Leadership & Faculty:
Brian Steel is the Director of the Cleantech to Market program to which he brings 35 years of business innovation and leadership experience. He is a repeat member of the Haas “Club of 6” for teaching excellence. Brian is a member of the investment advisory board of the Commonwealth Energy Fund and was a founding member of the external advisory board of the Innovation Incubator (a Wells Fargo/NREL joint venture).
Brian has served as an advisor to the Department of Energy, working on both renewable energy financing and solar initiatives and was Senior Advisor to the Renewable Energy Trust and an advisor to the Berkeley Startup Cluster. Prior to joining the UC Berkeley faculty, Brian was Vice President of Corporate Strategy & Development for PG&E Corporation, where he led the energy industry’s first tax-equity solar project financing by an investor-owned utility, investing $400 million in nearly $1 billion of photovoltaic assets from 2010-2011.
Brian is also a co-founder of Hypatia Project, a software engineering firm that builds advanced technologies for public benefit missions around the globe, including the U.S. Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. Prior roles include Chairman, International, Pandora Media – the world’s leading Internet radio company; President, International, Overture Services – building a billion-dollar division of Yahoo! with operations in 20 countries; President and CEO, Idealab Silicon Valley and Managing Director of Idealab; and President and COO, On Command. Previously, Brian was Senior Vice President and co-head of the Real Estate Merchant Banking Group at Shearson Lehman Brothers. He has served on the boards of more than 20 early-stage technology companies, several of which went public, and many of which had successful acquisition exits. His separate private investments include Back to the Roots (Haas-founded startup), Bay Area Panera restaurants, Birdies, LiveOps, and Powerset (sold to Microsoft). Brian holds a BA magna cum laude in
Economics from Duke University, where he was an Angier B. Duke Scholar.
Send an email to [email protected]
Ana Martinez is the Associate Director of the Cleantech to Market program, part of the Energy Institute at Haas School of Business. C2M connects cutting-edge climate tech startups with teams of 4-6 UC Berkeley graduate students, empowering them to accelerate commercialization through in-depth analysis of market opportunities, strategies, and pathways to scale. She previously served as Chief Innovation Officer of the Open Innovation Squad at UC Berkeley’s Garwood Center, guiding interdisciplinary student teams on corporate innovation projects.
Ana is an accomplished leader with extensive experience in corporate innovation. Throughout her career, she has been instrumental in helping Global Fortune 500 corporations from diverse industries develop new business strategies leveraging cutting-edge technologies. As Co-Founder of Xploration Partners, an innovation consulting firm, Ana has worked with startups and corporations across energy, agriculture, food, consumer goods, and other industries to bring innovative technology solutions to market. Over her career, she has worked with more than 1,000 startups and 100 corporates, facilitating over 200 partnerships. Notable clients include Nestle, P&G, BP, PepsiCo, Volkswagen, Mizuho, Mitsubishi, TOTO, JETRO, ENEOS, and many more.
During her time at RocketSpace, Ana guided corporations in innovation strategies, from establishing corporate venture capital arms for companies like JetBlue and De Beers to launching and managing accelerators. She also led corporations on startup scouting, investment, and acquisitions initiatives to drive strategic growth. During her tenure at Rabobank, Ana became one of the founding members of Rabobank’s innovation team where she played a pivotal role in launching Foodbytes and TERRA. Foodbytes is a startup pitch competition and networking platform connecting top food & agriculture startups, corporates, and investors. TERRA is a renowned food & agriculture accelerator.
Ana holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MBA from the Haas School of Business.
Send an email to [email protected]
Bill Shelander joined the C2M faculty in 2016 after serving as an advisor and mentor to the program since 2010. Bill brings hands-on proficiency at the earliest stages of emerging technologies and venture funding. He is also teaching the Environmental Entrepreneurship and Innovation program at Stanford University’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Bill was a commercialization expert for Berkeley Lab (2010-2015), working with researchers in fundamental energy science to utilize discoveries in new business activities. He helped create and obtain external funding for dozens of startups involving diverse technologies (from industrial-scale microbiology and DNA diagnostics to thin film oxides and high-performance supercomputers).
Previously, Bill served on a White House Office of Science & Technology Policy panel to improve technology transfer of basic research. Between 1986 and 2007, he was a managing director of venture capital funds from the U.S., Japan, Taiwan and China. He has served on the boards of several NASDAQ-listed companies. Bill is an active entrepreneur who has co-founded several successful “hard” technology companies, including Mango Materials, whose process converts methane into polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) a multi-application biodegradable polymer, which is recognized as one of the “Global Cleantech 100” for 2021, and Anven Biosciences, which has created a fundamentally new approach to rapidly developing novel and more effective therapeutics involving the creation of highly specific bio-functional molecules. Bill holds an MBA from Stanford University, an MS Engineering from West Virginia College of Graduate Studies, and a BS Systems Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Send an email to [email protected]
Alex Luce joined the C2M faculty in 2024, and brings extensive experience launching and investing in bold entrepreneurial ventures enabled by revolutionary science. Alex is a General Partner at Creative Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm where he leads the firm’s climate focus area.
His work and investments have covered a range of “deep technology” categories across the energy transition, advanced materials, health tech, semiconductors, robotics, and advanced computing.
Previously, Alex led CalCharge, the energy storage subsidiary of the California Clean Energy Fund. He was also a co-founder of SuperCharge US, a nationwide battery manufacturing consortium, and a solar energy startup. He also spent time with Prelude Ventures and ARPA-E. He currently serves on the Strategic Leadership Council for the Lab Embedded Entrepreneur Program at Los Alamos National Lab.
Alex holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Material Science and Engineering from University of California, Berkeley and was a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship.
Strauchs & The Mosse Foundation:
Roger Strauch is chair of The Roda Group. He has served on MSRI’s Board of Trustees for over twenty-five years, often as an executive member.
MSRI, now the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (SLMath), has brought together emerging and leading minds in mathematics for over 40 years as a U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) supported research institute, in an environment that promotes creativity and collaboration.
Roger is an engineer, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and philanthropist. He has helped build technology companies that have had public stock offerings or have been sold to global industry leaders. Currently, Roger focuses on the development of several enterprises whose products and services will mitigate the negative impact of industry on global climate change and human health. Roger serves on the boards of Chart Industries (NYSE:GTLS), the Berkeley Repertory Theater, Northside Center, a mental health service agency in Harlem, NYC and UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering. He is the leader of the Mosse Art Restitution Project, a major international effort to recover titute stolen art from his great step family during the Third Reich. Roger and his wife, Dr. Julie Kulhanjian, a retired pediatric infectious disease physician, have three adult children. Roger and Julie divide their time between Piedmont, California and Martha’s Vineyard.
He earned a Bachelor’s degree with honors from Cornell University and a Master’s degree from Stanford University, both in electrical engineering.
Hans D. Strauch, Leed AP, President. As founder, principal, and creative director of HDS Architecture, Hans D. Strauch has dedicated 35 years to designing distinctive buildings and communities throughout the US and abroad. With Hans’ vision and leadership, HDS Architecture continues to successfully deliver sophisticated and highly crafted buildings including large scale residential, commercial, retail destination, and medical facilities.
Over the course of his career, Hans has collaborated with leading real estate developers, property owners, and private institutions nationally and internationally. Clients appreciate his expeditious ability to get projects approved by strategically merging regulatory requirements with creative design solutions and economic realities. Hans’ practical experience, along with the talented team of designers and architects at HDS, allows each project to achieve its highest potential.
Hans is Chair of the Board of Trustees at Lesley University in Cambridge, an institution focused on teacher education, counseling and the visual arts. He actively supports several Boston social justice programs including Habitat for Humanity and The Jewish Coalition for Literacy.
Hans received his architecture degree with distinction from Cornell University. With his dedication to environmental sustainability, he endowed the “Strauch Visiting Critic in Sustainable Design” in 2013 in the College of Architecture Art & Planning to advance research and innovative design solutions associated with consequences of global climate change. In 2023, he endowed the “Strauch Early Career Follow” at Cornell to identify, attract and support diverse, talented, early-career educators who contribute fresh ideas and perspectives.
During his free time Hans enjoys playing competitive tennis, reading, and hiking.
The Mosse Foundation
Returning Nazi-looted art to rightful owners often bogs down in lengthy legal battles that hinge on arcane details. In the case of the Mosse family, Jews who built a fortune as newspaper publishers in Germany from the late 1800s through the early 1930s, the fight to recover their looted art collection has become decidedly easier.
“It’s an uncomfortable thing [for a person or museum holding a piece of artwork] to say that something which you’ve lived with for a long time, that you’ve been a custodian of, and may take some pride or pleasure in, may not be yours,” said Roger Strauch, a board member of the foundation, who represents the heirs.
Eleven German institutions have signed on to help locate and identify the artworks. So has the German government, which had not previously collaborated with Jewish heirs to search out stolen works, according to J. Eric Bartko, investigations director at the S.F.-based law firm Bartko Zankel Bunzel Miller. The partnership seeks to identify only the works of art in the Mosse collection.
Soon after Hitler, a famously failed painter, took power, the Nazis began to systematically purloin artworks, plundering museums as well as confiscating art owned by Jewish collectors. The practice, which continued throughout the war, is one of the largest robberies in history.
Formed in 1943 and operating through 1951, the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section, a 350-strong group of men and women from 13 countries — aka the Monument Men — worked to restore stolen art. But the Monument Men returned art to countries, not families, and in some cases Jews had to fight with their own governments for possession.
Independent Jewish efforts to recover stolen art have been underway for decades but hit important milestones in recent years. In 1988, 44 countries signed the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, which set guidelines for restoration of looted art. But in many cases, Jewish families still had to repurchase the art.
According to the Mosse Art Project website, the Mosse family business published 130 newspapers and journals, and during the rise of the Nazis, it soon became a symbol of the “Jewish press.” The publications were openly critical of Hitler, and as a result, the Nazis in 1933 confiscated the family’s art collection and substantial property holdings. Under the direction of Karl Haberstock, an art adviser to Hitler, the Third Reich auctioned off the collection and other valuables in 1934.
Some Mosse family members ended up in the United States after fleeing or being exiled from Germany. Hans Lachmann-Mosse, who ran the business after his father died in 1920, and his second wife, Carola Strauch, went to Paris and eventually settled in Lafayette. Carola had a son, Karl, from a previous marriage, and Karl went on to father Roger Strauch.
A sculpture of a lion by August Gaul was restored to the Mosse family in 2015. (Photo/Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)
A venture capitalist, Roger Strauch urged Bartko’s law firm — known for its work in intellectual property cases and complex international litigation — to take on the project to recover the family art collection.
The investigation kicked off in 2012 and has recovered nearly 20 pieces, including a pastel drawing by Adolph Menzel called “Dame mit roter Bluse,” a sculpture of a lion by August Gaul and an Egyptian marble sarcophagus from 200 C.E.
At this point, the Mosse heirs have no plans to reassemble the collection. Instead, Strauch said the heirs plan to “monetize and divide the proceeds between the heirs and the project manager after project expenses.”
But, Strauch added, the heirs will consider the interests of the current caretakers when deciding how to handle the recovered items, which the heirs would decide on a case-by-case basis.
For those working to recover the collection, there is a long way to go. Bartko said he has identified about 1,000 pieces by name but believes the Nazis looted more than 4,000 works from the Mosse family.
In some ways, the Nazis’ infamous record keeping made the task of recovery slightly less onerous. Prior to the 1934 auction of the Mosse collection, each piece was catalogued and appraised. Bartko was able to recover the Nazi catalogue, which has made the task of proving that the art belonged to the Mosses significantly easier. It could also pave the way for other Jewish families to collaborate with German institutions.
“I’m grateful and impressed with both the spirit and actions of the German institutions,” Strauch said. “It took a lot of hard work to make this formal collaboration possible.”
