Lou Castellani, Founder and Chairman, BSME, NJIT: Lou manages executive and planning activities, as well as business development, finance and government efforts. Lou started his career as an application engineer with a Brown Boveri (ABB) power plant equipment subsidiary. Subsequently, he has been involved in the ownership, management, sale, and acquisition of technology businesses for more than 30 years.
Lou was the founder and CEO of the Adirondack group of companies, which participated in the development of power, cogeneration, and infrastructure projects worldwide with utility and private power company partners such as Southern Co., Entergy, Enron, Cogen Technologies, and China Power & Light.
He was also the founder and CEO of Clearwater Engineering, a 300 employee technology company that designed and built high tech water treatment systems. A successful exit occurred in a sale to the public company, Envirotech Systems, Inc.
Jim Jewitt, President, BSCE, MBA, University of Calgary: Jim manages operational and financing activities. Jim began his career in upstream oil and gas, focusing mainly on project and group management roles, except for a period when he was negotiating large gas contracts.
He was recruited to the independent power industry by ESBI Energy, where he rose to become CEO. ESBI traditionally served several money-center banks with engineering due diligence and project developers with development services; pivoting to grow owners engineering and contract operations of power plants and transmission administration under his watch. While CEO at ESBI he started the first for-profit transmission administrator, serving the province of Alberta.
Jim has held joint operational and financial leadership roles while guiding 4 turnarounds and also at a biofuel start-up. He co-founded a power focused private equity business at El Paso Corporation and subsequently was an MD at a family capital firm.