Women Entrepreneurs in Sustainability 2018

Women Entrepreneurs in Sustainability 2018 Speakers

Kaitlyn Albertoli

Co-Founder, Buzz Solutions

Kaitlyn Albertoli is a current junior at Stanford studying International Relations and Psychology. She has always had a passion for entrepreneurship and started two of her own businesses in high school, one was a pre-packaged food business and the other was a jewelry company. She has always enjoyed creating her own product lines, developing business strategies, and negotiations. She knew when she came to Stanford that she wanted to take advantage of the many opportunities the school offers in entrepreneurship. When she had the opportunity to take an entrepreneurial class, CEE 246 at Stanford, she was incredibly excited. In this class, she met two other amazing team members, who have since become her two co-founders of Buzz Solutions. Buzz is a clean-tech startup which focuses on analyzing drone-collected data from transmission lines to provide predictive analytics. It launched from CEE 246 in the spring of 2017 and they have since hired 2 more employees and are working on pilot programs with utilities internationally. As a founder, Kaitlyn has learned about building a scalable business and received incredible mentorship. Aside from entrepreneurship, Kaitlyn spends her free-time deep sea fishing with her dad and participating in several clubs at Stanford.

Sonia Baltodano

Founder & CEO, Scrapworks Inc

Scrapworks’ founder, Sonia Baltodano, is a PhD ‘18 candidate in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. Her PhD work with autonomous vehicles as part of the Center for Automotive Research (CARS) at Stanford provides Scrapworks with a unique expertise in building real-world datasets and algorithms to predict unexpected interdependencies. Sonia received her MS in Engineering from Stanford's Joint Program in Design, under the direction of David Kelley. She was awarded a BA in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. Sonia is an entrepreneur and conversant in five languages. She is a dual citizen of the United States and Nicaragua. Sonia is passionate about applying the principles of Design Thinking and Deep Learning to solve the world's most pressing problems. Scrapworks is the first generalized predictions platform, providing actionable recommendations that transform businesses and promote sustainability.

Stacey F. Bent

Director, TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy

Stacey F. Bent is Director of the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy and the Chair and Professor, in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University. She also holds courtesy appointments in the departments of Materials Science and Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Chemistry. She leads an active research group in semiconductor processing, surface science, and materials chemistry. She and her students and postdoctoral scholars work toward applications in renewable energy devices and next-generation microelectronics.

Etosha Cave

Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer, Opus 12

Etosha Cave is a Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer of Opus 12, a startup recycling CO₂ into higher value products for Earth, and someday for Mars.  Opus 12 uses metal catalysts and renewable electricity to convert CO2 into one of 16 new molecules, which include a precursor to plastics and diesel fuels.  Opus 12 has received various grants from the Department of Energy, NASA and the National Science Foundation for their work.   Opus 12 has also gotten into various top incubators and organizations including the Elemental Excelerator, Breakout Labs, Stanford’s StartX, Echoing Green and Cyclotron Road at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Etosha received her Ph.D. from Stanford University where she gained the foundational knowledge for this technology.  In 2015, Etosha was TedX Stanford speaker and the winner of the 2015 Cool Companies Competition at the Fortune Brainstorm E Conference.  Prior to Stanford, she worked in Antarctica at the McMurdo Research Station and hopes to return to the continent someday to stay the winter.  Etosha graduated from Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in 2006 as a member of the first graduating class.

Joan King Salwen

Founder, Elm Innovations

Joan Salwen led two successful careers before founding Elm Innovations, a social venture partnering with farmers to nearly eliminate methane emissions from cattle digestion. She was a Managing Director at Accenture and then the Head of a college-prep girls’ school. Joan grew up in Iowa in the long shadow of the family farm, where Grandpa King raised soybeans, beef cattle and hardworking offspring. As a girl, Joan spent days walking bean fields (weeding by hand), harvesting cherries and preserving fresh-picked sweetcorn. Prior to coming to Stanford as a Distinguished Careers Institute Fellow, Joan became aware of Australian research that found that a few handfuls of a specific red seaweed, when added to cattle diets, reduced digestive methane emissions by 75-99% (annually, an average cow burps approximately one car’s worth of global warming gas). She is now a visiting scholar in the School of Earth and she leads a team fully exploring the intersection of livestock agriculture, seaweed cultivation and climate. Her aim is to bring about a cooler Earth in a way that honors her ancestors.

Kat Taylor

Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Beneficial State Bank

Kat Taylor (JD/MBA) works towards a more equitable and inclusive world by championing social justice and environmental well-being through the advocacy of good money, good food, and good energy. She is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Beneficial State Bank, a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) whose mission is to bring beneficial banking to low-income communities in an economically and environmentally sustainable manner. Kat is also a TomKat Center founding benefactor. (Yes, the Kat in TomKat)

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