Potential Energy DC 2019 Winter Pitch Night: A Wide Range of Clean Tech Innovators --- December 4, 2019 --- Washington, DC

November 26, 2019

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PEDC is partnering again with Morgan Lewis to host its 2019 Winter Pitch Night. Mark your calendars for December 4 and secure tickets now for this can't-miss event: the only pitch night dedicated energy and sustainability startups in the DC region. This program will feature companies talking about innovations in solar energy, biofuels, waste-water treatment, and more.

We're very proud to present the company teams who are ready to talk tech:

Drew Bond, President & CEO, Powerfield Energy, Inc.
Steven Kadiev, CEO & Co-Founder, Neo-H2
Rob Kershner, CEO, Innovative Treatment Products LLC
Chris Lord, CEO, Babington Burner Company LLC
Michael Shore, CEO, SustainRNG
Katherine Sizov, CEO, Strella Biotech

Our panel of judges so far includes:

Joshua Brady, Shareholder, Nixon & Vanderhye P.C., PEDC Angel Network Founding Member
Dean Girdis, PEDC Angel Network Founding Member
Jolene Gurevich, Incubator and Fund Manager, Mtech Ventures
John McKenna, Managing Director, Hamilton Clark Sustainable Capital
Walter McLeod, Managing Director, VSF Solar
Katie Richardson, Program Manager, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)

Morgan Lewis will again be our venue, and food and beverage sponsor.

Film Bison will again be providing the media production.

Please contact Dave McCarthy, PEDC Executive Director, for sponsorship and panelist opportunities.

The event will follow our standard Pitch Night format:

- 6:00 to 6:30: Gather, mingle, snack, drink

- 6:30 to 8:00: Company updates and pitches with panelist and audience Q&A

- 8:00 to 9:00: Finish the food and drinks on Morgan Lewis's amazing rooftop veranda.

Meet the Teams That Will WOW You with Their Innovations . . .

The 2019 Winter Pitch Night will feature six new teams and one of the widest scopes of the clean tech industry we’ve ever had the pleasure of hosting. The program features innovations in traditional areas such as solar energy and biofuels, but also newer ones such as food chain management and waste-water treatment.

Drew Bond is Co-Founder, President, and CEO of Powerfield Energy, Inc. which produces easy-to-deploy solar installations. Powerfield’s unique systems require no major construction, digging, tools, or specialized labor, making its product ideal for both rural and suburban customers. The company’s systems are also customizable, offering mini or micro installations to as large as a megawatt utility scale installations.

Steven Kadiev is Co-Founder & CEO of Neo-H2 which manufactures Hydrogen Generation Systems (HGS) for internal combustion engines such as those used on ships, generators, and trucks. Its proprietary catalyst reforms methanol, hydrocarbon, or other methanol-based fuel into a safe, hydrogen-based gas, which when used by an ICE produces less green-house gas, carbon monoxide emissions, and diesel smoke emissions. In addition to reducing the amount of harmful gas emissions, Neo-H2’s technology also reduces engine operating expenses.

Rob Kershner is Founder of Innovative Treatment Products, LLC. that produces a wide range of waste-treatment technologies, including miniMBR^TM_.miniMBR^TM is a modular membrane bio-reactor (MBR) designed specifically to reduce maintenance, operational labor, chemical dependency and energy consumption. It can treat from 10,000 GPD with its single skid design up to 40,000 GPD with its quad-skid design at normal biological loads.

Chris Lord is CEO of Babington Burner Company (BBC) that produces oil-fired burner technology. The company’s FlexFire™ burner is adapted from the Babington Airtronic™ burner, a proven technology that has been the clean heat source for military and disaster relief field feeding for over 25 years. The FlexFire™ relies on atomization - an entirely different approach to liquid fuels for heat. The Babington FlexFire™ burner, with its low-pressure, air atomization technique creates a super-fine mist with dramatically smaller droplets than the conventional high-pressure oil burner nozzle. A droplet of fuel created by a FlexFire™ burner contains 1,000 times less fuel than the average droplet from a high-pressure nozzle. This dramatic reduction in droplet size and fuel content means that these small droplets burn completely and almost instantaneously.

Michael Shore is CEO of SustainRNG a company that engineers industry-proven technologies to convert manure from the dairy industry into methane for energy generation and environmental assets.

Katherine Sizov is Founder of Strella Biotechnology. Strella builds biosensing platforms that can predict the ripeness of fruit. It uses this information to optimize the supply chain by reducing food waste and increasing produce margins.

Meet Our Star Panelists . . .

Joshua Brady is a shareholder at Nixon & Vanderhyne P.C. as well as a Founding Member of PEDC’s Angel Network. Joshua provides his clients a wide range of intellectual property expertise. His broad range of experience includes patent litigation and prosecution, trademark protection and enforcement, licensing and software contracts, and IP counseling. He assists businesses with identifying and enhancing the value of their intellectual property assets and competitive advantages, as well as portfolio management, due diligence, and opinions. Many of Josh’s clients, ranging from seed-stage start-ups to established multinational corporations, seek his assistance aligning intellectual property strategies with their business goals.

Dean Girdis is an energy entrepreneur, advisory, and investor, and is also a Founding Member of PEDC’s Angel Network. As Managing Director at OP Energy Advisors, Dean advises private equity firms, entrepreneurs, startups, utilities, manufacturers and technology investors on renewable power, gas/LNG, sustainability, ESG, and various cleantech sectors. He also works on origination and development of LNG, energy storage, solar, RNG, and midstream gas projects, and serves as a clean tech advisor and investor to his clients.

Jolene Gurevich is a Manager at Mtech Ventures and the Chesapeake Bay Seed Capital Fund. She is responsible for mentoring and advising startups as well as managing strategic operations within the Mtech Ventures Incubator. She is also responsible for sourcing and vetting companies for investment by the Chesapeake Bay Seed Capital Fund (CBSCF).

John McKenna is CEO of Hamilton Clark & Co. a FINRA-member investment bank that assists public and private companies with corporate finance advice, raising capital, project financing, completing a merger, acquisition or sale transaction, or seeking a listing on US public markets or the London Alternative Investment Market (AIM). John is a career energy and technologies commercial and investment banker. Prior to forming HamiltonClark he served as CFO of STM Power, an energy technologies company as well as Managing Director in investment banking with McKenna Securities, PricewaterhouseCooper's Securities, Lehman Brothers, and Dean Witter Reynolds in New York, Houston, and Washington, DC., and Vice President in the Energy Group at Citibank in New York.

Walter McLeod is Co-Founder and Managing Director of VSF Solar, a Virginia-based company with offices in Arlington and Fredericksburg, VA that specializes in developing greenfield, commercial/industrial and utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) energy systems. Walter leads project origination, site control, government relations, acquisitions, legal, utility relations, and business negotiations. He has more than 20 years experience in energy policy and solar development including serving as an executive advisor and consultant to the Edison Electric Institute; appointment to the “Utility 2.0” project steering committee commissioned by the United Nations Foundation and to the “Value of Solar” stakeholder committee commissioned by the Virginia General Assembly; founding Eco Capitol, LLC in 2008, a 100% minority-owned and NMSDC certified energy development company; and, serving as
Managing Director of Clean Power Group Africa, a solar independent power producer in sub-Sahara Africa.

Katie Richardson is a Program Manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) READ MORE / REGISTER