CARBON DIRECT - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Mechanical Engineer
- Director of Industrial Decarbonization
A.J. Simon leads Carbon Direct's industrial decarbonization practice which focuses on the chemical, physical, and mechanical mechanisms of carbon management and removal.. A.J. translates scientific and engineering expertise into actionable strategies for client organizations seeking deep and permanent decarbonization.
A.J. Simon is a mechanical engineer and energy systems expert, whose passion for efficiency and insatiable curiosity has led to a 20+ year career spanning industry, academia, and the U.S. Department of Energy.
Prior to joining Carbon Direct, he managed the Energy Group at Lawrence Livermore National Lab where he led assessments of technologies as diverse as carbon capture and removal, the energy-water nexus, nuclear energy, hydrogen fuel, building energy efficiency, and soldier-portable power.
From 2003 to 2008, he helped to manage a large portfolio of university-led clean energy research at Stanford's Global Climate and Energy Project. From 2001 to 2003, he developed combustion and emissions control technologies for General Electric's diesel and gas turbine product lines.
Job Titles:
- Life Cycle Assessment Lead
Daniel Garcia leads life cycle assessment (LCA) theory, research, and practice at Carbon Direct. He aims to implement cutting-edge LCA methods and ensure best-in-class quality LCAs across all technology categories at Carbon Direct, leveraging the unique strengths of the science team.
Daniel has previous experience working in industry and government. He most recently supported the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) as a consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton, leading the LCA team there. Prior to that, he was a member of the LCA and Optimization team at ExxonMobil Research & Engineering.
Supported by a background in chemical engineering and process systems engineering, he has analyzed and optimized many energy systems to minimize environmental impact while maintaining profitability, including bioenergy systems, petrochemical systems (from extraction through refining and upgrading), carbon-negative building materials, agriculture, iron and steelmaking, EV batteries, and CO2 removal technologies - specifically biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS).
Job Titles:
- Director of Interdisciplinary Science
Dr. Colin McCormick provides science and technology expertise across a wide range of engineered carbon removal methods and industrial decarbonization sectors. He also supports Carbon Direct's work in data science and remote sensing, life-cycle analysis, and carbon removal policy analysis.
Dr. Colin McCormick previously served as the Senior Advisor for R&D at the US Department of Energy where he helped oversee the full applied energy research portfolio, and as a Professional Staff Member for the House Science & Technology Committee. Prior to this he conducted research in applied quantum optics and atomic physics at UC Berkeley and NIST. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Science, Technology and International Affairs program, Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and a Member of the District of Columbia Commission on Climate Change and Resiliency.
Job Titles:
- Staff Research Data Scientist
Dr. Jessica Walkenhorst works at the intersection of data science, machine learning and climate.
Before Carbon Direct, she worked at an electric vehicle start-up, building design-optimization software and prior to this led one of the UK's big six utility companies' data science research efforts. She obtained her PhD in Spain, where she researched how to combine computational spectroscopy with optimal control theory to optimize optical properties of atoms and molecules.
Jessica is heavily involved in London's data-science scene, where she co-organizes London's PyData Meetup and regularly volunteers at DataKind's hackathon weekends.
Job Titles:
- Senior Decarbonization Scientist
Dr. John Dees is a senior decarbonization scientist with deep knowledge of biofuels and biomass-based engineered carbon removal projects. John combines technical analysis with expertise in bioenergy and carbon policy to help clients engage strategically with a rapidly evolving sector and bring quality decarbonization projects to market.
John initially trained as a geographer, where he developed a technical background in geospatial analysis and remote sensing. His interests later shifted to energy and climate. His master's thesis investigated interest group politics in state-level renewable energy policy.
John's PhD work focused on the intersection of industrial ecology and climate economics. In his dissertation, he employed life cycle and techno-economic assessment methods to assess the potential for bio-based products and fuels to remove carbon from the atmosphere. His research had a particular emphasis on the role of supportive state and federal policy to enable the "bioeconomy" for carbon drawdown.John brings an interdisciplinary background to bear across client engagements, from technical project reviews to policy expertise.
Dr. Julio Friedmann is Chief Scientist at Carbon Direct. He works directly with clients, the Science team, and the leadership of Carbon Direct to solve major technical challenges around carbon management and CO2 removal.
Dr. Friedmann recently served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy at the Department of Energy where he was responsible for DOE's R&D program in advanced fossil energy systems, carbon capture, and storage (CCS), CO2 utilization, and clean coal deployment. More recently, he was a Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia. He has held positions at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, including Chief Energy Technologist.
Dr. Friedmann is one of the most widely known and authoritative experts in the U.S. on carbon removal (CO2 drawdown from the air and oceans), CO2 conversion and use (carbon-to-value), hydrogen, industrial decarbonization, and carbon capture and sequestration.
Dr. Letty Brown advises on, contributes to research and manages a team focused on landscape decarbonization in forested ecosystems. Her area of emphasis is on large-scale restoration and reforestation in temperate and tropical ecosystems.
Dr. Brown holds cross-sector expertise in ecosystem restoration, vegetation ecology, conservation planning, carbon measurement, and natural climate solutions. Before joining Carbon Direct, she worked extensively in natural resources management, and led research teams in a variety of capacities, including mapping and helping designate conservation targets in the northern Brazilian Atlantic Forest and developing oak woodland restoration plans in coastal California. She has worked on land-based carbon projects in the forests of Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, Cambodia, Indonesia, Kenya, Tanzania and the United States.
Dr. Brown holds a Ph.D. from the Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM) Department at UC Berkeley and conducted post-doctoral work in Brazil. Her graduate work was supported by a 5-year grant from the USDA-Forest Service. Dr. Brown currently teaches at UC Berkeley. She is also a Fulbright Scholar.
Job Titles:
- Director of EMEA Advisory & Senior Scientist
Dr. Meera Atreya leads Carbon Direct's office in Europe. As a Director and Senior Scientist at Carbon Direct, Meera and her team help organizations take climate action by reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and supporting high-quality carbon removal projects.
Dr. Atreya has worked in climate technology research and strategic advisory since 2009. She was the lead author of Bioresources within a Net-Zero Emissions Economy, a report by the Energy Transitions Commission evaluating the role of sustainable bioresources in climate change mitigation. While at SYSTEMIQ, a sustainability-focused systems change company, Meera provided strategic advice to a major climate-focused philanthropic foundation and co-authored a report on alleviating the plastic waste crisis; the United Nations Environment Programme is currently using this analysis as the basis for a global plastics treaty. Prior to SYSTEMIQ, Meera was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, where she was designated as an Affiliate Expert in Renewable Energy & Cleantech and was a key member of the team that steered McKinsey to address its own global carbon emissions.
Meera is based in London and is an advisory board member of both the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) and Carbon Gap. She holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry (Chemical Biology) from UC Berkeley and an A.B. cum laude from Harvard. Dr. Atreya was awarded a US National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship for her doctoral research on engineering enzymes to improve the efficiency, and lower the cost, of converting cellulosic biomass to 2nd-generation biofuels.
Job Titles:
- Senior Decarbonization Engineer, Life Cycle Assessment
Dr. Peter Psarras is a Senior Decarbonization Engineer with a focus on lifecycle assessment of engineered CDR.
Dr. Psarras received his PhD in Chemistry from Cleveland State University in 2014 where he worked on computational modeling of catalysts used in Fischer-Tropsch synthetic fuel processing.
He subsequently held postdoctoral appointments at Stanford University and The Colorado School of Mines in the area of techno-economic, life-cycle, and geospatial assessments of engineered carbon management solutions. His work since has focused mainly on climate change mitigation, mainly carbon capture, utilization, and - more recently - atmospheric carbon removal via direct air capture and carbon mineralization.
Since January 2021, Dr. Psarras has held a joint appointment in the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy and Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at The University of Pennsylvania at the level of Assistant Research Professor.
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Landscape Decarbonization
Dr. Sarah Federman has cross-sector expertise in analytics, agricultural sustainability, and the science underpinning biodiverse and resilient landscapes.
Dr. Federman contributed as a lead author and coordinator to R&D roadmaps for landscape resiliency and climate-smart innovation for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Office of the Chief Scientist. While at the USDA, she also supported a federal interagency R&D strategy with the Department of Energy focused on the circular carbon economy. In the private sector, Dr. Federman led, developed, and implemented data-driven continuous improvement frameworks for an indoor agricultural technology startup, as part of a broader strategy to enable responsible vertical scaling.
Dr. Federman has deep expertise in the ecological dynamics supporting the structure and function of tropical forests. Her work includes peer-reviewed recommendations for forest conservation and management of critically endangered species. She has managed multilateral teams and collaborations in Peru, Madagascar, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Dr. Federman holds a Ph.D. from Yale University's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and a M.S. in forest science from the Yale School of the Environment. Her graduate studies were supported by the National Science Foundation's Graduate Student Research Fellowship Program.
Job Titles:
- Chief Operating Officer
- Health Counselor
Dr. Zara Ahmed is responsible for marketing, policy, communication, coordination, and execution across Carbon Direct. Dr. Ahmed's primary focus is strategic planning, program development, and U.S. policy engagement.
Prior to working at Carbon Direct, Dr. Ahmed was the Government Affairs and Policy Lead for the COVID-19 Response at the CDC. She rejoined CDC in August 2021 after two years at the Guttmacher Institute as the Associate Director for Federal Issues. Before her time at the Guttmacher Institute, Dr. Ahmed spent 10 years with CDC, including seven years based overseas at US embassies in Rwanda, Namibia and Haiti as a senior technical advisor, and three years as the Associate Division Director for Policy and Communications in the Division of Global Health Protection at CDC headquarters in Atlanta.
In addition, Dr. Ahmed has worked as a sexual health counselor at an alternative high school in Michigan and as a consultant in Bangladesh on the labor rights of migrant women. Dr. Ahmed has also conducted field research on sex worker rights in Cambodia, health financing in rural Cameroon, and donor coordination of malaria programs in Senegal. She holds a BA in political science from Brown University, MPP and MPH degrees from the University of Michigan, a MBA from the University of Oklahoma, and a DrPH from the University of North Carolina, where she is also an adjunct faculty member.
Job Titles:
- Leader
- Vice President, Business Operations
Ellie is a mission driven leader, with over a decade of experience in managing teams as large as 250, driving operational excellence and great customer outcomes.
Ellie joined Carbon Direct from Uber, where she was the Global Head of Operations and Customer Success for Transit - a division she helped grow from 0:1. Prior to Uber, Ellie led consulting teams at Deloitte, with a focus on macroeconomic and public policy objectives.
For carbon credits to be able to serve their role, there needs to be a focus on high-quality removals that are financing high-quality credits. And that is what we focus on in our work at Carbon Direct."
Job Titles:
- Scientific Editor for Science & Technology Review ( 2013 )
Dr. Matthew Potts leads Carbon Direct's global science team in its work on decarbonizing the global economy. Dr. Potts helps clients decarbonize food, fiber, and fuel supply chains, assess high quality carbon removal from managed landscapes, and works to ensure climate actions are just and equitable.
Dr. Potts draws on his interdisciplinary background with formal training in mathematics, ecology, and economics to inform his work in nature and community based climate solutions.
Dr. Potts has over two decades of experience in resource management issues in low- and middle-income countries. This expertise supports his work as the University of California, Berkeley's S.J. Hall Professor in Forest Economics at the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, & Management and as the Associate Director for Sustainable Development, Blum Center for Developing Economies, where he leads an interdisciplinary lab that focuses on the co-production by human and natural systems of ecosystem services and natural pathways for carbon sequestration.
Dr. Potts recently served as a coordinating lead author on the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Land Degradation and Restoration Assessment.
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Associate
Job Titles:
- Electricity Decarbonization Lead
Job Titles:
- Vice President, People & Culture
Job Titles:
- Carbon Accounting Specialist
Job Titles:
- Student Award for Outstanding Thesis, Yale School of the Environment