Renomics

Francis Oda,
 Chairman

Francis Oda is a renowned expert in architecture, tourism and sustainability. He served for many years as Chairman and CEO of Group 70 International, Inc., an award-winning architecture and planning firm with projects in Hawaii and throughout the Pacific. He has written three books, authored numerous professional articles and spoken internationally on architecture and tourism. He is the recipient of national awards for his resort and community designs, including the 1992 AIA Honor Award of the City of Kapolei; the 1991 AIA Northwest & Pacific Region Award of Merit for the Manele Bay Hotel; and the 1990 Western Regional AIA Design Award for The Lodge at Koele. He chairs the design review boards of the City of Kapolei, the Kuilima Resort, and the Kaanapali Resort.
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Philip Bane, 
President

Philip is a recognized authority on the emerging clean energy, smart infrastructure revolution. Philip has (i) managed manufacturing, integration and digital publishing operations at ‘C’ level positions, (ii) negotiated and closed numerous business transactions, to include taking companies public and (iii) published numerous articles and reports on the Smart Grid and smart infrastructure.

Prior to joining Renomics Corporation, he served as the managing editor of Smart Grid News (www.smartgridnews.com). Philip also spent a decade in industrial security, serving at various times as the President of a CCTV manufacturing company and in various other integration and manufacturing positions. He also co-founded G2 Technology (Russia), one of the largest domestic security integrators in Russia. Prior to entering the industrial security industry, he practiced law for over 15 years in Seattle, WA and Washington DC. He was the General Counsel for First Virtual Holdings, the first internet payment company, taking it public in 1996.

Philip graduated from the University of Virginia with a BA, received his law degree from William Mary and a Masters in Tax from George Washington University.

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John Coster, 
Director of Operations

John Coster is an expert in the management of complex projects and critical operations across a wide range of industries. Prior to joining Renomics, he held senior management and technical positions leading the planning; building, and operations of large enterprise data centers throughout the US, Europe and Asia.

In his role leading the Data Center Strategies and Critical Environments Group for Microsoft’s 7,000-person, $1 billion global IT division, he was responsible for planning, building and operating all of Microsoft’s mission-critical IT data centers around the world. Providing secure, 100% uptime availability in a financially responsible way drove the development of methods to quantify risk, optimize resources, and maximize ROI. Under John’s leadership, his teams developed a suite of processes to drive technical and business decisions, then provided the disciplined management to consistently achieve 100% of the guaranteed service levels and financial goals for over 9 years.

As part of the Enterprise Risk Management group, John led the formation of Microsoft’s Business Continuity Management initiative for IT, which reported to Internal Audit and the Board of Directors. John built a team of business continuity experts and executives to develop risk management governance and controls in accordance with best practices. This unified initiative successfully integrated Crisis Management, Disaster Recovery, Public Safety, and Operational Assurance with internal departments and also acted as a liaison with external local, regional, and national government agencies.

As Senior Project Manager for an ENR Top 400 contractor for over 10 years, John had complete P&L executive responsibility, from client relationships to the design, construction, commissioning and successful turn-over of a broad range of large and complex public and private projects that included: commercial, industrial, healthcare, education, correctional facilities, research, power generation and transmission, ports and marine construction, telecommunications and high-technology projects.

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Stuart Cowan, Ph.D., 
Director of Re-Sourcing Economics

Stuart Cowan is a leading expert in the integration of the science of complex systems, ecological design, and finance. He has helped to secure over $325 million in financing for green buildings, renewable energy, and ecosystem restoration. He is the co-founder of Autopoiesis LLC, which has worked to build new financial models and metrics for sustainable businesses, communities, and regions.

Stuart was previously Transaction Manager at Portland Family of Funds, a sustainable investment bank, where he oversaw comprehensive triple-bottom-line metrics and worked on numerous LEED development projects, including the Portland Armory, the first Platinum LEED historic renovation in the world. Prior to that, he was Research Director at Ecotrust, where he led the creation of the Conservation Economy framework for bioregional sustainability, which has been used internationally.

Stuart is the co-author with noted green building pioneer Sim Van der Ryn of Ecological Design (Island Press, 1996/2007), which is widely recognized as a founding text in the field of sustainable architecture and planning and has been translated into 3 languages. He holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics (Complex Systems focus) from the University of California at Berkeley and has taught at several universities.

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Katy Hopwood, 
Director of Finance and Administration

Katy Hopwood is a natural problem solver with a strong focus on outcomes and strong understanding of emerging, first and second round financed businesses, Katy has over 25 years of practical and real world experience in the accounting, operations, and human resources areas of small and mid size businesses ($2M to $100M per annum).

Holding a double Honors degree in Business Finance and French from Loughborough University of Technology in England, she has broad management experience and extensive involvement with Boards and venture capitalists, mergers, acquisitions and public offerings in both the American and British markets.

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Paul Bierman-Lytle, Director and Founder

Architect and planner Paul Bierman-Lytle is an internationally recognized expert in sustainable development, with special expertise in destination resorts and mixed-use communities.

Paul has served as Chief Architect and Planner on more than 150 sustainable developments spanning 29 years, including mixed-use facilities that integrate residential, hotels, convention centers, recreational facilities, retail and tourist villages, “edutainment” theme parks that combine education and entertainment, and state-of-the-art green custom homes. His projects have included:

• The UN Plaza Hotel (New York)
• Earth Centre (Costa Rica)
• The historic Arrowhead Springs Hotel and Spa (California)
• Sundance (Utah)
• Oman Botanical Gardens (Oman)
• The Egyptian Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)

Paul was a recipient of the 2008 Leadership Award from the U.S. Green Building Council for his pioneering work over the last three decades. Paul was a co-founder of the AIA’s Committee on the Environment in 1990, which led to the formation of the US Green Building Council and LEED program in 1993; served as an advisor to the Greening of the World Bank; Chairman on Materials for HRH Prince of Wales International Hotel Environment Initiative; representative to World Business Council on Sustainable Development in Geneva; and co-authored Your Natural Home (Little Brown, 1995).

From 1998 to 2001, Paul was Vice-President and Executive Director of the international sustainable development division at CH2M Hill, one of America’s largest environmental engineering firms. He led a multiyear, multimillion-dollar development effort that created COMPASS, a framework for precisely measuring and monitoring the sustainability of a project. Paul is also founder of SINBAD: Sustainable Island Nations Building And Development, a global sustainability program.

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Bill Browning, 
Founder

William D. Browning is a Partner at Terrapin Bright Green and is one of the green building and real estate industry’s foremost thinkers and strategists, as well as an advocate for sustainable design solutions at all levels of business, government, and civil society. His expertise has been sought out by organizations as diverse as Fortune 500 companies, leading universities, non-profit organizations, the U.S. military, and foreign governments.

Bill received a Bachelor of environmental design from the University of Colorado and a MS in real estate development from MIT. In 1991, Browning founded Rocky Mountain Institute’s Green Development Services, which was awarded the 1999 President’s Council for Sustainable Development/Renew America Prize. Browning’s clients include Wal-Mart’s Eco-mart, Starwood, Yellowstone National Park, Lucasfilm’s Letterman Digital Arts Center, New Songdo City, Bank of America’s One Bryant Park, the White House, and the Sydney 2000 Olympic Village. He coauthored Green Development: Integrating Ecology and Real Estate, Green Developments (CD-ROM), A Primer on Sustainable Building, and Greening the Building and the Bottom Line. Browning was named one of five people “Making a Difference” by Buildings magazine, and an Honorary member of the AIA. He was a founding member of US Green Building Council’s Board of Directors. In 2006, he co-founded Terrapin Bright Green LLC, which crafts environmental strategies for corporations, government agencies and large-scale developments. He also serves on the DoD Defense Science Board Energy Task Force.

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Robert F. Fox, 
Director and Founder

Robert Fox is a co-founder and principal of Cook + Fox Architects, a firm founded in 2003 to create environmentally responsible high-performance buildings. Cook + Fox are the designers behind the Bank of America building, a Manhattan office tower world-renowned for its pioneering integration of inspired design with innovative environmental technologies. Robert Fox has been honored with the 2008 Rachel Carson Environmental Award, the 2006 Leadership Award from the USGBC, and the 2006 Big Green Apple Ward for Environmental Leadership, New York City Council. He is the co-author of FOX & FOWLE: Function, Structure, Beauty (L’Arcaedizioni, 1999) and a contributor to BIOPHILIC DESIGN: The Theory, Science, and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life (Wiley, 2008).

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Erich Gunther, 
Director and Founder

Erich Gunther is one of America’s most prominent power engineers and one of the individuals responsible for the technical architecture for the smart grid of the future. As Chairman and CTO of Alliance Partner EnerNex Corporation, Erich advises leading organizations such as the California Energy Commission, Tennessee Valley Authority, Southern California Edison, and others. He was the primary creator of the IntelliGrid Architecture, which today guides many grid modernization efforts around the world. He is the author of several pioneering power systems software programs.

In 2004, Erich was appointed to the U.S. Department of Energy’s GridWise Architectural Council, where he helps to establish the technical standards and guiding principles for a next-generation electric power infrastructure. Other signature clients have included:

• The National Renewable Energy Laboratory
• The National Energy Technology Laboratory
• The Energy Reliability Council of Texas
• The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority

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Gary Lee, 
Director and Founder

Gary Lee has had a distinguished career marked by the successful completion of hundreds of civil and environmental engineering projects for public and private clients around the world.

Gary currently serves as President and Chief Executive Officer of Renomics Alliance Partner Universal Asset Management. He has extensive experience in independent engineering reports for financing facilities and in rate studies for utilities. He has served as Principal-In-Charge and lead design engineer over a wide range of infrastructure projects that have included advanced water treatment technologies, and complex financing, permitting and regulatory compliance issues. Gary is the originator of the Reliability Centered Maintenance approach to insurance-backed asset management.

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Steve Luker, 
Founder and Board Member

Dr. Steve Luker brings over 20 years of corporate and government experience creating highly profitable business value through project development, managing large P&L centers with complex engineering projects, creating new companies, integrating advanced technology and concepts, implementing innovative business models, and leveraging cultural diversity and successful organizational constructs.

Currently, Steve is President of Balance Energy Solutions, LLC which is a niche Engineering, Procurement, and Construction Management (EPCM) company providing end-to-end solutions for renewable generation and renewable fuel source projects. His large corporate experience includes being the Chief Technology Officer and Director of Energy Systems for Lockheed Martin Defense Systems (a $3.5B P&L) where he created Lockheed Martin’s commercial Smart Grid business and developed it into a profitable energy P&L. Most recently Steve served as Vice President of Business Development for BAE Systems Balance Energy where he created in excess of $374M in EPCM contracts during the first year of business development.

In addition to his large corporate experience, Steve has been an integral part of three successful start-ups. Steve has had executive level P&L responsibility ($500M), maintains multiple Board memberships, and has considerable experience in T&D Smart Grid Solutions like Demand Response, Distribution Generation, Microgrids, Renewables/alternatives, Load Control Management, Automated Metering Initiatives, and Outage Management Systems.

Additional executive experience includes successful Mergers and Acquisitions of companies for strategic growth and creating shareholder value, maintaining strong Federal and State political relationships, capital raises, technology development and transition, and third party debt financing to secure private sector renewable energy project development. Steve has a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in physical oceanography with a specialty in transport modeling and simulation.

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