• I provide engineering and business design consulting to Ecolife, an ag-tech social enterprise in Uganda. Together, we co-designed a locally-sourced solar-powered refrigeration system that uses ice thermal storage to reduce post-harvest loss for off-grid smallholder farmers in Africa. Our design improves energy efficiency by 20%, reduced battery usage by 70%, and lowered costs by 60%.

• Secured a Siemens grant to prototype the refrigeration system in Uganda, where I developed a three-week innovation and capacity-building curriculum that integrated HCD tools, classroom theory, hands-on skills building, and customer/stakeholder interviews.

• Advised on sustainable business models and pitch decks for Cooling-as-a-Service to Ugandan farms.

Team leadership

• I led the end-to-end development of a new flywheel energy storage product, overseeing strategy, execution, process improvements, timeline, and budget to deliver on customer requirements.

• Directing eight multidisciplinary teams, I facilitated cross-functional collaboration through agile and waterfall methods, all-hands meetings, phased gate reviews, and weekly tracking of progress and dependencies.

• True to my leadership style, I fostered collaboration between engineering and the product team to refine requirements and shape the product roadmap through technology to ensure a strong market focus.

Player-Coach

• As a player coach, I led RCAs, DFM, cost-down exercises, and re-design efforts that resulted in a radically simple suspension that cut capex by $1M per assembly line, and significantly improved performance, reliability, and manufacturability of the flywheel amidst competing constraints.

• As the technical lead for the mechanical engineering team, I helped grow the mechanical engineering team from two to seven staff, across core disciplines (design, analysis, manufacturing).

• I defined, staffed, and managed mechanical projects, and mentored engineers on FEA, CAD, GD&T, rotor dynamics, fluids, and heat transfer.

• I founded Amber’s Sustainability Committee and grew the team to six, aligning the company with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and serving as company spokesperson on sustainability topics. The team conducted a Life Cycle Analysis of our product that demonstrated a lower embodied carbon footprint compared to batteries.