Team and Company

Thomas Jensen is the Managing Director of iCatalysts and Co-Founder of Entrepreneur Futures Network (EFN). Tom has 30 years of experience starting and accelerating venture-backed companies and leading global consulting practices and projects for Fortune 500 companies.

Tom leads iCatalysts strategy and open innovation services and directs our technology advisory, coaching and acceleration work.

Tom served as Global Practice Director of Sustainable Solutions at SAIC, an $11 Billion Fortune 500 company that is an international leader in technology innovation, development and applications. Tom served as principal founder and vice president at Formatics Technologies, a venture capital-backed software company spun off from SAIC that used big data and intelligent matching to accelerate sustainable manufacturing in the chemical and food processing industries.

Tom has taught venture design at the University of California at Berkeley, lectured at Columbia and UC Berkeley’s Business Schools, and lectured in engineering and environmental management at Stanford University.

He earned a BA in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles and an MA from the Claremont Colleges.

Lee Bruno has more than 20 years of experience in technology markets and advising tech companies and investors. As a seasoned innovation and market researcher, Lee brings deep experience in researching and analyzing emerging technology, market and investment trends in multiple segments including cleantech, energy, and IT. Lee’s work emphasizes the identification and assessment of early stage innovations within context of market opportunities and the patterns of leading edge enterprise formation and growth.

His consumer and business market trend analysis writings have appeared in several leading publications like The Guardian, MIT Tech Review, Stanford Social Innovation Review and The Economist.

He has held key editorial positions as Director of Special Reports at The 451 Group, an IT analyst firm and prior to that at Red Herring where as a senior editor he developed award winning briefings on hi-tech industry trends. Lee is currently director of strategic research at E-Cubed Ventures, LLC, a technology venture development and strategy firm.

He graduated with a B.S. in Biology from San Francisco State University and a M.A. in Journalism from Boston University.

Hilal is a leader in the transformation of the power and utilities domain over the past 16 years, with expertise in conceptualization, assessment, and deployment of various technological solutions. These include system deployment for power system monitoring and control, communication infrastructure and asset management using drones and situational awareness. He was instrumental in development and deployment of behind the meter communication technology to leverage the customer technologies to benefit utility system modernization. He has experience working on large R&D grants funded by the DOE and CEC in support of utility infrastructure modernization. Hilal has experience with startups and large organizations including Siemens and San Diego Gas and Electric Company.

Hilal holds a M.S in Engineering Management from the University of Minnesota and a B.S Electrical Engineering University of Mumbai.

Wayne Larocque has more than 30 years of experience in business development with consumer products companies, angel investing and private equity. As an independent angel investor and the Principal of Larocque & Associates, a consulting firm specializing in fundraising and business development strategy for early stage companies, he supported and helped launch several clean technology initiatives at the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Wayne’s consulting clients include a variety of young companies in the technology and cleantech sectors, as well as companies on the funding side of the business, such as Acuity Ventures, LLC, a Silicon Valley venture capital fund.

Wayne is a graduate of Stanford University.

Steven is an expert in clean technology and energy production and generation technologies, markets and policy. He has over 30 years of experience in private industry and consulting.

He has written and reviewed more than 100 grant and contract proposals to government agencies.

Steven has led consulting work for many public and private sector clients in the past decade such as the City of Santa Clarita, the City of Los Angeles, the Port of San Diego, the Port of Portland, SMUD, Bank of America, SAP, Talisman Energy UK, Mittal Steel, Hellenic Petroleum, Toyota, and Hess Corporation. 

Steven is a graduate of Stanford University.