Climate Earth

Management Team

Chris Erickson, CEO

Chris is an entrepreneur and accomplished executive, now turning his attention and passion to the problem of climate change. Chris is known as a creative executive with a track record of pioneering new markets, developing and implementing creative business strategies, and building companies from the ground up. From this rich ground of experience, Chris helps client companies engage from an executive level to develop a climate strategy from the enterprise viewpoint.

As a Vice President of Tandem Computers, a Fortune 500 Company, Chris:

Defined new industry oriented corporate strategy and organization for global operations,
Developed and launched the global telecommunications industry strategy,
Managed worldwide staff of 600 plus people with revenue responsibility of over $330 million.

As CEO of venture-funded start-ups, Chris:

Pioneered the market in Data Warehousing, bringing to market the core technology allowing quick analysis of vast amounts of diverse data,
Grew Red Brick Systems from $1 to $40 million in revenue and led the company to a successful initial public stock offering (IPO),
Established Brightware as a leader in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) market and successfully sold the enterprise in a strategic acquisition,
Co-founded Cooler, the world’s first carbon-neutral online shopping mall.

Chris holds a BA in Economics from UC Santa Barbara and an MBA from UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business. He also currently serves as Chairman for ICEsoft Technologies, Inc. a leader in high-performance commercial Open Source software.

Dr. Sangwon Suh, Chief Technology Office

Sangwon Suh is an environmental engineer by training and particularly well known in the field for his work on the computational aspects of life cycle assessment.

He is the designer and developer of the Comprehensive Environmental Data Archive (CEDA), which is the data base underlying most Climate Earth services. He is also a frequent consultant at the national policy level, and assistant professor, University of Minnesota in the Environmental Science, Policy and Management Department where he teaches and conducts research on corporate environmental management and industrial ecology.

As Chief Technology Officer at Climate Earth Sangwon is responsible for ongoing development and maintenance of CEDA, advising the company on the use of CEDA CLIMATE, and occasionally consulting directly with Climate Earth customers.

Sangwon is also jointly appointed by CML, Leiden University in the Netherlands as an adjunct research fellow.

Sangwon earned his Ph.D. at Leiden University with the thesis entitled ‘Materials and Energy Flows in Industry and Ecosystem Networks’ in 2004 (cum laude). He also spent a year at Carnegie Mellon University in the US as a research associate continuing LCA and Material Flow Analysis (MFA) studies. He is a subject editor of the International Journal of LCA.

He is a co-author of the books, ´The Computational Structure of Life Cycle Assessment´ and ´Handbook on Life Cycle Assessment´, and he is currently editing ‘Handbook of Input-Output Economics for Industrial Ecology’.

Carter Brooks, Vice President

Carter is a visionary and, with nearly ten year’s focus on the climate crisis, has a deep expertise in the rapidly changing world of carbon offsets. He is passionate about expanding humanity’s ability to comprehend and create solutions for the world’s most complex issues. His creative talents range from master storyteller to aerial artist. His technical expertise ranges from carbon offsets to database design and programming. He is intensely motivated to apply both his creative and technical talents to help client companies develop new ways to engage the complex issue of climate change.

Some of Carter’s wide-ranging accomplishments include:

Developed the first merchant level climate calculator for e-commerce
Developed criteria for “quality offsets” and gained agreement on these from consortium of major environmental groups including Environmental Defense Fund, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council and The Gold Standard.
“First 50” presenter for Al Gore’s The Climate Project
Developed first online visual displays from NASA data to show climate trends by city
Associate producer for John Quigley’s Spectral Q aerial art for climate awareness
Author, “Face au changement climatique: l’imagination en action (Imagination in Action: Responding to Climate Change) for L’ Autre Campagne (The Other Campaign),
Developed unique presentations and performance art to engage our imagination in responding to the climate crisis,
Presented to thousands of people raising awareness for climate change.

Carter holds an MS in Energy and Resources from UC Berkeley and a BA in History from Yale University.

Andrew Deitz, Vice President, Business Development

Andrew Deitz is a veteran entrepreneur whose professional experience includes over 15 years working with CEO’s and executives of both large public and fast growing portfolio companies of influential Venture Capital firms.

As an executive recruiter he worked closely with organizational leaders to identity strategic staffing needs and to ensure his clients translated their vision into growth and profitability. Andrew was instrumental in launching human capital services for a newly created private equity fund and led business development efforts for the startup of a diversified recruiting company.

Mr. Deitz began his career as an environmental research scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratories studying A Comparison of Intra and Extra Amoebic Bacteria.

He is an active member with e2 (www.e2.org), helping shape energy policy that promotes economic growth and is a mentor with the California Clean Tech Open

Advisory Board

James Barret, Executive Director, Redefining Progress

James is Executive Director of Redefining Progress, the nation’s leading public policy think tank dedicated to promoting a healthy environment, a strong economy, and social justice. Working with government and advocacy groups, Redefining Progress develops innovative policy approaches aimed at promoting these three goals simultaneously.

Redefining Progress’s work includes creating the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), an alternative to the gross domestic product (GDP). Redefining Progress is also one of two Ecological Footprint organizations in the United States.

James’s personal research focuses on a variety of issues concerning energy and environmental economics, including designing policies that can both reduce global warming pollution and enhance economic growth, the economic implications of opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, and the technical and economic feasibility of hydrogen production.

Prior to joining Redefining Progress, he was an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, senior economist on the Democratic staff of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, and staff economist at the Center for the Advancement of Genomics and the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives. Dr. Barrett earned his B.A. in economics from Bucknell University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Connecticut.

Amy Skoczlas Cole, Head of Marketing, Global Citizenship, eBay Corporation

Amy Skoczlas Cole has worked at the nexus of business and sustainability for 15 years. Today, as the Head of Marketing for eBay’s Global Citizenship efforts, Amy is tapping the reach of digital communication to bring positive environmental and social consumer action

Prior to joining eBay Amy was a co-founder and Vice President of Conservation International’s Center for Environmental Leadership in Business where she launched relationships with companies as diverse as Starbucks, Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Intel, Office Depot, Fiji Water and Bank of America. Amy focused a significant amount of her time and energy on climate change issues. She spearheaded Conservation International’s ecosystem service investments program, creating one of the first NGO backed programs engaging businesses and their customers to measure and reduce their carbon emissions, going carbon neutral or beyond.

Amy holds an MBA in marketing and finance from George Washington University, and a BA in Environmental Policy from Vanderbilt University.

Gerhard Eschelbeck, CTO and Senior VP of Engineering, Webroot Software

As chief technology officer and senior vice president of engineering at Webroot Software, Inc., Gerhard is responsible for developing and driving the company’s overall Software-as-a-Service strategy. He also manages Webroot’s Software-as-a-Service development and research teams.

Gerhard most recently served as chief technology officer and vice president of engineering of Qualys, Inc., where he pioneered the company’s Software-as-a-Service based vulnerability management platform. Prior to joining Qualys, Gerhard was senior vice president of engineering for security products at Network Associates, vice president of engineering of anti-virus products at McAfee Associates, and founder of IDS GmbH, a secure remote control company acquired by McAfee.

Widely regarded as one of the foremost experts on vulnerabilities and network security, Gerhard has presented his research to the U.S. Congress and at numerous major security conferences including RSA, Black Hat and CSI. He was named one of InfoWorld's 25 Most Influential CTOs in 2003, 2004, and 2006. Gerhard is a frequent contributor to the SANS Top 20 expert consensus identifying the most critical security vulnerabilities. Gerhard is also a highly regarded author and is perhaps best known for publishing the "Laws of Vulnerabilities." He is one of the inventors of the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) and holds numerous patents in the field of managed network security.

Gerhard holds masters and PhD degrees in computer science from the University of Linz, Austria.

Chris Jones, Staff Research Associate, Berkeley Institute of the Environment

The Berkeley Institute of the Environment (BIE) mission is to leverages UC Berkeley’s collective resources for multidisciplinary research, teaching, and action to help address the planet’s most critical environmental problems. Chris’s research at BIE has centered around the application of input-output analysis to consumer product level carbon footprint assessment. Much of his work centers on enriching existing models to provide more detailed and specific product level output. He is also the creator of the online climate footprint calculator, http://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/ and a Staff Researcher for the Urban Sustainability Initiative.

Other research interests include modeling household and city-level environmental impacts; lifecycle assessment; rural and urban development; climate change; sustainable forestry.

Chris received his Masters Degree from the Energy and Resources Group (ERG) at UC Berkeley. ERG is an interdisciplinary academic unit whose mission is to develop, transmit and apply critical knowledge to enable a future in which human material needs and a healthy environment are mutually and sustainably satisfied.