Women in Energy Dinner: Cecily Kovatch, Founder, Fueled for Growth

LOCATION: The New School 6 E 16th Street, room 1618 New York, NY 10011 Please join the Center on Global Energy Policy for a Women in Energy dinner and roundtable discussion with Cecily Kovatch, Founder of Fueled for Growth. Ms. Kovatch will discuss her academic and job histories, career paths, and perspectives on what it means to be a female leader in the energy industry. Biography Cecily Kovatch is the founder of Fueled for Growth, a consulting firm focused on innovation in the energy sector.  Cecily has 25 years’ leadership experience in energy, industrials, financial services and retail/consumer.  Throughout her career, she has worked on groundbreaking projects and is known for her innovative thinking and drive to take on and solve complex problems.  She has built and led numerous new business lines and departments.  She leverages that “intrapreneurship” expertise to advise early stage startups to grow into sustainable business entities. She also helps corporations to develop successful innovation programs, new customer solutions, and fruitful relationships with the startup ecosystem. Cecily created, launched and led the innovation program at Covanta, the world’s largest waste-to-energy (WTE) company, to find new organic growth opportunities.  She also built the marketing department and directed all marketing activities for the renewable energy company.  In the financial services sector, she built and led the Energy & Industrials research team for Standard & Poor’s Vista Research, helping institutional clients better understand and value the sector.  She was business strategy manager at American Express where she developed the realignment strategy for the US Commercial Card salesforce in order to increase market penetration and expand into new customer segments.  Prior to that she was regional manager at Hess Corp. where she ran the P&L for 13 retail locations.  Cecily began her career as a wireline field engineer at Schlumberger Oilfield Services where she worked on over 300 oil rigs.  She is recipient of a Wildcatter Award for discovering oil & gas in Brazoria County, Texas.  Cecily lends her expertise to Stevens Institute of Technology where she teaches Entrepreneurial Thinking to engineers and is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Stevens Venture Center.  Additionally, she is a mentor to startups through VentureWell, PowerBridgeNY, and other incubator and accelerator programs.  She holds a bachelor’s degree in Geology from Princeton University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. This event is open to current female students.  Space is limited therefore please register only if you can commit to attending the roundtable. Dinner will be provided.  If you have any questions, please contact: jem2245@sipa.columbia.edu