Boryana Straubel
Boryana Straubel, Executive Director of the Straubel Foundation, is passionate about growing future leaders. Over a decade at Tesla and the Wikimedia Foundation, Boryana applied her expertise in identifying and developing human potential and top performance. Boryana is also an Analytics and Operations powerhouse and has led key functions such as People Analytics, HR Data and Systems, HR Operation, Business Analytics, Change Management, Talent Acquisition, Performance Management and M&A Integration.
While focusing on Impact Investments that help accelerate the transition to a more environmentally sustainable future, Boryana learned that the fashion industry is one of the largest global polluters (>8%). Driven by the fact that transitioning to recycled gold could decarbonise the fashion industry by ~2% (1.4-1.8%), Boryana founded Generation Collection.
Boryana holds an B.S. in Economics from University of California Berkeley, and both an M.S. in Management (Sloan) and an M.S. in Management Science and Engineering (Industrial Engineering) from Stanford University. A life-long learner and global nomad, Boryana was born and raised in Bulgaria, and has lived in Germany, Austria and Russia. She calls the United States home since 2005.
JB Straubel
JB Straubel is Co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of Tesla. At Tesla he focused on technical direction and engineering design including battery technology, power electronics, motors, software, firmware and controls. JB is an inventor on over 30 patents covering most areas of Tesla’s core battery, motor and controls systems.
JB also founded Redwood Materials, a recycling engineering company focusing on what he believes is the next important trend in sustainability: the transition to a circular economy.
In addition to his work, JB is a lecturer at his alma mater, Stanford University, where he created an engineering class and lab focused on energy storage integration (CEE 176C) in the Engineering Department.
JB received an B.S. in Energy Systems Engineering and an M.S. in Energy Engineering, emphasis on energy conversion, both from Stanford University.