After graduating from Tulane University with a degree in chemistry and mathematics, I landed a job on the trade floor at Citigroup in Houston, TX, and was unceremoniously thrust into the world of energy. It only took about a year for me to decide that I would spend the rest of my career thinking about electricity, power, and decarbonization.

It was never a question that climate change would be a fundamental motivator for me throughout my career — I did my sixth grade science fair project on the greenhouse effect and global warming. But the energy sector is vast, and it was my love of math problems and power markets that ultimately led me to focus on optimization of energy storage as a tool to pave the path towards a clean energy future.

I joined an energy storage start up in 2020 and began building a team to manage the trading operations of a large fleet of energy storage assets. My focus was always been on hiring the people who knew the things I didn’t, and building robust analytical tools to support strategic investment in energy infrastructure. After three years optimizing batteries, it became clear to me that conditions wholesale power markets did not adequately support battery economics to reach the level of investment required to get the grid to Net Zero.

I left in April, 2023 to found my own company that solves exactly this problem. At Tierra Climate, we are improving the economics of energy storage projects by paying them for the most valuable service they can provide to the grid: decarbonization.