grid-modernization
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Heather Martin Makes the Invisible Infrastructure Impossible to Ignore
After two decades turning complicated systems into clear stories, the Maine-based executive has arrived at the grid's least glamorous - and most consequential - layer: the network underneath it all.
Hersh Saluja Built E2 One Practical Problem at a Time
He started as E2’s only engineer in 1988. Nearly four decades later, the firm had become an 800-plus-person infrastructure business - and its founder was learning how to hand the controls forward without walking away.
Kaitlyn Albertoli Is Teaching the Grid to See Trouble Coming
She began with a jewelry business, a sustainability course, and 35 conversations with utilities. Now her company is turning inspection images into early warnings for the infrastructure that keeps the lights on.
Jim Murphy Built for the Grid's Long Game
After 25 years beside founder Michael Polsky, Invenergy's finance-minded co-founder has taken the CEO seat. His operating idea is simple: relationships compound, execution matters, and the power grid cannot run on slogans.
Vishal Kapadia
Vishal Kapadia is the Chief Executive Officer of LineVision, a Boston-based company that bolts non-contact sensors to high-voltage power lines and, through dynamic line rating, squeezes as much as 40% more capacity out of wires already in the ground. He took the top job in June 2025 after co-founder Hudson Gilmer moved to chairman. Before LineVision he ran energy transformation at Walmart, where he built a coast-to-coast EV fast-charging plan and oversaw more than 2 GW of clean energy; earlier he was CFO and CCO of Orsted's onshore renewables business and led renewable-energy investing at Morgan Stanley. Across his career he has financed or developed over 15 GW of energy and mobility infrastructure.
Drew Baglino
Drew Baglino spent 18 years at Tesla building the guts of the electric age - the Model S powertrain, the Powerwall and Megapack, the 4680 battery cell and a clean-sheet 50 GWh factory in Texas. In 2024 he walked away as Senior Vice President of Powertrain and Energy and aimed his next act at the one piece of grid hardware almost nobody had touched in a century: the transformer. His startup, Heron Power, builds software-controlled solid-state transformers and in February 2026 raised a $140 million Series B co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Breakthrough Energy Ventures to build a 40 GW U.S. factory. He also quietly founded a residential heat-pump company, Sadi Thermal Machines.
Arch Rao
Arch Rao is the Founder and CEO of SPAN, a San Francisco-based clean energy hardware company that reinvented the home electrical panel. A Stanford-trained mechanical engineer and former Tesla Energy leader who helped launch Powerwall, Powerpack, and SolarCity products, Rao founded SPAN in 2018 with a singular mission: rapidly decarbonize American homes by making the century-old electrical panel smart. SPAN's intelligent panels enable circuit-level control, real-time energy monitoring, solar and battery integration, and grid demand response - turning a neglected utility box into the command center for home electrification. With over $522M in total funding and backing from Wellington Management, Fifth Wall, Robert Downey Jr.'s FootPrint Coalition, and Amazon's Alexa Fund, SPAN is building the grid-edge infrastructure layer for the coming decades of home electrification.
Sam D'Amico
Sam D'Amico is the founder and CEO of Impulse Labs, a San Francisco-based startup building the world's most powerful and precise home appliances. A Stanford-trained electrical engineer who cut his teeth writing battery firmware for a solar car, then spent a decade building AR/VR hardware at Google Glass, Oculus, and Meta, D'Amico founded Impulse in 2021 after eating a pizza in 45 seconds at a wood-fired restaurant in Tokyo and deciding he needed to bring that power home. The result: a $5,999 battery-integrated induction cooktop that plugs into a standard outlet, boils a liter of water in under 40 seconds, and moonlights as a distributed grid storage node. Impulse has raised $25 million from Lux Capital, Fifth Wall, Lachy Groom, and Construct Capital.