SPEAKERS

Bill Ritter, Jr. is the founder and director of the Center for the New Energy Economy (CNEE) at Colorado State University, which launched on February 1, 2011.

Ritter authored a book that was published in 2016 entitled, Powering Forward – What Everyone Should Know About America’s Energy Revolution.

Ritter was elected as Colorado’s 41st governor in 2006 and built consensus to tackle some of the state’s biggest challenges. During his four-year term, Ritter established Colorado as a national and international leader in clean energy, by building a new energy economy. He signed 57 new energy bills into law, including a 30% Renewable Portfolio Standard and a Clean Air Clean Jobs Act that replaced nearly a gigawatt of coal-fired generation with natural gas. In total, the Colorado new energy economy created thousands of new jobs.

Governor Ritter was formerly the chair of the Board of Directors of the Energy Foundation and currently serves on the board of The Climate Group American and the Board of Trustees of The Nature Conservancy. He is a member of Blackhorn Venture Capital and serves as an advisor to Green Alpha and Millennium Bridge, among others. Ritter earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from Colorado State University (1978) and his law degree from the University of Colorado (1981). With his wife Jeannie, he operated a food distribution and nutrition center in Zambia. He served as Denver’s district attorney from 1993 to January 2005.

Ray Leonard is Chief Operating Officer of Linden Energy Holdings, a private equity funded firm focused on gas to power, LNG and gas sales projects in Africa, Eurasia, and North America. He received a B.S. Honors in Geosciences at the University of Arizona (1975) and an M. A. in Geology at the University of Texas-Austin. (1977) He has held executive positions with Amoco, FIOC, the Russian Oil Major YUKOS, the Hungarian National Oil Company MOL, the Kuwait Energy Company and was most recently Chief Executive Officer of Hyperdynamics, a NYSE-listed independent oil company exploring for oil and gas in West Africa. He has been active in publishing and presenting on world oil and gas reserves and climate change for many years at forums such as Council on Foreign Relations, Center for Strategic Studies, International Energy Agency, the 26th World Gas Conference and the World Economic Forum at Davos.

Michael R. Pompeo served as the 70th Secretary of State of the United States, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and was elected to four terms in Congress representing Kansas’ 4th District.

Secretary Pompeo graduated first in his class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1986 and served as a cavalry officer patrolling the Iron Curtain. He rose to the rank of Captain, and went on to graduate from Harvard Law School.

Before serving in Congress, he spent a decade leading two manufacturing businesses in South Central Kansas. Mike Pompeo is married to his wife, Susan — with whom he taught 5th grade Sunday school for many years — and has one son, Nick.

Rick Perry is a former United States Secretary of Energy, serving under U.S. President Donald J. Trump from March 2017 to December 2019.

As the 14th Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry led an agency tasked with overseeing the United States’ energy supply, nuclear defense capacity, and the 17 National Laboratories, home to many of the country’s best scientists.

Prior to joining the Administration as Secretary of Energy, Perry served as the 47th Governor of Texas. As Governor of the Lone Star State, Perry championed conservative principles that helped Texas become America’s economic engine.

Rick Perry is a veteran of the United States Air Force, having flown C-130 tactical airlift aircraft in Europe and the Middle East. He is deeply involved with supporting the active duty and veteran community.

Perry earned distinction early in his life as an Eagle Scout. He was one of the first in his family to go to college, earning a degree in Animal Science from Texas A&M University, where he was a member of the Corps of Cadets and a Yell Leader.

He is a lifetime member of both the NRA and American Legion Post #75.

Perry married his childhood sweetheart, Anita, in 1982. They have two children, two beautiful granddaughters, and a grandson who was born on the 4th of July in 2019.

Tony Seba is a world-renowned thought leader, author, speaker, educator, angel investor and Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He is the author of the #1 Amazon best-selling book “Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation – How Silicon Valley Will Make Oil, Nuclear, Natural Gas, Coal, Electric Utilities and Conventional Cars Obsolete by 2030” and co-author of “Rethinking Humanity: Five Foundational Sector Disruptions, the Lifecycle of Civilizations, and the Coming Age of Freedom”.

Seba’s work focuses on the complex patterns and dynamics of change, disruption and transormation at all scales: from product to sectors to the economy and civilzations. He is the creator of the Seba Technology Disruption Framework™ which has been used to accurately explain and anticipate the ongoing disruptions of energy, transportation, information, and food and agriculture. Fifteen years ago, he foresaw the rise of Apple, Google, Netflix, and Salesforce. Ten years ago he accurately foresaw the rise of solar, batteries and electric vehicles.

He has been featured in several movies and documentaries including Bloomberg’s “Forward Thinking: A Sustainable World”, 2040, and SunGanges. He is recipient of many awards including the Savvy Award, Solar Future Today’s Visionary Influencer Award, Clean Energy Action’s 2017 Sunshine Award and the inaugural ASES Solar Transformation Recognition 2021.

He has been a keynote speaker at hundreds of global events and organizations including Google, the European Commission, Davos, COP21, CLSA, J.P. Morgan, Nomura, National Governors Association, Conference on World Affairs, the Global Leaders Forum, Intersolar and China EV100. He has taught thousands of entrepreneurs and corporate leaders at Stanford Continuing Studies. He has a Stanford MBA and an MIT degree in Computer Science and Engineering.