Board of Directors
& Advisory Board

Board of Directors Board of Directors
Bob Powell, ZincFive Board of Directors

Bob Powell

Chairman

Bob has over 25 years of industry experience. He is passionate about changing the industry paradigm by putting customers at the center of the energy universe. He has customer and technology experience in renewables, cogeneration technologies, and efficiency measures. His experiences include serving as the CEO of a solar developer, an innovator in financing energy projects, the CFO of a large utility, the North America President of the largest worldwide renewable company, and a Partner at Andersen and PWC’s energy consulting practices.

ZincFive paper on how NiZn UPS Battery Cabinets are built for easy upgrade at data centers

Julie Blunden

Director

For more than three decades, Ms. Blunden has rapidly grown emerging energy companies to leaders in their sectors from power generation to retail power, solar, energy storage and EV fast charging. In her executive roles at Plus Power, EVgo, SunPower, Green Mountain Energy, KEMA Xenergy and SunEdison, Ms. Blunden has raised billions of dollars from the public and private capital markets to scale market expansion, manufacturing, and customer acquisition. She has served on multiple energy industry Boards, including the U.S. Energy Storage Association and Solar Energy Industries Association. Currently, she is Chief Operating Officer at Plus Power, on the Board of American Battery Technology Company, and Chair of the Board of New Energy Nexus.  She studied engineering and environmental studies at Dartmouth College and earned a Master of Business Administration degree from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

Ben Sampson, ZincFive Board of Directors

Ben Sampson

Director

Ben is a Principal at 40 North Ventures. He is passionate about the opportunity to transform large sectors of industry while improving productivity, resiliency, and sustainability. Ben’s engineering background attracts him to complex problems that often require the combination of technical innovation and business model adaptation to create meaningful and lasting impact. Prior to 40 North Ventures, Ben was a Director at GE Ventures, where he led investments in early-stage companies across energy, transportation, manufacturing, and the built environment. Ben has also held engineering and business development roles at an early-stage technology development company.

Ben holds a Master’s of Engineering Management as well as a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Dartmouth College. He is based on the east coast with his wife, Lindsay, and son, Maclan, where they are often on a mountain, on the water, or in the woods.

Mark Perutz, ZincFive Board of Directors

Mark Perutz

Director

Mark is a Partner at DBL Partners, a “Double Bottom Line” venture capital firm. DBL makes venture capital investments in companies with the dual goal of financial return as well as positive social and environmental impact in the regions those companies operate in. In addition to ZincFive, Mark serves as a board member or works closely with a number of DBL portfolio companies.

Previously, Mark was an equity research analyst at Robertson Stephens covering the areas of enterprise software and web infrastructure. Mark has also worked in business development at Interwoven, a web content management company; performed technology and market research at the Tower Group; and built computer systems as a systems integration consultant for Accenture.

Mark received a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, and received a MBA from the Sloan School of Business at MIT.

Prescott Logan, member of ZincFive Board of Directors

Prescott Logan

Director

Prescott began his career in healthcare at Baxter International before spending over a decade scaling businesses at GE where he served as General Manager of a wind turbine components business and then as founder-CEO of a standalone battery energy storage startup. After GE, Prescott held both turnaround and startup assignments, first as divisional President of a PE-owned waterjet business, and then as Commercial Head of a VC-backed, agtech startup where he helped build a multi-sided grain marketplace.

Prescott’s professional foundation in sales, marketing, product management, and P&L management have grounded him in the operational rigor required to lead profitable industrial technology manufacturing businesses. But his passion lies in scaling early-stage, hard-tech ventures with the potential to do good. Prescott graduated from Yale University and holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management.

Jesse Johnson, ZincFive Board Member

Jesse Johnson

Director

Jesse’s work has focused on early-stage investing and entrepreneurship at the intersection of business and the environment. He founded Q Collection, a leading sustainable design firm, the Telluride Venture Accelerator (TVA), and YX Capital, an early stage fund focused on high impact climate investments.  He is a Managing Director at Helios Climate Ventures, a firm with over $150M invested around climate and the energy transition.

He served on the board of two companies sold to a Fortune 50 company. He also was a founding general partner for the Telluride Venture Fund (TVF).  Before he saw the green light, Jesse was a Vice President for Jardine Fleming / Robert Fleming, helping institutions such as Fidelity, Tiger, and Soros invest in companies in Asia and South Asia.

Jesse lives with his wife and two boys in Telluride, CO. He has a B.A. from Princeton University and an MBA and a Masters of Environmental Management from Yale University.

Tim Hysell, ZincFive CEO

Tim Hysell

CEO & Co-Founder

For seven years, ZincFive co-founder Tim has expertly guided the creation and deployment of ZincFive’s nickel-zinc rechargeable battery technology. He founded and chaired PSI Acquisitions and Millennium Power Solutions – where the UPStealth® was invented – and ZincFive, which is establishing nickel-zinc as the fifth rechargeable battery to scale across the world.

Advisory Board Advisory Board
Jeff Bornstein, ZincFive Advisory Board

Jeff Bornstein

Founding Member

Jeff is a former Vice Chair and the former CFO of General Electric (July 2013 – October 2017). In his role he focused on portfolio transformation including the sale of Appliances, executing the merger of GE Oil & Gas with Baker Hughes, the sale of $300 billion of businesses and assets of GE Capital and GE’s acquisition of Alstom, as well as driving down structural costs. Previously, Bornstein served as SVP and CFO of GE Capital for 12 years. During his role GE Capital grew earnings 4X. He also played a pivotal role managing the company through the financial crisis and, subsequently, the on-boarding of the Federal Reserve as Regulator. Bornstein mentored and developed a generation of finance leaders that continue to lead GE, as well as many other public and private companies.

Bornstein joined GE in 1989 with the GE Power Systems’ Financial Management Program. In 1992, he joined the GE Corporate Audit Staff and then became Executive Audit Manager. In 1996, he was named Chief Financial Officer for GE Aircraft Engine Services and Vice President in 1998. In 1999, he was promoted to Chief Financial Officer of GE Plastics and served as their CFO until 2002. Jeff has a wife, Jill, and four sons: Mathew, Andrew, Max, and Alex. He is on the board of Northeastern University and BuildOn. He has also been involved in a number of youth programs. He received his B.S. in Business Administration from Northeastern University.

Ron Hynes, ZincFIve Advisory Board

Ron Hynes

Founding Member

Ron is a proven global FinTech and payments executive. Most recently, as CEO and Board Director, Ron led the successful turnaround of UniRush LLC, a prepaid financial services company and owner of the renowned RushCard. He initiated a recapitalization process, returned the company to profitability, and grew new customer acquisitions by more than 100% before completing the successful sale of the company to Green Dot in 2017.

Prior to UniRush, he held senior-level positions at MasterCard Worldwide, including serving as Executive Vice President Global Prepaid Solutions for four years. Under his leadership, the prepaid team engineered exponential growth in both revenue and market share for MasterCard’s global prepaid business and championed the company’s financial inclusion and government strategies, and was responsible for creating 7 of the top 10 prepaid card programs, globally.

Prior to his tenure at Mastercard, Ron was EVP Business Development and Strategy at FSV Payment Systems and Senior Vice President at J.P. Morgan Chase/Bank One, where he oversaw Prepaid Card Solutions. Hynes was also a founding Board member of the Network Branded Prepaid Card Association and a Board Director at Access Prepaid Worldwide.

Currently Ron sits on the advisory boards of PayFare, LLC, a FinTech provider of real time pay and banking for gig-economy employers and workers and Amino, a new kind of digital health company that combines big data and technology to connect people to the best care possible.

Marc Van Den Berg, ZincFive Advisory Board

Marc van den Berg

Marc van den Berg is Global Managing Director in the Investment Team where he leads the firm’s venture capital investment program. Marc joined Climate Investment in 2022 and is a Board member for CI portfolio companies, 75F, Achates, Andium, Qnovo, Svante and a Board observer at Aeroseal. Over his extensive venture capital investing career, Marc has held investment roles at 40 North Ventures, DBL Partners and VantagePoint Venture Partners through the past two decades. In those roles, Marc focused on energy, energy efficiency and industrial investing in support of sustainability initiatives. Prior to his venture capital career Marc spent 25 years in both venture-backed startups and multi-national public companies in Silicon Valley and abroad. Marc is based in San Francisco.

Brant Lane, ZincFive Advisory Board

Brent Lane

Small company growth stories are a passion for Brent, who has a history of identifying market opportunities and building companies in oil and gas services, construction, beverage, and banking. Sandvik, a Swedish global, public company recently acquired one of Brent’s companies, INROCK, the industry recognized global innovator in horizontal directional drilling (HDD). The technologies allow installation of infrastructure below economic and environmental sensitive surface terrain. INROCK pioneered the first rock drilling projects ever attempted in the HDD industry. Brent is a board member of Dynomax and President of Reve.

Peter Foss, ZincFive Advisory Board

Peter Foss

Peter earned a 36 year reputation at GE for scaling ideas into working solutions. Among his positions, President of Olympic Sponsorship and Corporate Sales and spearheading a team to develop and implement growth strategies with a select group of GE’s global customers, Peter managed the Sales Force Effectiveness, Corporate Sales and Government Selling programs. Peter continues important work with the GE Healthcare team working on the GE/NFL brain research effort, which he helped initiate. He is also President of the private foundation, ALS Finding a Cure.

Charles Gassenheimer. ZincFive Advisory Board Member

Charles Gassenheimer

Charles is a pioneer in commercializing new energy technologies, including as Chairman and CEO of Ener1, where he helped build a team of 700 full time employees and the infrastructure equipped for large scale development. The company expanded operations to a global platform with revenues growing tenfold and earning a spot on the NASDAQ. Charles also developed and commercialized the company’s battery technology into the hybrid and electric vehicles market, grid-scale energy storage, and consumer electronics applications. He has served on the Electric Drive Transport Association, Electrification Coalition, and the Richard G. Lugar Center for Renewable Energy.

Steven_Berkenfeld, ZincFive Advisory Board

Steven Berkenfeld

Founder and principal of Ecotopia Consulting, Steven recently retired as a Managing Director in Investment Banking at Barclays where he served as senior sponsor of the Environmental and Social Impact Banking Initiative, was co-head of the firm’s Cleantech Initiative and led the banking effort for Emerging Industrial Technology companies. He is the former Chairman of the Board of the Sierra Club Foundation and a sponsor and board member of several projects and organizations focused on social impact and sustainability.