Who's speaking at Financing Wind New York? Hear from these 12 influential people

There are just a couple of months to go until Financing Wind New York, where we'll be discussing the most important issues in the US wind market with a host of top names. Here are 12 people that you'll be able to hear from.

For more information and to book tickets, visit our conference website.

It's now just two months until our first US conference on 30th May, which we are hosting with our headline sponsor GCube Insurance Services, and tickets are going fast! You may have seen our speaker announcements on LinkedIn, and here's our complete run-down of the speakers we've announced to date.

1. Alicia Barton

Our keynote speaker, Alicia Barton, is president and CEO of the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA). She's worked in leadership roles in public and private clean energy projects for over a decade. In her current role at NYSERDA, she is leading efforts to make New York a global hub for offshore wind.

2. Nick Knapp

Nick Knapp, President of CohnReznick Capital, will also be speaking. Nick primarily focuses on M&A buy-side and sell-side and raising, structuring and negotiating tax equity investments, with a core focus on utility scale wind and solar projects.

3. Shalini Ramanathan

We're also looking forward to hearing from Shalini Ramanathan of RES Americas. Shalini joined the US subsidiary of the RES Group in 2007 as a project developer and rose to vice-president of development before moving to vice-president of origination in 2014. During her career, she has closed deals worth $2.5bn on wind, solar and energy storage projects totalling 1.5GW, and negotiated off-take agreements with firms including General Motors, Google, Microsoft and Xcel Energy.

4. Ted Brandt

Ted is CEO of Marathon Capital. He co-founded the company in 1999 to provide independent investment banking and financial advisory services in the North American wind industry. In those 18 years it has advised on more than 100 projects.

5. Susan Nickey

Susan is Managing Director at Hannon Armstrong, and is also on the board of directors at AWEA. She has been instrumental in Hannon Armstrong's minority investments totalling approximately $400 million in a diversified portfolio of wind projects, with a total capacity of over 2,500 MW.

6. Steve Lockard

Steve joined TPI, the world's only major independent blade manufacturer, in 1999 and became its president and CEO in 2004. TPI, based in Arizona, has secured key overseas transactions in the last year which include long-term deals with Siemens Gamesa in Turkey; with Vestas in Latin America; and with Senvion in Asia-Pacific and Latin America.

7. Rob Threlkeld

Rob is Global Manager of Renewable Energy at General Motors, leading the company's efforts to deliver its operations using 100% renewable energy by 2050. He manages its growing portfolio of renewables and leads the development of new projects to meet sustainability goals.

8. Rob Freeman

Rob is a CEO and founding member of developer Tradewind, which was established in 2003 with backing from local angel investors. In 2006, he led the firm as it teamed up with Italian utility Enel, and the pair have since completed wind and solar projects worth over $5bn in the US.

9. Declan Flanagan

Declan is CEO of developer Lincoln Clean Energy, which he set up in 2009 and led through its acquisition by I Squared in late 2015. His highlights of last year included completing a 253MW wind farm for Amazon in Texas, where Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was famously photographed standing on a turbine smashing a bottle of Champagne.

10. Jatin Sharma

Jatin joined specialist renewables insurer GCube Insurance Services in 2010, and was promoted to president of its North American operation in January. He specialises in underwriting offshore wind, wave and tidal projects; and is a recognised thought leader on the insurance side of the wind sector.

11. Ray Wood

Ray has built a reputation as a big dealmaker in the US wind market thanks to almost three decades’ experience in investment banking, including more than 20 years specialising in energy. He spent 22 years at Credit Suisse before joining Bank of America Merrill Lynch in 2012, where he is now Global Head of Power and Renewables.

12. Jayshree Desai

Jayshree is Chief Operating Officer at Clean Line Energy Partners LLC, and has been an independent director of TPI Composites since September 2017. She previously spent 7 years directing corporate and project finance for Texas-based firm Horizon Wind Energy.

We are hosting Financing Wind New York is partnership with headline sponsor GCube Insurance Services, gold sponsor Marathon Capital, silver sponsor Tamarindo Communications, and supporting organisation Tradewind Energy.