Onward has announced a full rebrand as the energy innovation studio fortifies its mission to transform the energy industry and achieve a Net Zero future. And in tandem, a newly assembled inaugural advisory board will bolster the company’s growth with unique perspectives to advance the energy transition and scale services to the energy sector and to the global climate community.
Previously known as Studio X, Onward is a nexus of change and collaboration and helps energy and climate tech companies utilize digital capabilities to innovate and achieve Net Zero goals, creating a community for energy entrepreneurialism and advancing technology to strengthen the resiliency of existing energy resources for resource resiliency. And the company operates by connecting thousands of innovators across the globe to tackle difficult energy and climate challenges.
The single-source platform offers a climate tech startup accelerator program, tackles moonshot energy projects through an in-house Innovation Lab, provides capital investment to fund new technologies, and sets up crowdsourced projects and challenges to facilitate collaborative breakthroughs within the global energy innovation industry.
The five-member advisory board will serve as counsel for the company’s new approach to collaborative energy and climate tech innovation. And they will work in lockstep with Onward’s executive team to advise across strategy, research, and project execution, providing hands-on mentorship to the company’s startup accelerator members and climate challenge project participants.
The inaugural members include:
— Anousheh Ansari is CEO of XPRIZE Foundation, a nonprofit crowdsourcing solution to global challenges through incentivized competitions. She is a serial entrepreneur, having founded multiple technology-forward and humanitarian endeavors. Anousheh serves on the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Future Council and is a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador.
— Eric Drummond is CEO and founder of Innovation Corridor. His storied career in emerging technology and alternative energy has led him to work extensively with our nation’s premier national labs, the American Energy Innovators Network, and the US Department of Energy. He is a seasoned strategic advisor serving on the board of a plasma fusion energy company, as well as numerous government and NGO organizations.
— Nils Mellquist is an angel investor, analyst, and strategic advisor focused on sustainable investing. He has written extensively about clean energy, global energy transfer, renewable energy, and the green economy. His investment repertoire includes global and advisory roles with the US Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office, Ingalls & Snyder, Deutsche Asset Management, AllianceBernstein, and Citi Smith Barney.
— Noel Kinder is the Chief Sustainability Officer of Nike and an established ESG leader with over 20 years of experience. He supports other companies in becoming industry leaders in sustainability.
— Tina Sharkey is a lecturer at USC’s Iovine and Young Academy, where she serves on the Business of Innovation faculty. She is a serial entrepreneur and operator and a prolific member of high-growth, technology-enabled companies’ boards of directors and advisors.
Launched in 2020, Onward has supplied the energy industry with new solutions, resources, and opportunities to approach energy challenges. In the last year alone, Onward created a 3.5x more efficient oil slick identification algorithm in one-eighth of the time it would have taken an independent customer to develop. In three weeks, the company was able to analyze a complex well dataset that would have taken a lone employee at a traditional energy company 60 years to evaluate. Now guided by an expert-led advisory board, Onward is looking forward to furthering these accomplishments with insight and expertise from trailblazing industry voices.
KEY QUOTES:
“The new identity is inherent to the mission itself: to move Onward toward novel energy solutions and Net Zero goals. We eagerly look forward to using our collaborative, innovation platform to achieve rapid, previously unattainable energy solutions for our clients. With the insight and expertise of our new advisory board, these solutions will only become more accessible, expeditious, and impactful. We warmly welcome each member to the Onward team.”
– Jeff Allyn, Chief Executive Officer of Onward
