Meet The Team
Ian Monroe, CEO
Raised on a small farm in the wilds of Mendocino County, CA, Ian graduated with BS and MS degrees in Earth Systems from Stanford University. He spent most of the last decade bouncing around the world on projects linked to clean energy, international development, and sustainable business, working with clients ranging from ginormous corporations and government agencies to NGOs and family farmer cooperatives. He finds joy in both big picture strategizing and the inner-workings of spreadsheets and code. He's rather obsessed with the power of environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), as well as edible mushroom hunting, and any/all pick-up sports. He also moonlights as a Visiting Scholar and Lecturer at Stanford, where he teaches classes on climate change decision-making and renewable energy technologies.
Kirstin Cummings, CTO
Born and raised in the beautiful Bay Area, Kirstin graduated from Stanford University with a BS in Symbolic Systems and an MA in Music, Science, and Technology. She began her career doing machine learning research at Stanford's Center for the Study of Language and Information, writing code to help computer programs learn how to do things like solve math problems and navigate virtual cars down virtual roads. Moving into the start-up world, she became one of the first software engineers at imeem, an early music-streaming service. She recently earned a Graphic Design certificate from UC Berkeley Extension and, totally unrelated, an Artisan Cheesemaking certificate. In addition to her interests in development and design, she is a founding member of women's vocal ensemble Musae, now in its ninth season.
Yang Ruan, Chief Product Officer
Currently a grad student at UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy, Yang is building bridges between policymakers and engineers (fancying herself a bit of both). With an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from MIT, she has experience in private sector supply chains from working on various stages of product development, which links nicely into her research on the effectiveness of low carbon fuel standards at Berkeley. Yang also worked on MIT's Climate CoLab project, attempting to make climate-economic models a bit more accessible to the public. She dabbles in a multitude of languages (PHP, MySQL, VBScript, JavaScript, Java, C++, and MATLAB), and she's excited to delve into the intricacies of environmental finance, dynamic modeling, and information economics with Oroeco.
Dav Clark, Chief Scientist
Dav does research on how people make decisions about climate change as a Psychology PhD student at UC Berkeley, working with the Cognition and Action Laboratory and the Reasoning Research Group. Dav also sports an MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience from MIT, as well as degrees in Math, Computer Science, and Linguistics from University of Maryland. He is an experienced web developer and is a partner at KeepOpen.com, a web publishing company, as well as an accomplished juggler (both literally and metaphorically). He's lending his expertise to help Oroeco build engaging apps that motivate real change.
Leighton Wallace, Chief Backend Dude
Leighton is a problem solver, and he loves to solve problems with code. After graduating from Stanford University with a BS in Symbolic Systems, he worked at Pinger; first as a lowly intern doing web development and later blossoming into a senior backend and web services engineer. Having done his time dealing with carriers and building scalable systems to help young people text for free, he is excited to lend his problem solving skills to help Oroeco help the world. When he's not solving problems with code, one can find Leighton at a salsa club spinning up a sweat, in the kitchen making the perfect scrambled eggs, or wishing he was in better shape playing pickup basketball.
Arash Danaie, COO
Arash is our generalist with a technical twist. He's spent the last two decades hacking away enterprise software, making data useful for startups to Fortune 500 companies. After spending half of his career growing biotech startups in Maryland, he relocated to sunny Pittsburgh to complete his MBA at Carnegie Mellon University, where he resides with his partner Alaina and their two cats, Gooz and Ayatolah Catmayni. He's excited about helping the world shift their financial impact to match their personal values. Arash gets his hands dirty with our data, business model, and codebase.
Bianca Silva, Media Maestro
Born and raised in South Africa, Bianca graduated with an MA in International Relations and International Economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Her interest in energy issues and sustainability sparked while working as a journalist in South Africa and led to her completing a concentration in Energy, Resources and the Environment (ERE) at SAIS. She has since been assisting sustainability-concerned startups, with their media, research and analysis, business development and events. Bianca is curious by nature, finds that it has yet to kill the proverbial cat, and is cultivating her growing addiction to the exciting startup environment in San Francisco. She maintains big dreams of helping to find solutions to the major global energy challenges.
Josh Herlands, Wizard of Finance and Legalese
Emerging from the coal mining heartland of Northeast Pennsylvania, Josh has focused much of his career on renewable energy finance and development. He has previously worked with the energy investment banking team at (canary in the global economic coal mine) Lehman Brothers, the renewable energy acquisition team at MAP Royalty, and has conducted financial and market-based consulting work for various organizations in places such as San Francisco, Mumbai, and Lesotho. Josh's passion for environmental stewardship stems from his love of playing in the mountains and wandering through deserts. In addition to his desk-bound experience, Josh has spent significant time leading wilderness therapy trips for at-risk youth. He holds BA and MA degrees in International Policy Studies from Stanford University and is in the process of obtaining his JD from Harvard Law School.
Tobin Keller, Artist-in-Residence
A maestro of multiple media, Tobin's tremendous talents transcend painting, illustration, photography and graphic design. Indigenous to Ukiah, CA ("haiku" spelled backwards), Tobin ventured to Vancouver for a BA in Integrated Media from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, then returned to San Francisco for an MFA from Academy of Art University. His claims to fame include surviving a hippie childhood, an extensive collection of high-tech kitchen gadgetry, (somewhat) sustainable meat procurement (via his also extensive collection of guns), and beating cancer. He's convinced Oroeco will save the world (or at least will look pretty in the attempt).
