Alison Mickey

VP, Marketing

Alison has 15 years of experience driving communications and marketing for cleantech startups. Most recently, she was VP of Marketing at Highland Electric Fleets, where she built the company’s marketing department and capabilities. Prior to that, she led communications at Fluence, supporting the company’s successful IPO in 2021. Before she began working in communications, Alison served as a Community Health Educator with the Peace Corps in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania for two years.

Dane McKay

Head of Design

At Verse, Dane leverages their 15 years of experience designing software and knowledge of energy markets to design all aspects of the Verse product. Previously, Dane was the Lead Designer at Fluence and has contributed significant designs to other emerging technologies such as IOT, GIS, and ridesharing.

Nathan Murthy

Head of Engineering, Software

Nathan has been working in software for over 12 years professionally. Prior to joining Verse, Nathan spent 2 years building financial reporting tools for tens of millions of merchants at Stripe and nearly 7 years at Tesla working on factory software, big data pipelines, and intelligent distributed energy systems. He also led the distributed controls team at SolarCity. Nathan brings expertise in commercial, industrial, and utility scale software from Wireless Glue Networks, Fujitsu Labs, and the Banatao Insitute. He earned his degree in Applied Mathematics from UC Berkeley. 

Shehzad Wadalawala

VP, Strategy

At Verse, Shehzad leverages his 20+ years of experience optimizing energy procurement decisions to lead the optimization modeling team and the delivery of analytic products to customers. Prior to Verse, Shehzad was an Energy Portfolio Manager at Google, responsible for developing the energy risk management framework and operationalizing its hedging program. He also provided
commercial and analytic support for energy supply agreements across the US, EMEA and APAC, including multiple first-of-a-kind 24/7 carbon-free energy structures.

Matt Penfold

Co-founder & CCO

Matt leads Verse’s customer and product work. Prior to Verse, Matt led the commercialization of the world’s leading A.I. wholesale market bidding software for utility scale clean energy assets – taking the idea from a whiteboard sketch to 10GW of assets under management. Matt previously worked at Bain & Co, serving clients in the utility & renewable energy sectors.

Seyed H. Madaeni, Ph.D

Co-founder & CEO

Seyed has been building software products to optimize the electricity sector for 10+ years. Before founding Verse, Seyed served as the Chief Digital Officer at Fluence, where he played a central role in the company’s successful $5B+ IPO, overseeing its digital business unit. Seyed was instrumental in growing Fluence’s renewable portfolio to over 10GW. Earlier in his career, Seyed was the CEO of AMS, where he pioneered a flagship market bidding product that eventually led to the company’s acquisition by Fluence. Seyed also contributed significantly to Tesla, SolarCity and PG&E, providing technical oversight for several groundbreaking wholesale market facing software applications.

Maria Koevska

Head of Product

Maria leads product at Verse, bringing extensive experience in delivering enterprise software products. At Stripe, she partnered with CPOs and CFOs of Fortune 100 tech companies to develop software solutions that reduced operating costs by millions. Previously, Maria was a private equity investor at Adamantem Capital and an investment advisor at Deutsche Bank, where she advised on Australia’s largest privatization program—the $34B government sale of electricity networks Transgrid, Ausgrid, and Endeavour Energy. She holds a law degree from Sydney Law School.

Pascal Smulders

Head of Business Operations