Robert Wimmer (President/CEO, Aqua-Aerobic Systems)

Bob Wimmer has been President and CEO of Aqua-Aerobic Systems since
1998. Bob previously was Divisional Managing Director (Chief Executive) of the
Products Division of Thames Water PLC, a London based company, and
commuted between the U.S. and London. Prior to that he served as
President/CEO of Thames Water Products and Services Division in the U.S.
Bob received his MBA from the Golden Gate University in San Francisco and his
BSME from New York Institute of Technology. He is also an alumnus of the
Senior Executive Program of London Business School and various other
graduate programs at IMD, Lucerne, Switzerland and The Wharton School of
business.
Bob has been active in various professional organizations, including the Water &
Wastewater Equipment Manufacturers Association (served as past Chairman)
and the WateReuse Association (Board of Directors). His community
involvement includes OSF St. Anthony Medical Center (past board member),
Rosecrance (board member), and Rockford Bank & Trust (board member).
He was a 2014 inductee into the Northern Illinois Business Hall of Fame.

Rick Bacon

Rick Bacon CEO at Aqua Metrology Systems Limited

Rick Bacon has served as CEO of Aqua Metrology Systems (AMS) since 2012. Prior to joining AMS, Rick held senior management and board level positions in the energy, industrial, technology, and water sectors. Rick, who has a keen interest in technology start-ups and innovation, has led AMS through their development and commercialization of online, real-time analytical and remediation solutions to predict, control and treat a range of contaminants in drinking water, process water and wastewater. Rick holds a degree in Land Economy from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom and a PhD from the University of California Santa Barbara. 

Beth McDaniel

Beth McDaniel (President Reactive Surfaces Partner at McDaniel and Associates, PC) received her BBA in finance from the University of Texas in 1988, and JD in law from South Texas College of Law in 1996. She has been with Reactive Surfaces since 2006, both as a director/advisor and officer of the company. Beth has 25 years of business experience and 17 years of legal experience with an emphasis on contracts, licensing and business operations. Mrs. McDaniel serves as President and Chief of Administration for Reactive Surfaces, assisting in implementing ongoing company business, business transactions and office management. 

Chris Kahn

Director of Unmanned Ariel Systems at American Water

Chris is a geospatial professional with over 22 years of progressive experience in large cross-functional organizations performing geospatial program development, GNSS spatial data workflow management, spatial analysis, terrestrial/aerial survey, UAS program development, interactive mapping, and GIS field mobility.

Kim Patrick Kobza

Kim Patrick Kobza is a cofounder of True Elements. Mr. Kobza is a technology and social impact entrepreneur with over 20 years of executive experience as a co-founder and CEO. He stewards True Elements’ strategic growth, finance, and cross-functional leadership.  

Before True Elements, Mr. Kobza co-founded and was CEO of Neighborhood America (NA), a SaaS pioneer building public communications systems for public outreach, major media, and commercial applications. (13 years). NA built systems for Imagine New York (World Trade Center), Statue of Liberty, Flight 93 Memorial, the American Express Open B2B network, and several major media companies. NA received three global SIIA awards as best in enterprise-class software.  

Mr. Kobza then founded Innovation that Matters, a personal social impact portfolio before becoming CEO of True Elements. Mr. Kobza was recognized as the SIIA Entrepreneur of the Year in Florida (2009).  He has a B.S. in Economics, Math, and Earth Sciences from Central Michigan University and a J.D. from Wayne State University and spent 17 years in the private practice of law specializing in land use, business organization, and strategic finance.

True Elements is dedicated to establishing a global standard in the emerging field of Water Intelligence. Our mission is to play a part in improving decision-making for water quality, quantity, and climate risk through forecasting – the World’s first authoritative water quality and resiliency forecasting system. Broadly, we are linking the water cycle to the carbon cycle.

To learn more, please visit trueelements.com.

Jon Gribble

Highly Regarded Entrepreneurial Business Executive / Growth Focused Business Visionary / Cultivator of High Caliber Teams that Achieve a Unified Vision

►Areas I Excel In
Building and inspiring teams that not only achieve repeated double digit growth and innovation, but also train leaders within those organizations to achieve more today and in the future. I have had the privilege of mentors that have inspired and informed my leadership and business acumen to repeatedly achieve success regardless of the market type. I have held such a diverse set of roles and in multiple markets that I can acutely identify the minutia that can unhinge a plan and craft multilevel strategies that resist the dynamics of a rapidly growing business. My leadership skills and resilient personality allow me to drive key initiatives, establishing benchmarks/KPIs to measure success and redirect to achieve double digit P&L results. My diverse strategic business acumen gives me the ability to see the big picture desired by a board and crisply communicate innovative strategies to internal teams, clients, and my executive team to optimize organizational success.

►What Drives Me
I am passionate about taking a team of talented professionals and focusing them on a common vision from which they derive inspiration and achieve high growth objectives. I find it easy to connect with people and create an environment of collaboration, empowerment, respect, loyalty, and teamwork building trust through transparency. High caliber teams allow me to apply business strategies that achieve big results. I am passionate about diversity of personnel, experiences and opinions that allow the team to achieve their best outcomes. Entrepreneurial leadership with a crisp vision and a robust team empowers my passion for a business.

►Some of My Proudest Accomplishments
✶Crafted and secured the largest prime progressive Design-Build / EPC contract ($540M) that ultimately became the highest generating profit project in company 100 year history.
✶In a 2 year period executed a complete turnaround of a struggling EPC transmission and distribution business driving client, contract and regional diversity that achieved double digit top line growth and profitable results.
✶Over a 3 year period diversified a singular focused engineering P&L into solar PV, transmission and distribution, water, wind, energy storage, electric transportation infrastructure among others. These markets are occupied by an engineering led, technology focused client base that ultimately award large EPC contracts on that basis. This was a strategic intent to create diversity as the EPC power market pivoted away from fossils which prior to this approach was the sole division focus.

Sue Mecham and Judy S. Riffle

Sue J. Mecham, Ph.D., is Co-Founder and CEO of NALA Membranes, a new-generation membrane company based in the Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. NALA is developing new chlorine tolerant reverse osmosis membranes from new, chlorine-stable, polymers. Sue has over 25 years of experience building and leading technical and business teams in both industry and academia. Sue’s background is in polymer chemistry and organizational management with a Ph.D. from Virginia Tech and manufacturing, sales, and leadership at Acadia Polymers, Polymer Solutions Incorporated, Virginia Tech, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  

Judy Riffle, PhD in polymer chemistry, is the Chief Technical Officer of NALA Membranes. She joined Union Carbide Corp. as a research scientist upon graduation working on synthesis and manufacturing of non-ionic polyols and their incorporation into polyurethane foams. She joined Thoratec Laboratories Corp., then a biomedical start-up company, in 1983 as Vice President of Research and Development. While at Thoratec, she co-directed (with Robert Ward) the synthesis and processing of polyurethanes that later became the materials for their FDA-approved ventricular assist devices and vascular grafts. Dr. Riffle joined Virginia Tech in 1988 as a professor of chemistry, where she taught and conducted research for 31 years. During that time, she mentored 68 graduate students who are now working mostly as polymer chemists and engineers in U.S. industries.

Sue and Judy founded NALA Membranes in 2018 together. NALA’s goal is to commercialize an entirely new set of water purification membranes that are chemically durable against strong oxidants including chlorine to avoid biofouling and to enhance “cleanability”. NALA has been selected for internationally recognized accelerators including MassChallenge and Imagine H2O-Asia, and in November 2021 was presented with a Cleantech award from the NC Tech Association. NALA was awarded National Science Foundation SBIR Phase I and II grants, and receives financial backing by venture and angel investors. 

Johnny H Pujol

Johnny Pujol, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of SimpleLab. To learn about SimpleLab home water test kits, visit Tap Score.

Johnny Pujul is a water quality expert with a background in commercialization and development of electrochemical arsenic remediation, off-grid water treatment and UV LED technology for pathogen and pharmaceutical inactivation. Johnny has a Masters in Engineering from UC Berkeley and Bachelors in Economics from Boston University.

Johnny’s goal is to bring laboratory services to the forefront of how you evaluate products to buy, consume and propagate. Beginning with the first user-friendly marketplace for accredited water, food, and product testing services (SimpleLab), our team delivers reliable sampling logistics, laboratory testing, and result reporting more elegantly than ever before. Structuring analytical lab services on a unified platform, and integrating efficient logistics is necessary to support modern demand for complex environmental sampling, testing and the resultant decision-making.

Gregg Semler

Gregg Semler is the CEO and Founder of InPipe Energy: a renewable energy and smart water technology company focused on generating renewable energy from water pipelines to improve resiliency and sustainability in cities and communities around the world.

Gregg Semler is a veteran entrepreneur with extensive experience in the clean energy and water sectors. Gregg’s ability to raise capital, lead teams, and bring innovative products to market are the hallmarks of his career.

A graduate of Columbia College in New York, Gregg also earned an MBA from The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Since 2000, he has served as CEO for a variety of companies, including PolyFuel, and ClearEdge Power. From 2007-2015 he was Managing Director at Pivotal Instruments, a venture capital firm the first early-stage venture fund in the Northwest focused on sustainability.

In 2011, he led Lucid Energy, a clean technology company that developed a novel turbine that produced energy in water pipes. In 2016, Gregg founded InPipe Energy, where he saw an untapped global opportunity to develop a turnkey energy recovery system to generate a new source of renewable energy from water pipeline networks.

To learn more about InPipe Energy, please visit https://inpipeenergy.com/

Aaron Tartakovsky

Aaron Tartakovsky is Co-Founder and CEO of Epic Cleantec, a leading water technology company based in San Francisco that deploys water reuse systems into the built environment. Prior to his career in sustainability, Aaron worked in federal politics and has remained active in affecting public policy on the local, state, and national levels. Aaron speaks frequently on urban water management at universities and industry gatherings throughout world, and was recently named a 2023 World Economic Forum Top Innovator. Under Aaron’s leadership, Epic Cleantec has achieved numerous accolades, including being named to Fast Company’s 2023 World Changing Ideas Awards and having Epic’s newly unveiled OneWater system named to TIME’s Best Inventions of 2022 list.