Many of our board members and advisors are from, or are affiliated with, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as is PurposeEnergy founder, Eric Fitch.
Founder & CEO Eric Fitch is our visionary leader who first imagined and then built a better solution for treating the organic waste produced by beverage and food manufacturing processes. His passion for technology (fine-tuned during his education at MIT), his love for the environment, and his years spent helping to launch a number of successful start-ups (biotech, clean tech, photonics, consumer electronics) inspired Fitch to establish PurposeEnergy and start “Saving the Earth. One beer at a time™” (Purpose Energy’s original tagline).
As the company’s leader, Eric is focused on strategic development, operations, and sales and is personally involved in every engagement and installation. When he is not traveling the country, visiting customers, touring production plants, conducting a Blitz Engineering Study or wastewater audit, and overseeing the installation of bioreactors, he can be found at home in Arlington, Massachusetts with his brilliant and beautiful wife and young family.
If you happened to be in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park from 2010 to 2012, you might have encountered Todd Hasselbeck leading the park’s restoration. He has also worked as a Clean Energy Fellow at the New England Clean Energy Council and as an advisor to the renewable energy industry. Add corporate positions including Operations Director at Cisco Systems and VP of International Sales at Boston Technology and you realize that Todd brings a unique resume to the table.
A graduate of Cornell University, Todd is at the helm of PurposeEnergy’s worldwide sales organization (did we mention he has built several worldwide sales organizations in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe?) His is focused on identifying prospective customers, building PurposeEnergy’s awareness across the food and beverage industry, managing the PurposeEnergy sales team and, of course, making sales presentations across the land.
Todd and his wife Barbara live in Rowley, Massachusetts and have two grown sons, James and Luke.
You can count the number of operations executives with Jeff’s qualifications on one finger. Jeff has a 30+ year history of winning and implementing water treatment and industrial construction contracts up and down the East Coast and across the Midwest. As site and relationship manager, he led the construction of four IBM manufacturing plants. He is a DBIA designated Design Build professional. A licensed professional engineer. And LEED certified.
Here at PurposeEnergy, Jeff is responsible for daily company operations that include sourcing contractors and construction teams, equipment procurement and logistics and working with his fellow executive team members on Blitz engineering studies and design/build projects.
Jeff is a graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology where he earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. He lives with his wife Erika, their three teenagers and the family dog in Middlebury, Vermont. When he is not busy revolutionizing waste water treatment for the food and beverage industry, Jeff can be found cooking, playing soccer, skiing or wake boarding.
Our Chief Scientist, Dr. David O’Keefe, has had a long career in the interface of the fields of soil science, solid waste and wastewater treatment, and agronomy. His lengthy list of accomplishments includes the successful application of anaerobic digestion and aerobic composting systems in the treatment of solid and liquid waste. In addition, he has developed and patented technology for biological nutrient removal from agricultural and industrial wastewater. His work involves process design, startup, commercialization, and the trouble shooting of treatment systems.
Dr. O’Keefe’s experience as a scientist and microbiologist encompasses commercial work as well as basic and applied research. To date, he has published over thirty articles and book chapters. Dr. O’Keefe is also the inventor of the Biphase Orbicular Bioreactor and holds patents in the field of anaerobic digestion and biological, wastewater treatment. He is an avid sportsman and once played guitar in Bo Diddley’s band.
Sharon Doble Bolen is a 20 year accounting veteran and CPA who serves as PurposeEnergy’s Controller. She is responsible for all accounting functions associated with the daily operation of the company.
In addition to these duties, she performs forecasting and budgetary analyses, oversees the installation and maintenance of our accounting software and systems, prepares periodic financial statements for our boardmembers and advisors, and manages compliance reporting. Sharon is a native of Boston’s North Shore and resides in Haverhill, MA.
