SOSV is pleased to announce four more speakers for the upcoming SOSV Climate Tech Summit taking place virtually on October 25-26, 2022, joining the previous eight speakers already announced.
Joining us on panel discussions are USV‘s Mona Alsubaei and Khosla Ventures‘s Rajesh Swaminathan, who will join a panel about climate tech investment. Quaise‘s Carlos Araque will round up the session focused on novel geothermal energy solutions. Finless Foods‘s Michael Selden will share his experience on a panel about on the regulatory challenges and opportunities climate tech face.
Below is more information about our speakers. Please register today!
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The Speakers
Mona Alsubaei
Mona Alsubaei, member of the investment team of USV, is focused on its Climate Fund. Before USV, Mona worked at CrossBoundary, an emerging markets investment advisory firm where she was responsible for growing the firm’s Middle East and Central Asia presence. Mona started her career in policy and international economics at the United Nations Economics Committee and Environment Programme. Mona is a global nomad who lived and worked in over eight countries but always has a special place in her heart for her hometown – Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Rajesh Swaminathan
A Partner at Khosla Ventures, Rajesh Swaminathan has two decades of experience assisting and investing in deep tech startups. He manages many of the firm’s investments across renewables generation, storage, hydrogen, industrial decarbonization, plastics, foodtech, healthcare and advanced manufacturing.
Previously, Rajesh was the head of Applied Ventures LLC, the venture capital arm of Applied Materials, where he managed a portfolio of 85 deep-tech startups globally, as well as two deep-tech funds in Korea and Taiwan. He led investments and helped build companies, many of which had strong exits, including Enphase Energy, Solid Energy, Rockley, Infinite Power Solutions, Adaptive3D, Tango, Inpria and Norsk Ti. Rajesh was recognized amongst the top 100 global CVCs, on the Global Corporate Venture (GCV) Powerlist.
Earlier, he worked at Third Point Ventures and at Lucent’s Bell Labs, where he drove technical assessments and partnerships for several optical, MEMS, and RF device startups, and also led DFR programs for the successful deployment of Lucent’s 10Gb/s and 40Gb/s systems.
While pursuing his MBA at Harvard Business School, he worked on Deutsche Bank’s cleantech banking team, and also worked with KV on companies in solar and water. Previously, Rajesh earned a master of science degree from the University of Maryland and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, where he was awarded the Shankar Dayal Sharma (President of India) Medal for overall excellence.
Carlos Araque
Carlos Araque, CEO of Quaise (deep geothermal, raised $70M). Carlos Araque is an engineer with a background in technology transfer, product development, and venture capital. He was the Technical Director for The Engine, MIT’s groundbreaking fund and platform to commercialize world-changing ideas. During his time at The Engine, Carlos got introduced to the work of Dr. Paul Woskov from the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center on disruptive millimeter wave drilling technology for deep geothermal heat access, and founded Quaise, Inc. to pursue commercialization of the technology at scale. He leads the company as its CEO, with teams in Houston, Boston and Cambridge UK. Carlos is from Medellin, Colombia and has BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from MIT.
Michael Selden
Michael Selden, CEO of Finless Foods (cultured and plant-based fish, raised $50 million), working on building a future for seafood where the ocean thrives. A stalwart environmentalist since a young age, Michael is dedicating his career to impacting positive change within the seafood industry. Prior to co-founding Finless Foods, he studied high-throughput cancer screening at the Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine, and worked as a research intern at New Harvest, a non-profit dedicated to propelling forward the field of cellular agriculture. When he is not working towards building a sustainable future for our oceans, Michael hangs out with his bulldog Roscoe, makes music, or reads the latest science fiction. Michael earned a B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
