Development Manager to the Vice Chairman of GE and as Program Manager in GE’s power project development group. Mr. Howard is a member of the Board of the Atlantis Water Fund, and the U.S. Secretary of Commerce has appointed Mr. Howard to the Environmental Technologies Trade Advisory Committee. Mr. Howard is the President of The Water Partnership Council (WPC), a Washington, DC-based not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting sustainable water quality in the United States. Mr. Howard has BS and MS degrees from Cornell Engineering and an MBA from Harvard University.

A co-founder and a Managing Director of PacificCap Group, Hawaii’s largest locally based venture capital firm, Mr. Au brings extensive experience in structuring and implementing innovative, interdisciplinary, strategic, financial, tax and legal solutions to complex problems facing early stage and emerging growth companies. He has been a Principal and General Counsel of a San Francisco based private equity firm, and been a frequent lecturer and contributor to business publications on various topics relating to venture capital, technology investing and Act 221, Hawaii’s high tech tax incentive program. Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, Mr. Au is a graduate of Punahou School and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a Master’s degree in International Policy Studies from Stanford University. He received his Juris Doctor degree from the Columbia University School of Law.

Mr. Jakeway is HC&S Director of energy development and planning for Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar (HC&S), a division of A&B Hawaii, Inc. and the largest producer of raw sugar in Hawaii. Mr. Jakeway has 20 years experience in sugar production businesses and has international experience with Winrock International in various locations worldwide.

Mrs. Kimura is the director of corporate finance and investments at Hawaiian Electric Industries, Inc. (HEI). Prior to joining HEI in 2004, Shelee was a manager with KMH LLP in Honolulu, the successor firm to the Honolulu office of Arthur Andersen LLP where she helped start and build their local internal audit and business risk consulting practice. At both companies, her primary client was Kamehameha Schools with a focus on its endwoment portfolio and land assets. Prior to 2000, Shelee was an audit supervisor on various real estate, hospitality and retail clients. Shelee earned her bachelor of business administration degree in accounting from the University of Hawaii in 1995 and is a certified public accountant.

Mr. Durante is Executive Director and Washington Representative of the Clean Fuels Development Coalition (CFDC), Former Director of Public Affairs for the National Alcohol Fuels Commission, Special Assistant in the Office of Alcohol Fuels at the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Fuels Advisory Committee, Department of Energy’s Business Roundtable Advisory Group and the Federal Fleet Conversion Task Force.