Dr. Cheryl Martin
Dr. Cheryl Martin founded her consulting firm, Harwich Partners, to engage public and private sector entities in designing and implementing solutions for complex problems, especially those related to energy, sustainability, urban development, and technology adoption at scale.
Previously she was a member of the Managing Board at the World Economic Forum where she was responsible for a range of business and innovation initiatives. Before this, Cheryl had served as the Acting Director of the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E). She was also the Deputy Director for Commercialization at the agency where she developed the Technology-to-Market program, which helps breakthrough energy technologies succeed in the marketplace. Prior to joining ARPA-E, Cheryl was an Executive in Residence at Kleiner Perkins after a career with Rohm and Haas Company in roles ranging from technology development to investor relations and business management.
Cheryl serves as the chair of the Board for Sound Agriculture, an early-stage sustainable agriculture technology company, as well as on the Boards for Menzies Aviation, one of the largest aviation services businesses in the world, Evergreen Climate Innovations (Chicago) and Elemental Excelerator (HI and CA). She received her PhD in organic chemistry from MIT.
Gabriel Kra
Gabriel Kra co-founded Prelude Ventures in 2013, after almost 25 years as an investor, entrepreneur, scientist, activist, and ski-bum. Before launching Prelude Ventures, Gabriel spent four years as an investment banker with Deutsche Bank in its solar and semiconductor groups. He also was an early employee at venture-backed telecommunications and semiconductor start-ups, where he was instrumental in raising money, launching products, developing technology and getting acquired. Gabriel’s early experience working a summer at Yellowstone National Park and for Greenpeace sparked his lifelong commitment to fighting climate change.
Gabriel serves on the Boards of Directors of Electric Hydrogen, Form Energy, Postscript Audio, Renew Financial, Ripple Foods, and Sense Labs, and is active with Catalog, Koloma, Natron Energy and Spark Thermionics. Other investments at Prelude include Raxium (Google), Quantumscape (NYSE: QS), Planet (NYSE:PL), ClearMetal, PLANT PV, Zymergen (NASDAQ: ZY, Suniva (ShunFeng Clean Energy), SolarBridge (SPWR), and Clean Urban Energy. Gabriel also serves on the Board of Directors of Activate and The CREO Syndicate, and on advisory boards for Prime Coalition and Carbon180.
Gabriel holds MBAs from the Columbia Business School and the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley, an MS in atmospheric chemistry from SUNY Stony Brook and a BA in philosophy from Columbia College. Gabriel is still an avid skier, and spends as much of his free time as possible in the mountains, with his wife and four children. Gabriel now roots for the San Francisco Giants after years as a New Yorker, and his favorite guilty pleasure, much to his wife’s chagrin, is Clash of Clans.