Wharton DC

Keynote: Opening Fireside Chat with Troy Helming

Session Panelist: Forms of Renewable Energy – The State of the Art in Solar, Wind, Hydro & Geothermal

Troy Helming is a visionary entrepreneur, innovator, and clean energy pioneer. As a creator, he’s founded companies that have generated more than $10 billion in economic impact to date and invented two technologies that have led to more than 40 clean energy patent claims. Troy was the founder and CEO of two impactful clean energy companies: TradeWind Energy, which he founded in 1998 and sold in 2004 (>$10 billion of wind projects were built by the company he founded since then, and was the #1 Wind Developer in the USA in 2017) and then Pristine Sun: >350 solar projects built so far totaling $1 billion in market value (including projects sold to other companies such as Renesola (NYSE: SOL) and Enerparc) and many high profile projects including the largest floating solar project award in North America and the largest community solar projects in both Vermont and Wisconsin. He’s the author of the 2005 book The Clean Power Revolution, co-inventor of FloatoRack (an innovative floating solar system with multiple patents pending), and inventor of the Red Gopher (a world-changing robotic tunneling technology).

Entrepreneur, startup catalyst, impact investor and a corporate executive. Founder and CEO of The Center for Advancing Innovation Inc. CEO and Co-Founder of Ignite Social Impact, the first crowd platform to democratize impact investing.

Accredited angel investor actively supporting companies that have a significant social impact. With over 25 years of experience, Rosemarie Truman is an entrepreneur, startup catalyst, impact investor and formerly, a corporate executive. Rosemarie is the Founder and CEO of The Center for Advancing Innovation Inc (CAI), also known as the “Tinder for Startups” by Nature; a “Powerful Innovation Toolkit” by the White House and “Shark Tank on Steroids” by BIO. CAI is an award-winning 501c3 non-profit with a mission to identify breakthrough SDG and ESG-oriented inventions and maximize their commercial potential.

She is also the CEO and Co-Founder of Ignite Social Impact, the first crowd-equity platform to democratize impact investing. Rosemarie’s specialty is investment strategy, having led growth and transformation strategies for 50 of the global Fortune 100 companies in over 15 countries, yielding more than $300 billion in near-term top line revenue improvement.

As CAI’s leader, Rosemarie pioneered a first-of-a-kind, award-winning, disruptive innovation platform. Orchestrating 9 innovative challenge-accelerator models, CAI has been the catalyst for the launch of 300+ companies, 3000+ entrepreneurs, and 120+ partnerships across federal labs, universities an hospitals.

CAI has received several awards for example, the Health and Human Services Secretary’s Pick Innovation Award. In addition, CAI has had nine Obama White House mentions such as #6 of top 10 of things that happened during the administration in innovation.

Prior to launching her own firm, Rosemarie spearheaded IBM’s Innovation strategy practice globally and was awarded IBM’s most laudable honor, the Golden Circle Award. In addition, she has spearheaded consulting practice areas at Booz Allen Hamilton, Oracle, PRTM, as well as Marsh & McLennan, where she served as VP of global strategy. At Oracle, Rosemarie designed and led the implementation of the first cloud-computing platform globally. Rosemarie began her career at Goldman Sachs in investment banking, establishing a breakthrough straight through processing platform for the NYSE floor.

Valerie Fremont, Ph.D. has expertise in R&D and Drug Discovery, with a strong background in biochemistry, protein engineering, molecular biology, cell culture and neurobiology for the development and production of new recombinant protein therapeutics. Dr. Fremont's expertise covers all early stages of the drug development process until late R&D and preclinical evaluation. She is the CSO/VP Market Development & Strategy at Quality Biological, Inc. Previously, Dr. Fremont was Director at the Life Sciences and Health IT at the Department of Economic Development in Montgomery County. She was responsible for formulating and implementing the County’s strategic plan for the life sciences and health IT sectors, fostering partnerships throughout the community, managing projects aimed at attracting new companies into the county, accelerating the growth of existing companies and aiding the pipeline of new companies in these sectors.

Prior, Dr. Fremont was Director of Product Development at Trophogen Inc. Her expertise focused on the development of hormones and related growth factor analogs for infertility as well as targeted therapy and imaging of various cancers. Dr. Fremont was responsible for translating objectives and initiatives into successful programs. Valerie Fremont earned their Ph.D. in Neurochemistry and Biochemistry from Aix-Marseille University in 1997.