ZAP - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- DIRECTOR
- INVESTOR
- Entrepreneur, Investor
Aaron Schildkrout is an entrepreneur, investor and advisor. He is a founding investor at Addition, the venture fund created in 2020 by Lee Fixel with 2.7b aum. He has served on the boards of Better, Noom, Rhino, Tala, Keep Truckin, JUMP and others. He is a senior advisor to The New York Times, Blink Health, Juul Labs and a number of other high-growth companies. He was previously an executive at Uber where he ran Growth, Global Marketing, Data, and the Driver side of the business. Prior to that he founded and was CEO of HowAboutWe (acquired by IAC). Aaron is a Harvard grad and currently serves on the Board at Codman Academy Charter Public School, where he was a teacher in the early part of his career.
Job Titles:
- CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER
- CO - FOUNDER
Brian Nelson received his PhD in Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1987, after which he joined the UW, where he retired as a Research Professor Emeritus in 2019. He has worked on several fusion energy concepts, including tandem & axisymmetric mirrors, theta-pinches, linear stellarators & heliacs, field-reversed configurations, spherical torii, and sheared-flow stabilized Z-pinches. He was project manager in the design, ground-up construction, and successful operation of ten different experiments at the UW. Brian co-founded Zap Energy with Benj Conway and Uri Shumlak.
Job Titles:
- DIRECTOR
- INVESTOR
- Founding Partner at Lowercarbon Capital
Clay is a founding partner at Lowercarbon Capital where he works closely with unreasonably ambitious founders to slash CO2, suck up carbon from the atmosphere, and buy time for the people and places already suffering from too much heat. In parallel with co-leading the Lowercarbon strategy, Clay is also a partner at Lowercase Capital, one of the industry's highest-performing early-stage venture funds. Previously, Clay worked in the West Wing serving as an aide to the Senior Advisor and the Deputy Chief of Staff in the Obama Administration. His work spanned operations and security to media and political strategy, culminating in working on the team that produced the 2014 State of the Union Address. He went on to help rebuild the Office of Digital Strategy, a team tasked by President Obama to use the internet to connect people with purpose. Part of his mandate was to reinvigorate how the White House built online support for its conservation, energy, and other planet-healing initiatives.
Jasmin Staiblin is recognized as one of Europe's top experts in the field of energy. She studied physics and electrical engineering at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. She completed her studies with a degree in physics and has a Master of Science in electrical engineering. Jasmin began her career in 1997 at ABB Group, the Swedish-Swiss global technology company. She served in various global functions as a member of the management team for ABB's power technologies division. She held the position of CEO of ABB Switzerland from 2006 to 2012. In 2013 she became CEO of Alpiq Holding Ltd., a leading Swiss energy services provider and electricity producer in Europe, until December 31, 2018. Jasmin is a board member of Zurich Insurance Group Ltd.; Zurich Insurance Company Ltd.; NXP Semiconductors N.V., Eindhoven; Georg Fischer Ltd., Schaffhausen; Chair of Rolls Royce Power Systems AG, Friedrichshafen.
Sir Frank Chapman has worked in the international oil and gas industry for more than 40 years, with BP, Shell, and British Gas, which he joined in 1996. This culminated with his appointment in 2000 as Chief Executive of BG Group plc. Under Sir Frank's leadership, the Group became a $60 billion international integrated oil and gas enterprise, with profits growing from $50 million in 1996 to more than $8 billion in 2012. Sir Frank retired from BG Group in 2013 at age 60. Today he serves as a non-executive Director of Rolls-Royce, where he is Chairman of the Safety, Ethics and Sustainability Committee. He is a Director of the NASDAQ-listed Next Decade Corporation, and is also a Trustee of the Myeloma UK charity. He was knighted in the Queen's 2011 honours list for services to the oil and gas industry.
Job Titles:
- CHIEF SCIENCE OFFICER
- CO - FOUNDER
Uri Shumlak received his PhD in Nuclear Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley in 1992, and worked at the Air Force Phillips Laboratory at Kirtland AFB, before joining the UW in 1994. He is a world-renowned theoretical, computational, and experimental plasma physicist. Uri is the lead developer of the sheared-flow-stabilized Z-pinch concept, and Principal Investigator of the UW ZaP, ZaP-HD, and FuZE flow Z-pinch research projects, as well as the UW Computational Plasma Dynamics Laboratory group. He has won numerous awards for his teaching, research, and mentoring, and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Uri co-founded Zap Energy with Benj Conway and Brian Nelson.
Job Titles:
- DIRECTOR
- SHAREHOLDER
- Retired Co - Founder and CEO of Bois
Wayne Laufer is the retired co-founder and CEO of Bois d'Arc Energy Inc., a NYSE Houston-based company that specialized in offshore oil and natural gas exploration and production. Laufer retired from Bois d'Arc executive management in November 2007 but remained active on the board of directors until the company was sold to Stone Energy Corp. for approximately $1.7 billion in August 2008. Since earning his civil engineering degree from Missouri University of Science and Technology, Laufer's career has been in the energy industry. His first job out of college was as a production engineer for a major oil company. He worked in various capacities in the energy sector from 1967-1977, then co- founded an independent energy consulting company in 1977. He served as vice president of operations and production for two independent companies from 1980-1983. In 1984, he co-founded Bois d'Arc Resources and Bois d'Arc Operating Corp. and served as managing partner and president until all company assets were sold in December 1997. Continuing the Bois d'Arc tradition, Bois d'Arc Offshore was formed in 1998 and was active in Gulf of Mexico exploration until it was folded into the Bois d'Arc Energy Inc. initial public offering in 2005. Formerly a registered professional engineer in the state of Texas, Laufer is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers and the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association. Laufer funded the Missouri University of Science and Technology's first endowed chair of energy research.