Kreneon's Leadership
Mike Ulwelling
CEO & Co-Founder
Multi-time CEO, proven leader across the growth spectrum, from early-stage startups to $3B global enterprises; expert in global GTM and partnership engines. Driving Kreneon's mission to make water investable at a global scale through financial innovation and market transformation.
Stan Hanks
CTO & Co-Founder
Architect of the world's first broadband commodity trading markets; expert in high-integrity distributed systems and production-grade validation. Stan leads the technical infrastructure that bridges the gap between traditional capital and environmental assets.
Melissa Evers
Head of Ecosystem & Co-Founder
Former VP at Intel, SW engineering leader and Linux Foundation Board; built global standards, driven ecosystems with industry-wide adoption. Melissa focuses on building the deep partnerships required to turn water projects into bank-grade assets.
Randy M'maitsi
CFO
Strategic finance executive who has secured $730M+ in venture financings, executed $200M+ in M&A, and facilitated two successful exits across high-growth technology and industrial businesses. Randy brings a disciplined, investor-oriented perspective .
STRATEGIC GUIDANCE
OUR ADVISORS
Hannah Cool
The Athena Foundation
Hannah is a Senior Advisor and former leader of the UK’s Bankers for Net Zero initiative, working at the intersection of financial services, policy, and the real economy to drive climate action & increase economic resilience. She is a leading voice in UK green finance and regulatory alignment. Her work focuses on integrating climate risk, particularly exposure to energy and critical resources, into credit risk decision-making, advising institutions on sustainability strategies.
Val Fishman
Netafim
A recognized leader in global water stewardship, Val Fishman bridges the gap between corporate "Water Positive" pledges and on-the-ground operational reality. Val brings two decades spanning NGO and corporate sustainability and as a consultant for Netafim, Val advances climate-resilient agriculture by modernizing irrigation and partnering with farmers. Val’s work connects corporate sustainability commitments to practical solutions for water and environmental impact.
Tom Price
Advisor
Tom Price is a 4X climate founder, with a focus on emerging technologies. Tom has extensive experience in helping shape regulatory and policy frameworks to drive real world impact, and on how to best quantify and best monetize environmental MRV outcomes, to turn those outcomes into bankable instruments for sovereign buyers and investors.
Laksh Sampat
Former BNP Paribas Group
Laksh Sampat is a strategic cleantech advisor and finance architect who scaled an ESG banking platform to a $1B+ portfolio. Expert in capital structuring, SPVs, and non-dilutive funding; he leverages engineering rigor to transform breakthrough technology into bankable, high-scale go-to-market systems and category-defining global impact assets.
David Trueba
Former CEO, Revive Environmental
David Trueba is an experienced CEO, Founder and P&L leader with 25+ years scaling clean tech and environmental services companies. He built Revive Environmental from startup to $120M enterprise deploying North America's only permitted PFAS destruction technology. Former Evoqua Water Technologies VP/GM. Chemist with five patents.
Mike Ulwelling
CEO/Co-founder
Biography
Why Kreneon?
Michael Ulwelling is a high-growth executive, multi-time CEO, and visionary founder recognized for scaling businesses from inception to $3B+ global divisions. With a foundational leadership background at HP, Michael famously led the explosive growth of the All-in-One business, adding $1.1B in revenue, and spearheaded the revitalization of the $3B LaserJet division. A master of first-principles thinking, he excels at building high-performance global organizations and designing sophisticated Go-to-Market (GTM) systems. His career spans the tech, SaaS, and manufacturing sectors, where he consistently leverages strategic partnerships and organizational development to drive exponential growth and shareholder value. Michael is known for his ability to transform complex operational challenges into streamlined, scalable success stories. He holds a Bachelor of Science in History and Economics from Willamette University and an MBA from the University of Oregon.
I've spent my whole life worried about the climate and have watched policy frameworks fail repeatedly. Mobilizing markets to solve our most difficult problems is the truest way to do it. It endures - regardless of regulation or other factors. Water is a foundational problem, whether human, industry, or the planet – and I want to leave this place better than I found it. Kreneon is a generational opportunity to live into our shared generational responsibility.
Stan Hanks
cto/co-founder
Biography
Stan Hanks is an accomplished technologist and executive known for "inventing the future." A multi-time founder, he has successfully navigated nine exits, including five IPOs.
During his tenure at Enron, Stan was a chief architect of the broadband trading market. His deep technical expertise includes building PKI/telemetry systems and complex hardware/software control stacks. Previously a General Partner at Aventurine Capital, Stan excels at translating complex technologies into scalable business models. He is currently focused on making water an investable asset class. Stan holds his BS and PhD in Computer Science from Rice University.
Why Kreneon?
For me, Kreneon is very personal. As a child in West Texas, the town I grew up in ran out of water in high school. It wasn’t clear the town was going to survive. So water scarcity was something I connected to deeply, really early on; it threatened the place I called home. Additionally, I have had experiences that taught me how commodity markets can solve issues. In a flash I realized I could apply technology and knowledge of markets to solve this problem that I had experienced so profoundly – Kreneon is that solution.
Melissa Evers
Head of ecosystem/co-founder
Biography
Why Kreneon?
Melissa Evers is a senior technology executive with over 30 years of experience leading global software engineering organizations and driving enterprise-wide transformation across Fortune 500 companies. Her career is marked by scaling high-performing teams, modernizing legacy platforms, and delivering strategic impact at the intersection of engineering, finance, and software. Most recently, Melissa served as Vice President in the Office of the CTO at Intel Corporation, leading a globally distributed team of over 600. In this role, she drove transformation initiatives including DevOps, code security tooling, accelerated open source adoption, and crafted Intel’s AI Open Source ecosystem strategy. Melissa currently serves as Board Chair for the Technology Association of Oregon and has broad board experience including over a decade on the Linux Foundation Board of Directors. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Engineering and Master of Business Administration from the University of Texas at Austin. Melissa is a certified Executive Coach and a passionate advocate for inclusion initiatives.
Throughout my career, I've used my position to address areas of systemic inequity whether at the institutional or global level. I've learned that policy has limited staying power - Market forces however are lasting. Kreneon is tackling arguably the most critical issue on our planet with a market solution, based on centuries of presecent. I am honored to be part of building our future.
Randy M'maitsi
CFO
Biography
Why Kreneon?
Randy M'maitsi is a strategic finance executive dedicated to helping visionary companies convert bold ideas into scalable, investable, and enduring businesses. As the Founder and CEO of Scale Fast LLC, he advises founders and leadership teams on capital strategy, fundraising readiness, and the institutional-grade financial infrastructure required for aggressive expansion.
Prior to founding Scale Fast, he built the FP&A function that supported Apptronik's $30M Seed and $415M Series A, helping scale one of the world's most ambitious humanoid robotics companies. He has partnered with numerous founder-led, venture-backed and private equity-backed businesses to accelerate growth, navigate regulatory complexity, and manage critical inflection points with confidence.
Randy's rigorous approach to value creation stems from his early career foundation evaluating enterprise software investments at Vista Equity Partners. He refined this approach through years of executing complex transactions within the Oil & Gas Investment Banking groups at HSBC and SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.
Throughout his career, his financial leadership has resulted in over $730 million in venture financings, $200 million in executed M&A, and two successful strategic exits.
At Kreneon, Randy brings a disciplined, investor-oriented perspective and a builder’s mindset to help ensure the company’s financial foundation matches the ambition of its mission.
I am drawn to companies poised to fundamentally reshape global industries. I joined Kreneon to partner with a world-class management team on a mission that is both technically ambitious and commercially meaningful. I'm excited to help build the financial foundation needed to scale this vision with discipline and conviction.
Hannah Cool
advisor/athena foundation
Biography
Why Kreneon?
Hannah Cool is a strategist and advisor operating at the intersection of SMEs, finance, and public policy. She specialises in enabling businesses to navigate complex regulatory environments, access capital, and drive the UK’s economic and climate transition. Her work centres on dismantling structural barriers, such as fragmented data, regulatory complexity, and misaligned incentives, that disproportionally disadvantage smaller firms.
She works closely with government to simplify the real-world consequences of regulation, supporting the streamlining of compliance through open and smart data systems. With a background in management consulting and executive leadership, Hannah advises investors, banks, and public sector stakeholders on managing climate risk exposure.
Notably, she led the UK SME Data Taskforce, a cross-industry initiative recognised as a finalist for the 2026 Edie Awards for Sustainability Programme of the Year.
Known for her direct and energetic approach, Hannah bridges the gap between policymakers and the real economy, translating complex financial frameworks into actionable strategies that enable smarter capital allocation and more resilient growth for UK businesses.
I’ve spent much of my time in the climate space moving away from a narrow focus on emissions at an entity level, and instead focusing on the underlying drivers of risk and value, particularly resource consumption.
With energy, understanding real, metered usage unlocks better financing decisions, clearer insight into price exposure, and more targeted support. It shifts the conversation from reporting to action.
What’s compelling about Kreneon is that it applies this same principle to water but goes a step further by creating a commodity and credit system for net new water. That fundamentally changes how we value, track, and finance water.
By making water measurable, tradable, and investable, you unlock new flows of capital, incentivise efficiency and replenishment, and build resilience at a system level.
For me, it’s a natural extension of the work I’ve been doing, moving from abstract metrics to real, asset-backed mechanisms that drive behaviour change and enable smarter capital allocation.
Val Fishman
advisor/netafim
Biography
Why Kreneon?
Val Fishman is a sustainability leader and early architect of the corporate water stewardship movement, with two decades of experience spanning NGO and corporate environments. Val’s work focuses on translating corporate sustainability commitments into practical, scalable solutions that deliver measurable water and environmental outcomes. Currently, Val serves as a Development Consultant to Netafim, where Val advances climate resilient agriculture by modernizing irrigation
systems and partnering with farmers to reduce the environmental impact of agriculture while maintaining family farming legacies. Earlier in Val’s career, Val held senior leadership roles at an environmental nonprofit during a formative period for corporate water stewardship, helping shape market based approaches and influence the evolution of the field. Val also co-developed a nationally recognized water sustainability campaign that restored billions of gallons of water across North
America and earned the US Water Alliance’s Water Prize. Today, Val works at the intersection of agriculture, policy, and corporate demand, supporting real world implementation and impact.
I joined the Kreneon effort to help strengthen and accelerate work that has the potential to move capital toward solutions that already exist. Rather than focusing on a single solution, my contribution centers on supporting collective success by connecting people and ideas, asking challenging questions, and thoughtfully examining assumptions that may limit impact. Throughout my career, I have worked at the intersection of markets, policy, and implementation. Progress in these areas often depends on clarity, coordination, and honest evaluation of what will and won’t work.
I appreciate Kreneon’s focus on organizing demand and unlocking investment for proven approaches, rather than reinventing solutions. In this field, we don’t lack tools or ideas; we lack sufficient funding and aligned effort to put them to work. Supporting initiatives that bring rigor, discipline, and capital to this challenge is where I believe I can add the most value.
Tom Price
advisor
Biography
Why Kreneon?
For the past two decades I’ve built ventures across emerging energy technologies by identifying the constraint that governs the system (technical, economic, or regulatory) and redesigning it so solutions can scale beyond early adopters. That work has included rewriting energy policy, building carbon-negative energy systems, designing connected climate hardware, and rebuilding market structures where incentives had broken down.
Much of my work sits at the intersection of hardware, markets, and policy, creating the conditions where good technologies actually get deployed at scale.
I tend to work best in ambiguous environments where the job is to turn uncertainty into confidence by aligning engineers, operators, investors, and policymakers around a path forward and building teams that can execute under imperfect information.
When approaching hard problems, I usually start with three questions: what is the actual constraint in the system, how quickly can we test it, and how do the economics need to work so the right behavior becomes inevitable.
Solving the climate crisis meant first measuring, and then putting a price on pollution in the air we all breathe. Kreneon is trying to bring the same rigor and opportunity to new clean water. When we can prove it’s done and trade the sustainable elements, we’ll unleash a flood of investment.
Laksh Sampat
advisor/ bnp Paribas group
Biography
Why Kreneon?
Laksh Sampat is a prominent figure in the cleantech and sustainable technology financing sector. He is a strategic advisor to companies across the energy and broader impact ecosystem, working with cleantech founders, developers, and climate-focused investors on go-to-market strategy, revenue models, capital structuring, and investor positioning. He helps translate complex capital stack decisions into clear, practical guidance for operators and asset owners at different stages of growth.
Before launching his advisory practice, Laksh led efforts at a major bank to build an ESG-focused platform that grew into a $1B+ portfolio of commitments within six years. He scaled the business from an early concept into a fully developed coverage vertical spanning cleantech, renewables, fuel cells, EV infrastructure, and sustainable finance.
Earlier in his career, Laksh was part of PwC’s advisory team, supporting large energy companies in deploying critical water and energy systems, including smart grid, AMI, and demand response infrastructure.
With an engineering background, he evaluates opportunities through a technology-first lens, drawing on market insight from his consulting work and structuring expertise from banking to assess the maturity and scalability of new ideas.
I’m drawn to Kreneon because of the impact it can have in the water infrastructure space, particularly through shaping market architecture and enabling scaled financing. The team’s experience and their vision to address a clear gap in the market really resonates with me. While other areas of impact infrastructure benefit from established mechanisms like regulatory and compliance credits, applying similar frameworks to net-new water infrastructure feels like a meaningful and innovative step.
Additionally, Kreneon provides the opportunity to define those variables and unlock more mature pools of capital for projects is quite unique. It feels like a practical way to bridge a real gap and accelerate investment into much-needed infrastructure.
David Trueba
Advisor/Former-ceo revive environmental
Biography
Why Kreneon?
David Trueba is a CEO and P&L leader who has spent 25+ years building and scaling technology companies in water, environmental services, and advanced materials. Most recently, he served as President & CEO of Revive Environmental Technologies, where he built a clean tech spinout from Battelle from employee #1 into a $120M enterprise in under three years. Under his leadership, Revive deployed the only two permitted PFAS destruction facilities in North America and closed the largest PFAS state takeback contract in U.S. history.
Prior to Revive, David held VP and General Manager roles at Evoqua Water Technologies, where he consistently reversed multi-year sales declines and delivered sustained double-digit growth while transforming safety cultures. He began his career as a production chemist at Celanese Corporation, where he was awarded five patents for chemical process improvements. David holds an MBA from UT Dallas and a BS in Chemistry from Texas A&M.
I believe water is the future of society's infrastructure. The fundamentals are simple: water scarcity is becoming a hard operational constraint for everything that matters — data centers, manufacturing, agriculture, municipal systems. But the financial architecture to fund verified water outcomes remains fragmented and manual.
Kreneon is building what carbon markets needed from day one: device-level truth, standardized proof, and institutional-grade settlement rails. Having spent my career turning complex environmental technologies into scalable businesses, I recognize the pattern. The companies that win are those that solve for trust and transaction infrastructure first. Kreneon is doing that for water.