Strategic guidance and services at the intersection of innovation, policy, government, and capital.

Decades inside the US Department of Energy taught us how energy innovation actually gets funded and built. Now we put that knowledge to work for entrepreneurs, investors, and public and business leaders.

About

WHAT WE DO. We guide clients through every stage of energy and technology innovation—from R&D to pilots to market deployment. We work with startups, established companies, foundations, investors, and government agencies.

OUR BACKGROUND. Our team spent decades at the Department of Energy and other federal agencies—standing up new offices, running billions of dollars of major programs, and working across multiple administrations. We've seen what works, what doesn't, and why good ideas stall. That firsthand experience is the foundation of everything we do.

WHY IT MATTERS. Too often, great innovations stall because technology developers don't understand government, or agencies design programs that miss how industry actually works. We bridge that gap—helping innovators access support and helping institutions design programs that deliver.

Areas of Expertise

We combine deep technology knowledge with hands-on program design and execution experience. We help our clients build the right system of tools, not a single intervention.

Areas of expertise combination graphic

Generation

  • Solar — Photovoltaics and Thermal
  • Wind — Onshore and Offshore
  • Water — Hydroelectric and Marine
  • Geothermal
  • Nuclear — Fission and Fusion

Grid

  • Energy Storage — Electrochemical, Thermal, Mechanical
  • Distribution Grid
  • Virtual Power Plants
  • Microgrids
  • Energy Systems Integration

Industry

  • Iron and Steel; Green Metals
  • Cement and Concrete
  • Low‑Carbon Fuels
  • Process Heat and Electrification
  • Blue Economy (Maritime, Aquaculture, mCDR, Ocean Observations)

Energy Commercialization

  • Commercial readiness evaluations
  • Competitive landscape mapping
  • Technology‑to‑market strategies
  • Demonstration planning
  • Project finance and risk management

Strategy & Program Design

  • Goal setting and success metrics
  • Opportunity and risk assessment
  • Lifecycle planning from ideation to deployment
  • Milestone‑driven intervention design
  • Design and execution of suites of programming

Public Sector Transformation

  • Programmatic change management
  • Office and program launch strategies
  • Innovation policy development
  • Government operations modernization
  • Funding mechanism optimization

Founding Partners

Andrew Dawson

Andrew Dawson

Systems Strategist & Commercial Demonstrations Expert

Jennifer Garson

Jenn Garson

Innovation Program Designer & Policy Expert

Victor Kane

Victor Kane

Emerging Technology Commercialization Specialist

Garrett Nilsen

Garrett Nilsen

Scale-Up and Manufacturing Specialist

Our Work

We tackle challenges through a systems-based lens, aligning technical, financial, and policy levers in parallel to accelerate solutions. By combining rapid execution with rigorous measurement, we ensure every intervention delivers timely impact and creates a foundation for long-term success.

We offer a range of services to address critical client needs, provide actionable information and insights, and enable informed decision making.

PROGRAM DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

We offer a full suite of services for organizations deploying capital to accelerate innovation, spanning strategic planning, portfolio design, and implementation support. Our team structures high-impact funding mechanisms - including grants, equity programs, prizes, challenges, and large-scale incentive models - that de-risk technology pathways, mobilize private investment, and drive commercialization from ideation through deployment. We also build robust systems for portfolio management, metrics, and impact evaluation to ensure funders can track performance, communicate outcomes, and maximize the return on their innovation investments.

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Innovation and Investment Strategies

We offer strategic planning services that de-risk technology pathways and accelerate market entry. From commercialization strategies for startups to portfolio investment planning for billion-dollar programs, we help clients think creatively and pragmatically about advancing technologies.

Full-Stack Program Design and Execution

We specialize in structuring high-impact, agile incentive programs that unlock private capital, drive collaboration, and catalyze markets, covering the full lifecycle from ideation to deployment. Our team has designed billion-dollar federal initiatives, diverse prizes and challenges, accelerator programs, and strategic partnerships to drive technology commercialization. From the DOE's American-Made Challenges to large scale industrial demonstrations, we build incentive-based funding models that deliver strong returns.

For more detail: Explore Full Stack

INNOVATION POLICY

Leveraging our decades of experience, we provide insight into policy impacts and changes that affect practitioners inside government. We develop recommendations for national and subnational efforts, as well as translate lessons learned from the United States for other countries contemplating creating policy changes to incentivize innovation.

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Policy Development and Implementation

We craft actionable innovation policy that delivers results, not just theory. Experience includes standing up new government offices, developing risk frameworks, developing authorization and appropriations language for the U.S. federal government, and shaping national strategies for energy and technology sectors.

Change Management and Government Operations Transformation

We advise on how to navigate and change complex public-sector systems, helping organizations move beyond bureaucratic barriers to achieve practical results.

COMMERCIALIZATION AND FUNDING ADVISORY

Companies face complex technical and funding milestones when navigating from research through deployment. We work alongside companies to identify key technical and funding milestones to support the commercialization of your technology. And we know that funding is a key piece of advancing technologies. To assist companies facing the complexity of navigating federal and state funding, we conduct comprehensive landscape assessments of the funding and partners necessary to advance technologies, and assist with comprehensive review of applications to opportunities, using our experience as reviewers and selectors of hundreds of projects.

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Competitive Assessments and Technology Validation

We perform rigorous evaluations of technology readiness, commercialization potential, and competitive landscapes. Our approach combines systems-engineering depth with market understanding to guide funding and development decisions.

Funding Landscape and Submission Support

We conduct assessments of various agency funding opportunities and identification of Congressional appropriations to support navigating the federal landscape. We provide expert support for grant applications, proposals, and prize submissions, including drafting, refinement, mock reviews, and interview preparation. We help applicants strengthen weaknesses and stand out.

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If you'd like to learn more about our perspectives and approach, please consider subscribing to our Substack. We are seeking to support an open dialogue around funding mechanisms and models, commercialization strategies, balancing risk, and trust. Our goal is to explore opportunities for change, elevate effective program design, and share lessons learned from decades of federal experience.

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Andrew Dawson

As Strategy Director at DOE's Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED), Andrew shaped a $25 billion portfolio that moves first-of-a-kind projects from concept to bankability. He led program design for Industrial Demonstrations, Long-Duration Energy Storage, Distributed Energy Systems, Point Source Carbon Capture, Direct Air Capture, Clean Energy on Mine Lands, Energy Improvements for Rural and Remote Communities, and Small Modular Reactors. Andrew also co-authored the Pathways to Commercial Liftoff reports and OCED 2030, aligning technical, policy, and finance milestones across agencies and investors. Over 9 years at DOE, he has established a proven track record in building large, integrated demonstrations that de-risk technology, address commercialization barriers, and crowd-in private capital.

Jennifer Garson

Jenn spent 15 years at the US Department of Energy in various executive roles. As Director of the Water Power Technologies Office, she directed the $200 million Water Power Technologies Office and launched programs that now anchor the blue-economy innovation landscape. She created the Powering the Blue Economy initiative which focused on power applications spanning ocean markets like aquaculture and microgrid power, and supported the design of an $800 incentive program to modernize the hydropower industry. She helped shape the creation of OCED and managed the launch of the $1B Energy Improvements in Rural and Remote Areas provision to address energy security and affordability in communities with less than 10,000 people. She led on the design of new funding mechanisms, created a new DOE-affiliated Foundation for Energy Security & Innovation (FESI), launched more than a dozen rapid prizes, supported new voucher programs for startups, and created new cooperative-agreement pathways that steered public and private dollars to hundreds of start-ups. Her hallmark is translating policy authority into user-friendly programs that grow durable innovation networks.

Victor Kane

Victor engineered DOE's most prolific commercialization program engines, channeling >$1 billion annually into the clean-energy ecosystem. He scaled DOE's American-Made Challenge prize programs from one solar pilot to 100+ department-wide competitions backed by a 500-member national network; introduced Partnership Intermediary Agreements, now 60+ active funding programs delivering multimillion-dollar projects at startup speed; and created the Energy Program for Innovation Clusters (EPIC) prize-to-grant model anchoring regional incubators. Victor reinvigorated Energy I-Corps, expanded the Technology Commercialization Fund, and launched the MAKE IT (Manufacture of Advanced Key Energy Infrastructure Technologies) Prize to on-shore critical-component production. He and his team were instrumental in launching FESI, DOE's new public-private foundation that channels philanthropic and private capital into commercialization and workforce programs.

Garrett Nilsen

As Deputy (and Acting) Director of DOE's Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO), Garrett managed a $300+ million-per-year portfolio spanning photovoltaics, solar-thermal, grid integration, supply-chain resilience, and non-hardware solar costs (e.g. workforce development, siting, community acceptance, equitable access to solar). Under his leadership the office launched first of their kind programs to address technology commercialization, solar energy and load forecasting (solar and net load forecasting prizes), renewable energy siting (Renewable Energy Siting through Technical Engagement and Planning, Large Animal Solar System and Operations Prize), renewable energy grid interconnection (Interconnection Innovation Exchange), new uses of solar (Solar Desalination Prize) and more. Garrett spent over 13 years working in SETO aiding the industry's rise from a minor contributor to the US electricity sector to the nation's fastest growing energy source. His expertise lies in designing pipelines that swiftly translate research into commercially bankable solutions across energy technologies.