MANAGEMENT TEAM
Centuries of experience. One mission.
Manufacturing veterans, engineers, lawyers and builders who seek meaningful work and meaningful relationships through radical truth and radical transparency.
Leadership
The people building ANEW way forward.
A team that has built and sold real manufacturing companies. ANEW's leadership brings four-to-five decades each across semiconductor manufacturing, product industrialization and high-volume production. Founder and Chairman Pat Conarro built MicroTool and sold it to NASDAQ-listed Brooks Automation, and the team has run design and industrialization centers and led engineering organizations at scale — the same discipline now applied to ANEW's replicable copy-factory model.
Pat Conarro
Chairman · Co-CEO · CTO · Manufacturing LeadOver 4 decades of hands-on manufacturing know-how — including developing G-Code for CNC programming in the 1980s. Leads the vision for 10 global copy factories by decade's end.
Ray Rohrbach
Co-CEO · Founder · International Business DevelopmentDecades in UK business development, with previous roles at Virgin Group and Warner Bros Licensing — and a long-standing cleantech partnership with Pat.
Howard Haenel
President · Legal Strategies · Board Member4+ decades of general law with thousands of brokered deals guiding clients to successful outcomes.
John Kamau
President of Africa Operations · CEO, ANEW Energy AfricaPhysicist-educated finance professional from JP Morgan Chase, leading ANEW Energy Africa operations from Nairobi, Kenya.
Board of Directors & Advisors
Guided by world-class governance.
Paul Blasco
Board of Directors · ManufacturingVeteran manufacturing professional, formerly of Superior Tire & Rubber. Decades running high-volume production operations — team engineering, extreme-condition product building, data analytics and QA/QC.
Anita Kutlesa Slivar
Fractional CFO · Board of AdvisorsSilicon Valley finance executive serving as ANEW Energy's fractional CFO and a member of the Board of Advisors.
Susan Mac Cormac
Legal Counsel · Climate & Sustainability LawPartner at Morrison Foerster ("MoFo") — ANEW Energy's counsel of record — where she co-chairs the firm's ESG, Impact Investing and Energy practices. A founding board member of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and a leading voice in climate finance and governance law.
Charlie van Dongen
Technology Advisor · Battery Management SystemsElectronics engineer specializing in battery management systems, supporting BMS development for ANEW's solid-state platform. CTO at Zenaji, Melbourne — ANEW's South Pacific distributor. Power electronics and inverter design since the late 1980s.
Rick Payne
Semiconductor AdvisorSemiconductor industry veteran, formerly of Texas Instruments, advising on ANEW's semiconductor-inspired manufacturing processes.
Engineering & Manufacturing
Built by people who build things.
Doug Turner
Director of Engineering · Manufacturing · Systems LogicOver 4 decades of product design and electro-mechanical engineering at Flextronics. Developed embedded microprocessor systems; holds 3 patents on speech-recognition interfaces.
Mike Cullinane
Semiconductor Manufacturing · Business Development5 decades in semiconductor robotic system engineering. Has led thousands of engineers on advanced manufacturing processes globally.
Peter Kember
Production Line Design · Solar & Semiconductor · Kember AssociatesSpecialises in the design and implementation of new production lines in semiconductors, sensors and solar cells. A senior consultant to executive management and government ministers, and an advisor to the EU on technology development and the implementation of international high-tech projects — with delivered programs in Malaysia, China, Russia and Brazil spanning MEMS, power electronics (GaN) and solar cells.
Paul Connelly
Semiconductor Process & Commissioning · Kember AssociatesOver 20 years across semiconductor, hi-tech and pharma manufacturing, telecommunications and latterly defence, construction and oil & gas. Grounded in microelectronics, physics, mechanics and communication engineering, with design, build and commissioning of semiconductor fabs as his mainstay — previously with Oxford Instruments, Plasma Technology, Brooks Automation and Applied Materials, delivering for end users including NXP, ST Micro, Intel, TSMC and Texas Instruments.
Trey Hamond
Production Machining Lead · CNC · Robotics SystemsTwo decades of hands-on advanced manufacturing. Leads 125+ tooling and automation programmers in AutoDesk Fusion360 Cloud.
Thomas Bates
Copy Factory 3D Architectural Lead · BIM Digital TwinArchitectural design expert leading 120+ remote designers, with proven delivery to Apple and Google.
Sam Macmillan
Copy Factory Construction LeadMore than 4 decades in construction completing projects on time and under budget, with multi-decade involvement with ANEW Energy.
Hána Blasco
Engineering Executive Assistant · Project ManagementManages vendor payments and capital equipment scheduling. Certified in FEMA NIMS and HAZMAT with accounting and certification backgrounds.
Taylor Holcomb
SaaS Integrator · AI Integration · Big Data · BlockchainLeads 75+ Zoho tool integrations across CRM, IoT, project management, HR, inventory and analytics at global scale.
Business Development & Strategy
From the Rockies to every continent.
Don McClasky
Large-Scale Utility Applications · PPAs · Tax & Carbon Credits · Board MemberExpertise in PV, LED audits, market research, investment administration, power purchase agreements, due diligence and strategic partnerships.
Jesse Stubbs
Strategic Partner · Board Member · Master DistributorGot into renewable energy back when Jimmy Carter put solar on the White House. Leads Ventara for utility-scale projects across North America and the Caribbean.
Joel Gregoire
Special Projects · Caribbean Business Development · Board MemberBrings expertise in complex user journeys, distribution and engineering studies — an early volunteer who has grown with the company.
Rodrigo Gutiérrez Hermelo
Director of Knowledge Transfer · LMSNearly four decades in communications across print, radio, television, film and multimedia — in English, French and Spanish.
Mark Tranter
Events · Hospitality · Marketing · Business Development4+ decades of event management worldwide, delivering Fortune 500-caliber trade show experiences.
Jennifer Williams
Executive Assistant to CEOs · Special ProjectsCustomer-centric hospitality professional managing 5-star resort transactions at scale and CEO access.
Plus a global network of strategic partners, advisors and distributors on every continent.
How this team thinks
Wide boundaries, not narrow ones.
The mix of backgrounds above is not an accident of hiring. It is the structural choice we would defend hardest, because the problem ANEW is solving does not sit inside any single discipline.
The method is not the world. Breaking complex things into parts has worked extraordinarily well — so long as we do not mistake it for how the world behaves. A battery decision that is correct in isolation and wrong for the factory, the freight, the repair economy and the financing is not a correct decision.
So we work the edges. Semiconductor manufacturing meets power electronics; capital-markets structuring meets field installation; trades instruction meets product design. The copy factory, the E2X platform and a funding model that treats a signed device reading as a financial instrument all began as conversations between people who, at most companies, would never have been in the room together.
Several of the economic ideas in these sections come from The Great Simplification — Nate Hagens in conversation with John Fullerton on regenerative economics and Ed Conway on Material World. Cited as influences on ANEW’s thinking; none is affiliated with ANEW Energy and no endorsement is implied.
Investor & Team FAQ
The questions investors ask first.
Who leads ANEW Energy?
ANEW is led by Chairman, Co-CEO and CTO Pat Conarro and Co-CEO and Founder Ray Rohrbach, with a senior team spanning semiconductor manufacturing, engineering, finance, legal and regional operations.
Has ANEW's founder built and sold a company before?
Yes. Pat Conarro founded MicroTool and sold it to NASDAQ-listed Brooks Automation.
What is the ANEW team's manufacturing background?
Four to five decades each across semiconductor manufacturing, product industrialization including at Flextronics, and high-volume production for global manufacturers.
Does ANEW have leadership in the markets it serves?
Yes — including a President of Africa Operations based in Nairobi, plus leaders across the United States, the United Kingdom and Latin America.
Want to build with us?
We're always looking for people who embrace radical truth, radical transparency and meaningful work.
The people here design for one outcome: a micro-grid that holds output around the clock. Generation, storage and distribution are specified together, grid-connected where that helps and self-sufficient where it must be — 24/7.
ANEW reference design — architectural rendering generated with Runway.