Marilyn A. Brown is a Regents’ Professor and the Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she created and co-leads the Climate and Energy Policy Laboratory and the Master of Sustainable Energy and Environmental Management. Her research focuses on the design and modeling of energy and carbon reduction policies and programs, highlighting opportunities on the customer side of the electric meter. Using data analytics and energy-engineering-behavioral models, she examines energy technology and market transitions. 

Prior to joining Georgia Tech, she worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where she deployed her expertise in scenarios focused on a clean energy future, bringing a fact-based and authoritative perspective to energy sustainability discussions, influencing policy initiatives in the U.S. and around the globe. One of her favorite accomplishments is the co-creation of Georgia Tech’s Master of Sustainable Energy and Environmental Management in 2018. 

In 2007, Professor Brown contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. From 2010 – 2017, she served two terms as a presidential appointee to the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the nation's largest public power provider. From 2014 – 2018 she served two terms on the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Electricity Advisory Committee where she chaired the Smart Grid Subcommittee. She has written six books on the clean energy transition. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences, and she served two terms on the TVA Board of Directors and the U.S. DOE Electricity Advisory Committee.

Renee Wegrzyn serves as the first director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), appointed on Oct. 11, 2022, by President Joe Biden. Previously, Wegrzyn served as a vice president of business development at Ginkgo Bioworks and head of innovation at Concentric by Ginkgo where she focused on applying the tools of synthetic biology to outpace infectious diseases. Wegrzyn comes to ARPA-H with experience working for over a decade at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), five of those years as a program manager with a $250 million portfolio, and as a technical advisor to the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity. At DARPA, Wegrzyn leveraged the tools of synthetic biology and gene editing to enhance biosecurity, support the domestic bioeconomy, and thwart biothreats. Wegrzyn received the Superior Public Service Medal for her work and contributions at DARPA. 

Before joining DARPA, she led teams in private industry across a range of specialties including biosecurity and gene therapies. Wegrzyn served on the scientific advisory board for the National Academies’ Standing Committee on Biotechnology Capabilities and National Security Needs, among other boards in government and the private sector. She holds doctoral and bachelor’s degrees in applied biology from the Georgia Institute of Technology, was a fellow in the Center for Health Security Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative, and completed her postdoctoral training as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in Heidelberg, Germany.

As a student at Georgia Tech, Sean both ran e-commerce businesses and worked on supply chain optimization at an automotive manufacturer in Germany. Leveraging these experiences to gain firsthand insight into the fragmentation and disconnected technology of the third-party logistics industry, Sean co-founded Stord in 2015 with Jacob Boudreau. 

Stord’s mission is to make supply chains a competitive advantage for brands of all sizes. Stord enables brands with “Prime-like” logistics by combining a nationwide logistics network with advanced technology. 

Since founding Stord, the company has raised over $300 million of venture capital investment and employs more than 500 people. Sean has since been recognized as a Thiel Fellow, in the 2019 Forbes 30 under 30 list, and in 2021 by Forbes as the youngest CEO of a $1 billion-plus private company.