Powering the Energy Transition

Meet Frank Currie

Mr. Currie is a Senior Counsel at Davis Polk, having served in its Corporate Department and as a founding partner of its Menlo Park office.  He has also been active in the formation and operation of its Global Technology Group.  He represents technology companies and their investors and advisers in mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances and capital formation transactions, as well as in matters of corporate governance and securities law compliance.  Mr. Currie also represents a number of funds for their fund formation matters.

Mr. Currie was a longtime partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati before joining Davis Polk to open its Silicon Valley office.  

Meet Jim Wickett

Mr. Wickett has over 20 years of operating experience as the senior business and corporate development leader in media technology companies, where he has closed numerous acquisitions, divestitures, and equity/debt transactions, ranging from $1M to over $2B in value.  In his role at Macrovision/Rovi as EVP, Corporate Development, he completed over twenty M&A transactions, including acquisitions ranging from AMG to Gemstar TV Guide.  

Prior to Rovi, Mr. Wickett served as general partner at Bay Partners, an early stage venture fund, and as an executive at a number of Silicon Valley companies. Mr. Wickett is a member of the State Bar of California.

Meet Mary Lovejoy

Ms. Lovejoy served as a Vice President and Treasurer at Textron Inc. from April 2000 to 2018.  Ms. Lovejoy was responsible for overseeing Textron’s financing activities, global treasury operations, the investment of pension fund assets and Textron’s insurance programs. 

Prior to joining Textron, Ms. Lovejoy served as a Vice President and Senior Corporate Banker at the First National Bank of Chicago.  She is a Director of Rhode Island Foundation, and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).  She received a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago.

Meet Suedeen Kelly

An energy practitioner and former commissioner with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Ms. Kelly represents Jenner & Block clients in the electric and natural gas industries on business, regulatory, litigation, enforcement and policy matters such as electricity and gas markets, renewable energy, electricity transmission, natural gas and oil infrastructure, electricity reliability standards, carbon emissions, smart grid, energy efficiency, and distributed generation. Nominated by presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama to three terms as a FERC commissioner, Kelly is credited with spearheading change in regulatory policies such as transmission interconnection and planning reform and integration and deployment of renewables and smart technology into the grid. She holds a law degree from Cornell Law School.

Meet Mark Laabs

Mark Laabs is the Co-Founder and CEO of Modern Energy, a holding company for clean energy businesses leading the transition to a net-zero carbon economy. Modern Energy partners with clean energy business leaders to scale innovations in energy efficiency, distributed generation, and storage. Mark previously co-founded Faro Energy, one of the leading distributed solar companies in Brazil, which Modern Energy acquired in early 2020.

Prior to Modern Energy, Mark served as Chief Operating Officer of Soligent, a California-based solar equipment distributor with over 5,000 customers and over $150mm in annual revenues. Prior to Soligent, Mark helped to build and sell Climate Bridge, a major early player in global carbon markets with offices in Europe, Asia, and Oceania. Prior to that, he served as a Business Analyst at McKinsey & Company. 

Mark serves on the Board of Directors at Advanced Energy Economy, the Board of Advisors at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University, and as a Commissioner of the Environmental Transitions Commission. 

In addition to his work in the clean energy industry, Mark founded and chairs the board of the Rare Cancer Research Foundation (rcrf.org), a 501(c)3 non-profit dedicated to curing rare cancers. The foundation operates Pattern.org which helps patients with rare cancers directly donate their tumor tissue and medical data to high-impact research institutions such as the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard to accelerate research and therapeutic opportunities. 

Mark graduated as a Robertson Scholar jointly from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University. 

Meet Benjamin Abram

Ben is a co-founder and Managing Director of Modern Energy, a holding company for clean energy businesses leading the transition to a net-zero carbon economy. Modern Energy partners with clean energy business leaders to scale innovations in energy efficiency, distributed generation, and storage. Today, Ben serves primarily in two roles at Modern Energy: as Executive Chairman and Head of Investments.

Prior to co-founding Modern Energy, Ben was the President of American Efficient, which partners with manufacturers, retailers, contractors, developers, distributors, electric utilities, and grid operators to develop and manage portfolios of energy efficiency resources. He acquired and incubated American Efficient in 2013 following a multi-year search for an energy efficiency business model that could bring energy efficiency resources to market at scale. Today, American Efficient is a fully-owned subsidiary of Modern Energy.  Previously, Ben worked at The Westly Group, a clean technology-oriented venture capital firm.  

Ben serves or has served on several non-profit boards, including the Rare Cancer Research Foundation, the Chordoma Foundation, the Sall Family Foundation, the A.M. and Ruth Z. Fleishman Foundation, and on the boards of his alma maters, Duke School and the Duke University. 

Ben is a graduate of Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering, graduating with a bachelor’s degree with dual majors in civil & environmental engineering and public policy studies. He received Pratt’s Distinguished Young Alumnus award in 2019.