Mary Ashe Yamada currently serves as the Associate Director of Innovative Partnerships for U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Technology Transitions (OTT). In this role she leads the Innovative Partnership Mechanism (IPM) portfolio which spans the Department-wide Partnership Intermediary Agreements (PIAs) with EnergyWERX, TechWERX, and ConnectWERX, as well as the Foundation for Energy Security and Innovation (FESI). She previously served as Chief of Staff for OTT, where Ms. Yamada led the Department’s efforts to establish FESI and development of OTT’s PIA service.
Prior to OTT, Ms. Yamada served as a Technology to Market Advisor at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) where she helped prepare innovative energy technologies for transition from the lab to the market. In addition, Ms. Yamada was integral to the creation of ARPA-E’s program SCALEUP – Seeding Critical Advances for Leading Energy technologies with Untapped Potential. The program builds from ARPA-E’s primary research and development (R&D) focus to support the scaling of high-risk and potentially disruptive new technologies across the full spectrum of energy applications.
Prior to joining ARPA-E in 2019, Ms. Yamada served as an Associate Director within the Navigant Consulting (now Guidehouse) Energy Practice. During her near decade-long career within Navigant, she managed technology transformation efforts and developed long-term program plans for the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Her work focused on conducting engineering and technology assessments, market evaluations, and economic impact analysis for innovative energy technologies.
Ms. Yamada earned an M.S. in Civil & Environmental Engineering, as well as a B.S. in Civil Engineering and a B.S. in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University.