NACFE - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Lightweighting Consultant
Andrew Halonen is NACFE's Lightweighting Consultant. In this role he helps NACFE with its work on helping fleets lower the weight of their tractors and trailers. Andrew is also president of Mayflower Consulting, LLC, a lightweighting consultancy that provides strategic marketing, market research and business development for high tech clients. He works with castings, extrusions, brakes, and new material development programs. Recent research includes automotive material benchmarking, crash management systems, EV material selection, and the investigation of composites for trucking.
Job Titles:
- Manager, Carbon - Free Transportation
- Mobility Manager
- RMI Partner Team
Ari Kahn is the Carbon-Free Mobility Manager at RMI and works as a consultant to NACFE to focus on increasing medium- and heavy-duty truck electrification, including addressing the gap between the power trucks need and the electricity the grid can provide. Ari has spent 12 years working to increase electric vehicle adoption. His career includes roles in government, a distribution utility, the private sector, and non-profits including serving as electric vehicle policy advisor to the Mayor of New York and working at Con Edison, New York City's distribution utility.
Job Titles:
- Principal
- Principal, Carbon - Free Transportation
Dave Mullaney is Principal, Carbon-Free Mobility at RMI, where he focuses on fleet electrification, particularly for trucks, and logistics decarbonization. Dave leads RMI's trucking electrification work in the United States, India, and China. He is also building up RMI's capabilities in data science to drive vehicle electrification and transportation decarbonization. Dave has worked globally with policymakers at every level of government to craft and implement freight decarbonization policies. At the local level, Dave has worked with policymakers from Beijing, Shenzhen, Delhi, and other cities to design and implement urban logistics and trucking electrification policies.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Director of Industry Engagement
- Industry Engagement Director
Dave Schaller is NACFE's Director of Industry Engagement. His responsibilities include interfacing with fleets, OEMs and suppliers, writing reports, conducting workshops, giving presentations, and running the social media groups. Dave works closely with the drivers, fleets and sponsors for the Run on Less demonstrations. As a Navistar employee for 27 years, he held positions in production design, research, program management, dealer sales training, marketing, product line management, and strategic product planning. A marketing role allowed him to spend many days in truck stops, fleet offices and dealerships in five countries learning about what the industry desired and why.
Job Titles:
- Communications Director
- Director of Communications
Denise Rondini is NACFE's Director of Communications. Her responsibilities include handling NACFE's internal and external communications efforts as well as media relations. She also is on the teams that develop Confidence Reports and Guidance Reports. Denise has 40 years' experience in the trucking industry as editor of several industry publications. She is also president of Rondini Communications, a full-service communications firm specializing in the trucking industry. She is the recipient of SAE International's 2019 Environmental Excellence in Transportation Award.
Jeff Seger is NACFE's Clean Energy Consultant. In this role he will be working on a project around the messy middle, helping scale electric and hydrogen solutions, looking at sustainability and intermodal and assisting with various other Confidence Reports including one on the driver's effect on fuel efficiency. Jeff has 38 years' experience in the commercial vehicle market and has knowledge and expertise around powertrain integration, electrification and internal combustion engines. He is an expert in understanding the technical and business challenges of new technology and successfully finding reliable and profitable solutions.
Job Titles:
- Director for Industry Engagement in Mexico and Latin America
Pepe Gutierrez is NACFE's Director for Industry Engagement in Mexico and Latin America. In this role, he will be reaching out to OEMs, fleets, and industry suppliers to share information in order to improve freight efficiency. He also will be collecting information that applies to transportation in that region and communicating benefits, challenges and payback on fuel-efficiency options to help fleets adopt fuel efficiency technologies.
Pepe has a 28-year background in the trucking industry, including sales and operations positions with several companies.
Job Titles:
- Electrification Team Lead
Kevin Otto is NACFE's Electrification Team Lead. In this role he provides consulting services and has authored a number of Confidence Reports and Guidance Reports. Otto spent 40 years at Cummins where he held a number of key positions in Technical Service, Engineering, Quality and Program Leadership in several of the Business Units. Otto has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. He is involved in the Technology & Maintenance Council and was awarded the Silver Spark Plug in 1999.
Kim Ehrenhaft is the Design Director. In this role, she works on NACFE's Confidence Reports and Guidance Reports and is responsible for its social media efforts and website. Kim has been involved in the trucking industry since 1993 and has served as managing editor/production manager at Successful Dealer and Truck Parts & Service, and production manager at Heavy Duty Trucking and Heavy Duty Aftermarket Journal.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Executive Director
Mike Roeth is NACFE's Executive Director. He sets the direction for the organization and determines which projects NACFE should undertake and where to focus its efforts on improving freight efficiency. He also serves as the trucking lead for RMI. Mike has worked in the commercial vehicle industry for more than 35 years and his specialty is brokering green truck collaborative technologies into the real world at scale. Mike was named an Industry Influencer by Fleet Owner and awarded the prestigious SAE 2020 L. Ray Buckendale Lecturer and manuscript author in 2020. He understands the customers, operations and intricacies of the commercial vehicle industry having held various positions with Navistar and Behr/Cummins.
NACFE's Executive Director, Mike Roeth, was honored to be named the 2020 SAE L. Ray Buckendale lecturer for the SAE COMVEC event in September 2020. This honor included writing a manuscript entitled, Transformational Technologies Reshaping Transportation - An Industry Perspective.
Job Titles:
- Senior Associate in the Carbon - Free Transportation Team at RMI
Nocona Sanders is a senior associate in the Carbon-Free Transportation team at RMI. He uses various analytical methods to support electric vehicle adoption efforts with a specific focus on medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. Prior to joining RMI, Nocona was a senior associate at Gladstein, Neandross & Associates where he used technical analyses on the total cost of ownership, greenhouse gas emissions inventories, and fleet energy use profiles to inform the deployment of electric vehicles and their charging infrastructure.
Job Titles:
- Industry Engagement Manager
Rachel Ellenberger has joined the NACFE team as Industry Engagement Manager. In this capacity she will help manage NACFE's relationships with various members of the trucking industry and sponsors. Rachel has worked in the alternative fuel industry for several years and now is the owner of Green Seed Collective, LLC, a consulting firm dedicated to cultivating project management and strategic growth solutions for groups dedicated to changing the world.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Director of Emerging Technologies
Rick Mihelic is NACFE's Director of Emerging Technologies. In this position he spearheads NACFE's work on electric, hydrogen fuel cell and other alternative fuel medium- and heavy-duty trucks. He also contributes to NACFE's Confidence Reports and writes blogs that are regularly published in CCJ. He is also president of Mihelic Vehicle Consulting LLC and has 40 years' experience in the trucking and aerospace industries including 20 years in commercial vehicle development for PACCAR and Peterbilt. He received the 2016 SAE L. Ray Buckendale Award and 2020 SAE Crawford award. He also is an associate editor for the SAE Journal of Commercial Vehicles and active member of multiple SAE and TMC groups.
Job Titles:
- Senior Technical Consultant
Rob Graff is Senior Technical Consultant at NACFE where he assists and leads a variety of projects. Rob has a background in energy and climate change policy. Rob worked at the metropolitan planning organization for Greater Philadelphia, where he established and led the Office of Energy and Climate Change Initiatives. He led the creation of the region's electric vehicle action plan as well as the Interagency Battery Electric Bus Dialogue, which brought together 11 of the nation's largest transit agencies to discuss the opportunities and challenges of transitioning to battery electric buses.
Yunsu Park is NACFE's Director of Engineering. His responsibilities include analyzing data for NACFE's Annual Fleet Fuel Study and Run on Less events. He has authored several Confidence Reports for NACFE and is an independent consultant to the trucking industry. Yunsu's area of interest is in data collection and analysis, and technology implementation, particularly as it relates to human behavior. Prior to NACFE, Yunsu was CTO for a technology start-up working with fleets on driver behavior and incentives and held various roles in finance and engineering at Navistar.