Mike is a PhD geoscientist who spent years in senior leadership at the DOE's Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, where he led strategic vision, market analysis, and program development for geothermal and co-authored the "Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Next-Generation Geothermal Power" report. Before the DOE, he worked in lawmaking on Capitol Hill and is currently leading a multi-disciplinary consortium to catalyze capital formation for next-generation geothermal in the Mountain West. Having helped write the federal playbook for commercializing the technology Birch is building, and now actively working to unlock the capital flows that will fund it, Mike brings policy credibility and commercial connectivity that very few people in the geothermal space can match.