Board of Trustees

RMI is governed by a self-perpetuating Board that has complete oversight and policy responsibility, is kept currently informed of the Institute’s affairs, confers frequently on an individual basis with RMI’s operating officers, and meets four times a year.

Meet Our Board

Sumant Sinha

Board Chair

Sumant Sinha is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of ReNew, one of the largest renewable energy companies globally, with a 13.7 gigawatt (GW) portfolio and growing investments in key technologies such as green hydrogen and energy storage. Prior to founding ReNew, Sinha was CFO at Aditya Birla Group, founder CEO of Aditya Birla Retail, and COO of Suzlon Energy Ltd.

Sinha contributes to a number of international initiatives. He is an Energy Transitions Commissioner (UK) and co-chaired of the Electricity Governor’s Group. He chairs the Advisory Board of the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) and is a Board Member of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), as well as the US India Strategic Partnership Forum. Sumant is Co-chair of the WEF Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders India and is the Founding Member of the First Movers Coalition.

Sumant is a regular speaker at various international fora such as WEF, UNFCCC COP, Climate Week NY, CERA Week, and at leading global universities. He has written more than 150 opinion pieces on climate change, renewable energy, and sustainable economic growth. He has also authored a book, Fossil Free: Reimagining Clean Energy in a Carbon-Constrained World.

For his leadership in clean energy, Sumant has won several awards including the Chief Trailblazer of the Year by the S&P Platts Global Energy Awards 2022 and the SDG Pioneer by the United Nations Global Compact in 2021, a first for any Indian business leader. Sumant is the recipient of the Distinguished Alum Award from Columbia SIPA 2022, IIM Calcutta 2019, and IIT Delhi, 2018.

Sinha holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from IIT Delhi, India; an MBA from IIM Calcutta, India; and a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University in New York. Sinha is also a CFA charter holder.

Martha C. Pickett

Co-Chair, RMI Board of Trustees, Managing Director, General Counsel

Marty Pickett focuses on the Institute’s advancement in alliances, funding, and governance as well as general strategy and legal counsel. Pickett holds a master’s degree in Community Development and Planning from the College of Architecture and Planning, University of Colorado, Denver, and a law degree, with an emphasis in environmental law, from the University of Denver.

Prior to joining RMI in 1998, Pickett practiced land use planning and land use and real estate law in Denver and Aspen, Colorado. She also serves on: the Advisory Board of the Center for the Environment at Catawba College in North Carolina; the board and executive committee of Clean Energy Buyers Alliance, a 501(c)(6) business trade association; chairs the board of Clean Energy Buyers Institute (CEBI), a 501(c)(3) organization; and chairs the board of directors of Canary Media, a 501(c)(3) journalism subsidiary of RMI. Learn More

Jon Creyts

Chief Executive Officer

Jon Creyts is the Chief Executive Officer of RMI. He is an internationally recognized leader on global energy issues and climate change. Joining the organization in 2012, Jon has managed the strategy and execution of RMI’s global research and collaboration activities in multiple senior positions at the organization, most recently serving as chief program and strategy officer. Under his leadership, RMI has advanced market-based solutions to transform the global energy system to secure a clean, prosperous, and zero-carbon future for all.
Learn More

Anjali Bansal

Anjali Bansal is the founding partner of Avaana Climate and Sustainability Fund, which invests in technology and innovation-led start-ups catalyzing climate solutions and sustainability. Previously, Anjali was the non-executive chairperson of Dena Bank, appointed by the Government of India to steer the stressed bank’s resolution and merger with Bank of Baroda. Prior to that, Anjali was a global partner and managing director with TPG Growth PE, responsible for India, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East as well as a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Co. in New York.

Anjali has invested in various successful start-ups including Nykaa, Delhivery, Urban Company, Darwinbox, Farmart, and climate tech leaders such as Turno, Terra.do, and Eeki. She serves as an independent director on leading boards including Tata Power, Nestle, and Piramal Enterprises. She has been appointed to the board of ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce) and GIFT City; she chairs the Climate Council within the Indian Venture and Alternate Capital Association (IVCA). She is also a member of the Evolution Review Committee for Niti Aayog, India’s premier policy think tank chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Anjali has previously chaired the India board of Women’s World Banking, and served on the boards of GSK Pharma, Siemens, and Bata. She has co-founded and chaired the FICCI program for Women on Corporate Boards.

Anjali is a member of the Young President’s Organization (YPO) and a charter member of The Indian Entrepreneurs (TiE) Young Entrepreneurs (TYE). She has been recognized as one of the “Most Powerful Women” by India’s leading publications, including Business Today, Fortune India, and Forbes India.

She has a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Gujarat University and a master’s degree from Columbia University.

Martha Brooks

Chair, Development

Martha Brooks is a widely experienced international operations executive, board member, and philanthropist.  She currently serves as a director at both Volvo AB and Constellium, and was formerly a director at Jabil, Bombardier, International Paper, and Harley-Davidson.

Martha has worked through major corporate transformation issues, including CEO transitions, dramatic strategic change including refocus on ESG issues, restructuring and refinancing, integration of large acquisitions, and major compensation plan changes, while chairing or serving on committees responsible for human capital, sustainability, finance and risk, audit, public policy, and governance.

In her executive career, Martha served 16 years with Cummins, the global leader in diesel engine and power generation, ultimately running the core truck and bus engine business. She then moved on to aluminum giant Alcan as CEO of the Rolled Products Americas and Asia business. As her business and another division were spun off after a major acquisition, she took on the COO role for the new public company, Novelis, and later led it through a second sale process to Indian giant Aditya Birla Group before retiring as the leader of Novelis, the $11-billion global leader in aluminum rolling and recycling.

Throughout her career, Martha has lived on three continents and held leadership roles in joint ventures and licensing, marketing and customer engineering, product planning, M&A, corporate strategy, and general management.

Since her early work as a teacher in China with the Yale-China Association, Martha has been deeply interested in economic development. She has chaired the board of CARE, a leading poverty-fighting NGO active in over 100 countries, as well as the Yale-China Association, the Carter Center Board of Councilors, and has served on numerous other non-profit and university boards in leadership roles. She is a graduate of Yale University with a bachelor of the arts in economics and political science and a master’s degree in public and private management. She currently serves on the Yale President’s Council of International Advisors.

Catherine Coleman Flowers

Catherine Coleman Flowers is an internationally recognized environmental activist, MacArthur “genius” grant recipient, and author. She has dedicated her life’s work to advocating for environmental justice, primarily equal access to clean water and functional sanitation for communities across the United States.

Founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice (CREEJ), Flowers has spent her career promoting equal access to clean water, air, sanitation, and soil to reduce health and economic disparities in marginalized, rural communities.

Flowers sits on the Board of Directors for the Climate Reality Project, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the American Geophysical Union. She also serves as a Practitioner in Residence at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. In 2021, her leadership and fervor in fighting for solutions to these issues led her to one of her most notable appointments yet — Vice Chair of the Biden Administration’s inaugural White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. In 2023, she was recognized as one of TIME’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” and was featured on Forbes’ “50 Over 50” list.

As the author of Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret, Flowers shares her inspiring story of advocacy, from childhood to environmental justice champion. In the book, she discusses sanitation and its correlation with systemic class, racial, and geographic prejudice that affects people across the United States. She and her work have been profiled by CBS’s 60 Minutes, The New York TimesThe Washington Post, The Guardian, PBS Newshour, and more.

Learn more at www.catherinecolemanflowers.com.

Bryan Hannegan

Chair, People committee

Bryan Hannegan (he/him) is President and CEO of Holy Cross Energy, a not-for-profit, member-owned electric cooperative utility providing electricity and energy products and services to more than 46,000 customers in Western Colorado. Headquartered in Glenwood Springs, Holy Cross Energy is leading the responsible transition to a clean energy future with its “Journey to 100%” plan aimed at obtaining 100% renewable and clean energy for its members by 2030. For its efforts, Holy Cross Energy was named “2020 Electric Cooperative of the Year” by the Smart Electric Power Alliance.

Prior to joining Holy Cross in July 2017, Bryan was an Associate Laboratory Director at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), where he co-founded the US Department of Energy’s Grid Modernization Initiative and started up the Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF). A unique “distribution grid in a box,” ESIF enables utilities, entrepreneurs, and consumers to work together on clean, affordable and reliable energy systems. Earlier in his career, Bryan held senior leadership roles at the Electric Power Research Institute, the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

Bryan holds a Ph.D. in Earth Systems Science and an M.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, both from the University of California at Irvine. He earned a B.S. in Meteorology from the University of Oklahoma.  currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Smart Electric Power Alliance and is presently Vice Chair of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association’s Science and Technology Advisory Council. Bryan has also served as an elected Director of the Coastside County Water District and was a former member of the California Council on Science and Technology.

Ma Jun

Ma Jun published his book China’s Water Crisis in 1999. In 2004, he was selected for the Yale World Fellows Program. In 2006, he founded the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE) and led the development and launch of China’s first environmental public database, as well as the Blue Map, a mobile app that visualizes air, water, ocean, and soil quality data that also tracks the performance of hundreds of thousands of major emitters.

In 2020, Ma led the launch of the Blue Map for Zero Carbon and collaborated with professional organizations to develop regional Carbon Peak and Neutrality Index, as well as the Corporate Climate Action Transparency Index (CATI). Major multinationals and financial institutions have incorporated the use of Blue Map data and the digital solutions into their sourcing and investment codes, motivating more than 20,000 companies to openly address their violations or measure and disclose air, water and carbon emissions data.

In 2006, Ma was awarded as China’s “Green Person of the Year” and was named as one of TIME Magazine’s “World’s 100 Most Influential People.” Ma was also honored with the Magsaysay Award in 2009 and the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2012. In 2015, he received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. In 2019, Ma was invited as a Special Observer by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. In 2022, Ma received the Asia Game Changer Awards from Asia Society.

Amory B. Lovins

Cofounder, Chief Scientist of RMI and Chairman Emeritus

Snowmass, Colorado. MA, Oxford (by special resolution), twelve honorary doctorates; physicist, author, consultant.
Learn More

Dennis McGinn

Chair, Governance & Nominations committee

Dennis McGinn was appointed and served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations and Environment from September 2013 until January 2017. Previously, Mr. McGinn served on active duty in the United States Navy for 35 years as a naval aviator, test pilot, aircraft carrier commanding officer, and national security strategist. His capstone assignments as Vice Admiral included serving as Deputy Chief of Naval Operations and as Commander of the United States Third Fleet. Mr. McGinn is former President of the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) and a past member of the Steering Committee of the Energy Future Coalition, United States Energy Security Council, Bipartisan Policy Center Energy Board, and CNA Military Advisory Board. He currently serves as a board member for the RMI, Customer First Renewables, Willdan Group Inc., HALO Maritime Systems, and is a senior advisor to the Electric Power Research Institute, Scripps Institute of Oceanography and the Center for Climate and Security. Mr. McGinn holds a degree in Naval Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and was a Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Studies Fellow at the U.S. Naval War College.

Dr. Enki Tan

Dr. Enki Tan joins the board as the executive chairman of Giti Tire Pte. Ltd., a tire manufacturer with plants in China, Indonesia, and the United States. Dr. Tan is a renowned business leader who serves on the boards of companies listed on the Singapore, Jakarta, Shanghai, and Australian stock exchanges; the Asian School of Business; the World Economic Forum Automative and New Mobility Group; and Conservation International.

He has a deep interest in conservation, seen through his work as the founding chairman of Konservasi Indonesia and his work supporting the formation of marine protected areas and whale shark satellite tagging and protection. Dr. Tan also works on climate-aligned solutions as a board member of the Center for Nature-Based Climate Solutions at the National University of Singapore.

Jessica Uhl

Chair, Finance Audit Investment committee

Jessica is currently the President of GE Vernova, Vice Chair for Mission Possible Partnership working on the decarbonization of industry and transportation and a Strategic Advisor to Breakthrough Energy focusing on deploying CO2 reduction solutions at scale. Jessica is on the Board of Goldman Sachs and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy.

Until April 2022, Jessica was the Chief Financial Officer and a Board member of Shell, one of the world’s largest companies operating in the entire energy value chain. During her tenure, she led major strategic initiatives to reposition the company for the energy transition and embed climate and wider environmental, social and governance ambitions. Jessica became the first executive sponsor of the global LGBTQ+ network and led ethics and transparency initiatives resulting in the creation of an ethical decision-making framework and the first tax transparency report. She started in Shell as the CFO of Shell’s Solar business and held leadership roles in the US, UK and the Netherlands.

Jessica has been named to the Forbes’ and Fortune’s lists of Most Powerful Women (2018-2021) and a 2021 OUTstanding Ally. Jessica holds a BA in Political Economy from UC Berkeley (Phi Beta Kappa) and an MBA from INSEAD.

Dr. Kandeh Kolleh Yumkella

Kandeh Yumkella is an internationally renowned consultant, distinguished development economist, and an expert in agricultural economics with over 25 years of experience. He is founder and CEO of The Energy Nexus Network, a regional ecosystem hub for sustainable energy solutions. Previously he served for almost two decades in United Nations System including as Under-Secretary-General and Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All and founding Chief Executive Officer of Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) Initiative. Yumkella is a former Chairman of UN-Energy and a two-term former Director-General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). He has facilitated international cooperation and strategic partnerships with bilateral and multilateral development agendas, including other United Nations agencies. Yumkella is a prominent moderator and public speaker in international forums and addresses issues including climate change, global trade, development, and energy issues.

Audrey Zibelman

Chair, Strategy
Audrey Zibelman is an experienced energy industry executive who has driven decarbonisation efforts and innovation within organizations and across the sector. Audrey has been at the helm of multiple organizations leading the transition of the power industry into a decarbonised world as a CEO, Board Member, government leader. Audrey currently serves on President Biden’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council, is a Board member of EOS Energy, Squadron Energy and SPAN and Senior Advisor to the Pollination Group, Meridiam and Alliance Capital.

Audrey most recent executive appointment was at X, Alphabet’s moonshot factory where she led an effort on grid digitalisation and now serves as an independent advisor. Before joining X, Audrey was the Managing Director and CEO of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), the national power system and gas system operator for Australia. Previously Audrey was the Chairwoman of the New York Public Service Commission, Executive Vice President and COO of PJM, Founder and CEO of Viridity Energy and Vice President at Xcel Energy.