VECKTA Leadership Team
GARETH EVANS
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER & CO-FOUNDER
TRISTAN JACKSON
CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER & CO-FOUNDER
DAVID OCHOA
CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICERGARETH EVANS
Gareth is our Leader, strategically and passionately guiding VECKTA to success. He believes that it is a privilege to lead, collaborate and work with talented and motivated people. Gareth is committed to constantly evolving VECKTA as the world’s leading Energy Transition platform, in harmony with our vision, mission and values, all while having fun along the way!
Previously Gareth lead Worley’s Global Distributed Energy Systems strategy and Power Networks & Systems team, helping the company and its clients successfully navigate energy transition, leading to VECKTA.
He is a dad, husband and friend who seeks out adventure at every turn. Most recently he completed Brek Epic, a 6 day race, with his wife – check out the grueling accounts in his LinkedIn Articles.
TRISTAN JACKSON
Tristan is our Trailblazer, charting new frontiers in the Energy Transition and DES landscape. He explores market opportunities and establishes proven pathways to cost savings, carbon reduction, and improved energy reliability and resilience for you, our global community, partners, and clients. Tristan lives in the field alongside energy system end users, equipment suppliers, and development partners, co-defining the energy systems and business models of the future. As CSO of VECKTA, Tristan combines his deep experience in team building, communication, and problem solving, with technical expertise, tenacity, and excitement for breaking new ground and producing extraordinary results.
He is a husband, outdoor and international explorer, lifelong leader and believer in a thriving, sustainable future for all.
DAVID OCHOA
David is our Realist, providing a consistent focus on Commercial Finance Management in all parts of the business with a requirement to establish best practices across the business. David collaborates with our leadership team, business development and operations to secure new work by creating strategic pricing and contracting strategies. David has worked on projects and acquisitions around the world with major project delivery companies in the energy and resource sectors.
David understands and delivers current and potential financial positions to the business. He serves as our financial partner to distill individual financial transactions and simplify results into an overall company position.
David lives with his family in Houston, TX.
INTERESTED IN JOINING US?
We are building the most advanced platform for the energy transition market and we’re looking for great people to join our family
The VECKTA Team
Meet the team behind VECKTA’s Energy Transition Marketplace
ADERINSOLA AKINTILO
ARI ZILNIK
BALAY AYDEMIR
BRIAN NOEL
CALVIN FINE
CASANDRA CHEVEZ
DAN WAGAR
DAN ROBERTS
DAVID PRINGLE
DOMINIQUE LE GREE
DUSTIN FALGOUT
ERIN HUNZEKER
FELIPE SARUBBI
JOHN VOLKER
JOLA PROSCENO
JORGE QUIROZ
LEVAN BADZGARADZE
MARIANA CÁZARES
MARTIN ROECK
NICK ASCHENBACH
NICOLAS SESMA
PABLO PARRA
RYAN SMYTH
SYLVIA WEISER
ADERINSOLA AKINTILO
A hybrid consultant with over 8 years of experience, who highly values collaboration, strategy, and execution. Hands-on leader and a problem solver, with extensive experience building software solutions in the healthcare, transportation, and business sectors. Utilizes design-thinking as a process throughout various roles and stages of projects. Lead research interviews, managed stakeholder meetings, organized feature prioritization workshops for products, managed software development teams, managed projects from concept to launch, and helped organizations with their digital transformation.
Aderinsola’s Superpower: Problem solver
ARI ZILNIK
Ari is the president of Gravy, a company focused on designing and building the most beautiful and usable digital products. He crafts end-to-end experiences and software for large corporations as well as nascent startups. He also teaches design, as a professor of interaction design at Sheridan College, and is a capstone project mentor at University of California, Irvine.
Ari’s Superpower: Translating human needs into usable products
BALAY AYDEMIR
As a member of the engineering team, Balay works on building out business-critical functionality in the VECKTA platform. Prior to VECKTA, Balay worked in technical recruitment and event management. After completing a software engineering bootcamp, she made the transition into the tech industry and officially started her career with VECKTA. Balay is passionate about delivering an exceptional user experience by creating intuitive user interfaces that work seamlessly with the backend. She is excited to be part of the VECKTA team driving innovation to empower a distributed energy future.
When she isn’t hammering away at her keyboard, she likes to lift weights, cook great food at home, drink craft beer, and hang out with her husband Ismail and their fluffy best friend, Opie. Learn more about Balay here.
Balay’s Superpower: Get [it] done
BRIAN NOEL
Brian is a scrappy, DIY type who is comfortable swinging a hammer, as much as he is directing the construction project. Having cut his teeth as an electrical system engineer in industries ranging from nuclear, to automotive and energy storage to clean-tech, he brings to the table strong analytical skills, as well as experience designing, building, and operating large/novel electric machinery and systems. He leads Project Development, which encompasses all activities in which a typical project owner on the VECKTA platform may engage. From leading the VECKTA modeling team to setting the direction for project development on the VECKTA platform, Brian strives to find the balance between keeping it simple [stupid] and empowering users to dive into the details.
He likes to spend his free time seeking adventure on his DIY-custom ADV bike (still running!), or taking his two [insane] rescue pups on long hikes or beach trips. He also likes music and good cheese. Learn more about Brian here.
Brian’s Superpower: Creating Value
CALVIN FINE
Calvin is an energetic, engaging product leader. He empowers the VECKTA team to focus on the most important priorities, take responsibility for them, take action, and deliver results. Calvin loves to get things done well, get them done quickly, learn from experience, and have a good time along the way.
Prior to VECKTA, Calvin held senior leadership positions in infrastructure, mining, and consumer products companies, focused on supply chain and procurement strategy. Learn more about Calvin here.
Calvin’s Superpower: Grow the Market
CASANDRA CHEVEZ
Casandra is a QA and her role not only covers the quality control of the software development but also helps the whole team to make things work properly. She has experience working in different areas from a university to an insurance company.
Casandra loves reading, sports and traveling around the world.
Casandra’s Superpower: Brutally honest
DAN WAGAR
Dan now works remotely from Portland, Oregon where he enjoys hiking and other outdoor activities with his girlfriend Maria and his dog Reggie.
Dan’s Superpower: Actualizing the abstract
DAN ROBERTS
Dan is a problem solver, developing the strategy and process for VECKTA to help energy users around the world access cheaper, more reliable, and cleaner energy solutions. The VECKTA marketplace is particularly exciting because more projects will be developed more efficiently than ever before. Prior to VECKTA, Dan led top performing sales organizations in a variety of industries including digital identity and telemedicine.
He loves spending free time sailing, surfing, mountain biking, golfing and enjoying the marvel of fatherhood.
Dan’s Superpower: Listening
DAVID PRINGLE
David is a Tech Lover, passionate about bringing happiness to clients by solving their IT needs the right way! With a mix of over 10 years of experience as a web developer, QA Team Lead, Customer Success Manager and Delivery Manager, David is capable of understanding both sides of the coin; the business and the production of software, helping the development team better understand the client’s perspective while delivering top quality products.
David’s Superpower: Unlimited Stamina “I can do this all day!”
DOMINIQUE LE GREE
Dominique brings her energy to guarantee that VECKTA successfully delivers the features in the Energy Transition Platform and believes in VECKTA’s vision. Her role is pivotal in bringing product, design, and development teams in alignment with VECKTA’s vision in order to create user stories.Having lived in France, England, and the U.S., Dominique is highly adaptable, leveraging her software development experience and analytical skills as project manager. Dominique has an appetite for learning and swiftly resolving issues.
She is the proud mother of a son who is an Army officer serving our country. During her free time, Dominique loves to have fun with friends, entertain, eat great food, drink wine, travel, watch art and design exhibitions, drive fast cars, and exercise.
Dominique’s Superpower: Resolver
DUSTIN FALGOUT
Dustin is a father of 2 beautiful daughters and husband to a beautiful supportive wife! He likes to constantly learn and explore new things. He likes coffee, food, and beer!
Dustin’s Superpower: Expand always in all ways
ERIN HUNZEKER
Erin is a revenue generator, growing the business from startup to industry leader by sourcing and monetizing industry relationships. Previous leadership positions in commodities and financial services industries include heading up global sales, relationship management, trading, and asset optimization. VECKTA allows him to uniquely leverage experience in both industries.
He is also a baseball coach and tennis instructor and taught his 3 kids to play and excel in both, following in his footsteps.
Erin’s Superpower: Build the Business
FELIPE SARUBBI
Felipe is responsible for drumming up our community of partners and clients, as well as advising the executive team on how to make our offerings even more aligned with future needs. He is a serial entrepreneur, having founded or co-founded 4 companies, and a global executive with almost 2 decades of experience in smart grids, electrification of transportation and cybersecurity. Felipe has lived in 4 countries, and worked in over 50. He is working with VECKTA because he believes it is the place to be if you want to truly make a positive impact in the energy transition.
Felipe currently lives in Canada with his wife and two cats. His main hobbies used to be to playing the guitar and drinking wine, but as he is getting older his nerdy instincts are becoming more prominent. Today he prefers to study technical topics, engineer robots and full stack programming – besides exercising at home (discovered during the pandemic).
Felipe’s Superpower: Predicting the future
JOHN VOLKER
As VECKTA’s Partner Engagement Specialist, John loves interacting with businesses around the world who share a common goal of creating a sustainable planet through the implementation of Distributed Energy Systems. He is responsible for creating seamless customer experience at VECKTA. Prior to VECKTA, John enjoyed creating lasting relationships with all kinds of clients as a top performing broker in the renewable energy space. John is an ocean sports enthusiast and has a passion for living sustainably.
John’s Superpower: Empowering Others
JOLA PROSCENO
As VECKTA’s Scrum Master, Jola passionately guides VECKTA’s team members by facilitating, planning, and tracking activities to deliver VECKTA’s powerful Energy Transition Platform. Jola is dedicated and devoted to VECKTA’s mission and vision; transforming Distributed Energy Systems acquisitions. Her past experiences embrace a customer-centric approach, broadly spanning multiple industries.
Jola applies her skills as an active volunteer, always striving to enrich anything she’s involved in. She is a mom, wife, daughter, and friend whose favorite pastimes include travel, scuba diving, creating magical moments, and family gatherings.
Jola’s Superpower: Intuitive Synchronizer
JORGE QUIROZ
Jorge is our SDET on VECKTA. He is always looking for a fast way to detect defects on our platform. He is a proactive resource proposing new process improvements that help to reduce the number of defects or identify risks that may impact the user experience. Jorge has over 10 years of experience in testing. Developing automation scripts is the most exciting activity that he enjoys.
As hobbies, Jorge is a homebrewer and small investor and loves to travel. He lives in Riviera Maya where he and his wife spend their weekends visiting ruins, cenotes or going to lovely Mexican Caribbean beaches.
Jorge’s Superpower: With perseverance you can achieve anything
LEVAN BADZGARADZE
Levan recently graduated from San Diego State University with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and joined the VECTKA team as a software engineer, where he puts his knowledge to practice by creating a platform for sustainable energy systems. Levan strongly believes in VECKTA’s vision and aspires to be a full-stack web development engineer. Before graduation, Levan interned at VECKTA as a software engineer, test driving business effectiveness through automation, and has previous experience in building a computer-assisted education platform.
During free time, he loves to explore San Diego, play volleyball, and photograph landscape.
Levan’s Superpower: Resilience
MARIANA CÁZARES
Mariana is a front-end developer working on building the VECKTA platform. She has a bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering and is passionate about building software for a better future. She has a CALARTS certification in UI design and has a strong belief that good design leads to a great product.
When she isn’t writing code, Mariana likes to read, experiment with baking, and cook great food.
Mariana’s Superpower: Keep it simple
MARTIN ROECK
Martin’s attitude and appetite for new skills and knowledge has made him a welcome member at VECKTA. Following the ethos “The follow-through is everything,” he directly supports leadership through technical consulting and product design. Martin loves to take ownership of new challenges, delivering results that benefit VECKTA’s vision.
Prior to VECKTA, Martin was heavily involved with Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) and predictive modeling of electric vehicles and EV supply equipment (EVSE).
Martin’s Superpower: Turning vision into success
NICK ASCHENBACH
Nick is a full stack web development software engineer with a multidisciplinary background. He specializes in developing AWS cloud enabled back-end APIs in Node.js. He has experience dealing with PII/HIPAA/PHI data and payments in a variety of environments. He has worked in new product development most of his career. He is passionate about doing the right thing for users and building products with a clear value proposition.
Nick’s Superpower: Do the right thing
NICOLAS SESMA
Nico contributes to the product’s feature development efforts by working with the team to refine product needs and developing them into the system applications while collaborating with the engineering team. He’s excited to be a part of VECKTA to help build the applications that will streamline the renewable Energy Transition. Previously, he co-founded a software company operating in the payment and financial industries to help “high risk” merchants have access to more reliable payment and banking services. He has experience working with Node.js and various web technologies to build scalable and adaptive system applications.
He enjoys thinking about the various impacts of new technologies on everyday life and spending time outdoors in the shade on sunny days with his French Bulldog, Ralphie.
Nicholas’ Superpower: Night Owl
PABLO PARRA
In his free time Pablo enjoy to play video games and ride bike.
Pablo’s Superpower: Keen eye
RYAN SMYTH
Ryan is the connector between the VECKTA technology and the reality of improving the lives of miners faced with a new paradigm around renewable energy, ESG and decarbonization. He deeply understands the mining industry, from both an operator and capital markets perspective. He is passionate about technology and the role it has in ensuring Australia’s future as an ongoing globally competitive miner.
He is a husband, dad, passionate tech advocate and rugby fan.
Ryan’s Superpower: There’s always a way
SYLVIA WEISER
As VECKTA’s Senior Program Manager, Sylvia guides VECKTA’s product vision into deliverables, keeping VECKTA’s team aligned to provide optimal solutions to our customers. Prior to VECKTA, Sylvia’s vast experiences as a Program Manager includes consumer electronics and SAAS.
Sylvia loves the outdoors, and her adventure-seeking nature has taken her and her boyfriend cycling through 15 separate European countries and throughout California. She also enjoys applying her creativity which she shares with friends and family.
Sylvia’s Superpower: Guide the vision
VECKTA Board of Directors
TONY FRENCHAM
GARETH EVANS
JOHN ALLEN
NASER PARTOVI
ADIB NASLE
TONY FRENCHAM
Tony is responsible for Worley strategy and execution planning for the Power Sector and for providing leadership on the Energy Transition. Through a career of over 30 years Tony has successfully established and grown businesses that delivered technical and organization innovation, addressing both industrial and consumer markets. Having operated in executive leadership roles around the world, Tony’s style reflects the understanding that every business must not only operate well but also change well, and he has been successful in developing teams that can do both.
Tony lives in Melbourne, Australia where he enjoys his time with family, friends, sport and music.
GARETH EVANS
Previously Gareth lead Worley’s Global Distributed Energy Systems strategy and Power Networks & Systems team, helping the company and its clients successfully navigate energy transition, leading to VECKTA.
He is a dad, husband and friend who seeks out adventure at every turn. Most recently he completed Brek Epic, a 6 day race, with his wife – check out the grueling accounts in his LinkedIn Articles.
JOHN ALLEN
John is responsible for Worley’s mergers and acquisitions globally. John was the transaction and equity raising lead in Worley’s latest and very significant acquisitions of Jacobs ECR in 2018, $A4.7 billion and Amec FosterWheeler UK in 2017, $A303 million. Prior to this and since 2007 John has held senior roles leading the global tax team, finance and leading the business transformation team. The transformation team was responsible for restructuring the business to be fit for the future.
John lives in the beautiful city of Sydney with his wife and two boys. When he is not working he is watching sport or cooking with the boys.
NASER PARTOVI
Naser brings over 30 years of experience in investing, managing, and growing new businesses. He is the founder and CEO of Sanitas Health. Prior to Sanitas, Naser was CEO and Director of SKY MobileMedia and Managing Director of Enterprise Venture Capital (EVPC). Naser was also a Director at the La Jolla Music Society, and EvoNexus, a tech start-up incubator in Southern California.
Naser is passionate about helping improve the lives of as many people as possible by leveraging innovative technologies to solve problems through affordable and accessible solutions. He is married, has two daughters, lives in San Diego and loves hiking.
ADIB NASLE
Adib is Founder and CEO at XENDEE. He is the inventor of model predictive control and real-time power analytics for electrical power distribution networks. Previously, Adib was co-founder and president at Power Analytics Inc. He is a Senior IEEE member, teaches microgrid planning and economic optimization at UC San Diego and holds 25 patents in the areas of power system design, optimization, and capacity assessment. He studied finance and accounting at Stanford University GSB, and has an MBA from Pepperdine University GSBM.
Adib lives in San Diego with his wife, son and their two dogs.
