Cleantech industry training new leaders

As the cleantech industry picks up steam in Colorado, the Colorado Cleantech Industry Association (CCIA) wants to make sure there are enough talented individuals able to bring these new technologies to market.

CCIA has teamed up with the Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University and the University of Colorado Boulder to offer the Cleantech Fellows Institute, a training ground for seasoned executives from other industries who are interested in starting cleantech businesses but don’t know where to begin.

Cleantech covers many different sectors, including renewables such as wind, solar, biofuels, geothermal and advanced transportation technologies.

The program helps entrepreneurs understand the opportunities and challenges of starting and growing companies in the cleantech industry. In 2012, CCIA received grant money to seed the effort. The organization hired a director and put together a 14-week curriculum to help executives understand the different sectors involved in cleantech and where the opportunities were, said Christine Shapard, executive director of CCIA.

The institute graduated its first five fellows in January 2013, and three of those five are starting companies based on what they learned, she said.

“They came in not having connections with the cleantech investment or technology community or thought leader community,” Shapard said. “We built that ecosystem around them. A couple came in with their own ideas of what they were interested in and we gave them mentors and handholds in the industry that would accelerate their ability to grow a company.”

The fellows also were introduced to researchers at Colorado’s major research universities and federal research labs, such as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

The program has $100,000 in grant money for 2013 and 2014 and, according to Shapard, CCIA would like to take the program national or even international in the next five years.

“Right now it is a model program for the U.S. and something we would like to expand,” she said. “We don’t know what it will look like yet, but we have high hopes for it.”

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