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• our carbon projects
  • Farm Methane Avoidance
    • Laurelbrook Farm
    • 
  • Renewable Energy
    • Greensburg Wind Farm Project
    • St. Leon Wind Power Project
    • Wray School District Wind Turbine
    • Alex Little Soldier Wind Turbine
    • Mandan, Hidatsa & Arikara Nation Demonstration Wind Turbine Project
    • Toksook Bay Alaska Native Village Wind Turbines
    • Kasigluk Alaska Native Village Wind Turbines
    • Essex Junction Municipal Biogas Generator
    • The Boulder Creek Hydro Project
    • Farmer Distributed Wind
    • 
  • Farm Methane Power
    • Noblehurst Family Farm Methane Project
    • Mains Family Dairy Farm
    • Brubaker Family Dairy Farm Methane Project
    • Wanner Family Dairy Farm Methane Project
    • Hillcrest Saylor Family Dairy Farm Methane Project
    • Schrack Family Farm Methane Project
    • Dovan Family Farm Methane Project
    • Penn England Family Dairy Farm Methane Project
    • 
  • Solar
    • Stonyfield Farm Solar Array, the largest in New Hampshire
    • 
  • Biomass
    • Trellis Biomass Conversion Project
    • 
  • Transportation Efficiency
    • Cascade Sierra Solutions Trucking Efficiency Project
    • 
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about us

NativeEnergy is a climate solutions innovator and recognized leader in the US carbon market, offering services that reduce carbon emissions to fight, global warming. In the latest North American survey of top providers (COPEM,Oct08), NativeEnergy ranked #1. Since 2000, we have used our distinctive “help build” model to support the construction of new wind farms, other renewable generation and carbon reduction projects. NativeEnergy offers its customers carbon-solutions consulting services and carbon offsets and renewable energy credits (RECs).

By helping finance construction of Native American, family farm, and community-based renewable energy and carbon reduction projects, our customers help communities in need build sustainable economies. We also have significant Native American ownership, providing tribes the ability to share in the business value we are creating.

We have strong relationships with environmental NGOs and business partners who work with us to build public awareness and promote action in the fight to reduce global warming pollution. We are a founding member of ICROA, the leading international organization of carbon offset providers.

Our Management
Tom Boucher, Chief Executive Officer
Jeff Bernicke, President & COO
Tom Stoddard, Vice President and General Counsel
Tom Rawls, VP, Sales & Marketing
Patrick Spears, Member, Board of Directors

Our Staff
Vermont
Ariana F. Wammer, Marketing Coordinator & Customer Support
George Hoguet, Director, Business Development
Brian Killkelley, Director, Supply Origination & Management
Sean Breen, Director, Supply Origination & Management
Joel Boucher, Creative Director
Kevin Hackett, Inside Sales Manager 
Adam Scherr, Sales Advisor
Owen Glubiak, Sales Advisor
Kathy FitzGerald, Customer Service & Office Manager

Midwest/Chicago
Mary Panks-Holmes, Director of Client Strategy

Central
Jonny Bearcub Stiffarm, Director, Business Development

Our Consultants
Robert Gough, Business Development Advisor
Chip Comins, Business Development Advisor
Steve Allenby, Business Development Advisor





Tom Boucher
CEO

Tom Boucher, our Chief Executive Officer, is an energy industry veteran. His experience spans utility strategic and financial planning, power marketing, energy supply and renewable energy projects. In 2000, Tom initiated and co-founded NativeEnergy, with the hope of building a renewable energy marketing company that would expand the creation of innovative services, worldwide marketing and strategic relationships to support renewable energy development and fight global warming. With his wife Jeanne, Tom built their own energy-efficient Vermont country home over 30 years ago, and still harvests wood for much of their heating requirements. As a boy, Tom learned wood and metal working from his dad and grandfather - and while still in school, designed and built a small wind turbine for his backyard. Now years later, he proudly views new small and large-scale wind turbines, biogas, and solar projects that are the result of his team's efforts.

 

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Jeff Bernicke
President and COO

Jeff Bernicke, our new President, oversees all day-to-day business operations and administrative areas of the Company. In addition. he is responsible for NativeEnergy’s project origination and development, asset management, and supply partnerships. He has over 18 years of experience in business development, strategy, and finance in renewable energy, Cleantech, and manufacturing industries. Prior to NativeEnergy, Jeff held senior positions with GE-AES Greenhouse Gas Services, DTE Energy Resources, and the Environmental Capital Network (precursor to Cleantech Venture Network). Jeff holds an MBA with distinction and an MS in resource ecology from the University of Michigan and BS degrees in business and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. Jeff lives with his wife, Veronica, three sons, and various cats and dogs in Shelburne.

 

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Tom Stoddard
Vice President & General Counsel

Tom Stoddard is NativeEnergy’s Co-founder, Vice President and General Counsel. He has provided legal advice and conducted business transactions at prominent law firms in Boston, MA and Manchester, NH and subsequently at Green Mountain Energy, where he focused on energy supply contracts, regulatory compliance, and substantiation for marketing claims. With NativeEnergy, Tom helped create the International Carbon Reduction and Offset Alliance and served for two years as Co-Chair of the organization. Tom co-founded NativeEnergy with the firm belief that business can be good for the environment, and that we can all do well by doing good.

Tom lives with his wife Stephanie, a visiting nurse, their son Ryan, and their dogs and cats on a farm bordering the Green Mountain National Forest, where he and his family raise chickens and grow much of their own food. As a child, Tom grew to love the outdoors while on long walks in the woods behind his family's retreat on a Vermont lake. He is an enthusiastic catch-and release fisherman (during all four seasons), and enjoys crafting furniture in his barn woodshop.

 

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Tom Rawls
VP, Marketing & Sales

Thomas H. Rawls was the president of THR Associates, a public affairs consulting firm that specialized in environmental and renewable energy policy and public relations. Before that, he was Chief Environmental Officer of Green Mountain Energy Company, and during his career in journalism was the editor-in-chief of several magazines. He is the author of Small Places: In Search of a Vanishing America, published by Little, Brown & Co. He lives on a Tree Farm in Vermont with one wife and two dogs.

  

 

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Patrick Spears
Member, Board of Directors

Mr. Patrick Spears is a member of NativeEnergy's Board of Directors and co-founder and President of the Intertribal Council On Utility Policy (COUP), representing eleven Tribes in the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Nebraska. Intertribal COUP is involved in policy issues and outreach education to Tribal governments, Tribal Colleges, and indigenous environmental organizations on telecommunications, climate change, energy planning, energy efficiency and renewable energy development. The policy work includes specific proposals to support renewable energy development, energy efficiency, and as team member of the Intertribal Energy Network. Mr. Spears has worked in tribal government and Indian programs in various capacities over the past 30 years.

As a member of the development team, he assisted in the first commercial, utility scale wind turbine project (750 kW) at the Rosebud Casino and on feasibility and development of the 30 MW project for the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. He has provided consultant services for the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe on feasibility for community and wind-hydro pump storage projects and is currently consulting with the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe on community and rural wind projects. Spears also manages the wind energy feasibility and development for community and commercial wind power for the eight COUP Tribes in the 80 MW Intertribal Wind Project.

Intertribal COUP represents Tribal energy interests from regulatory and economic perspectives at regional and national levels on regulatory issues, policy analysis, energy development plans, and legislative proposals. Mr. Spears views energy as a key component of sustainable development and economic restoration. The energy interests range from utility regulation policy, energy planning, energy efficiency, and renewable energy with emphasis on wind energy development.

Mr. Spears is a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and completed undergraduate work in Sociology with emphases in Anthropology and Indian Studies from the University of South Dakota, and graduate study in Public Administration at the Washington D.C. Public Affairs Center, University of Southern California.

 

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Joel Boucher
Creative Director

Joel is NativeEnergy's creative director. While finishing his B.A. in visual communications in Tempe, Arizona and working as a freelance designer, Joel began work on branding NativeEnergy in 2002, and he has created a unique look for the Company's marketing programs, through print and interactive media outlets.

 

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Sean Breen
Director, Origination & Supply Management

Sean Breen is NativeEnergy’s Senior Business Development Manager. He comes to us after a three year stint in business and technology development at Microgy, Inc. where he helped develop new anaerobic digester projects. Prior to that, Sean spent more than twenty years in the electric and gas utility industry working in energy supply, resource planning and demand side management. Born and raised in Vermont, Sean and his wife, an elementary school educator, grow award-winning blueberries on their organic farm.

 

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Kathy FitzGerald
Customer Service & Office Manager

Kathy FitzGerald joined the NativeEnergy team in November of 2007 and has over twenty years of experience in program management, client/customer recruitment and relations, staff and client support, public relations and marketing, and business management. She has a BA in psychology with a minor in business, and a MA in Literature. When not at work Kathy enjoys volunteer work, writing, reading, the cinema, photography and travel.

 

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Ariana F. Wammer
Marketing Coordinator & Customer Support

Ariana joined NativeEnergy in July of 2008, after graduating from Saint Michael’s College where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science with a concentration in International Business. While attending Saint Michael’s she played on the Women’s Varsity Basketball team for two years. She then decided to study abroad for a semester through Boston University’s intern program in Sydney, Australia. Ariana has interned for both a corporate risk management and security company known as Business Risks International and a legal firm, as well as other companies associated with the healthcare field and securities lending. Ariana is a born and raised Vermonter and when she is not at work she enjoys being outside with her husband engaging in activities such as basketball, photography, ultimate frisbee, skiing, running, and camping.ariana.wammer@nativeenergy.com

 

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Owen Glubiak
Sales Advisor

Owen Glubiak joined NativeEnergy as an intern in June 2008 and was quickly hired on to join the team as an Inside Sales Representative in July 2008. He graduated from Saint Michael’s College in May 2008 with a double major in Economics and Business Administration, winning the Father Prevel award for the most outstanding male student of his graduating class. During his studies in college, he concentrated in environmental economics and energy efficiency establishing the college’s first carbon footprint calculation. His thesis in Economics analyzed the monetary costs and benefits of reducing the college’s carbon footprint by evaluating several energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies as well as carbon reducing programs for students and faculty. Originally from Chagrin Falls, Ohio, Owen grew up skiing, backpacking, camping, canoeing, and playing in the woods which made Vermont a perfect fit.

 

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Kevin Hackett
Sales Manager

Kevin Hackett is NativeEnergy’s Inside Sales Manager. Kevin came to NE with a sales and marketing background from the ski industry, where he designed and ran event marketing campaigns and provided support to sales staff and clients. Kevin was born and raised as a proud fifth generation Vermonter and graduated from Burlington, Vermont’s Champlain College with a degree in Business Management. When he is not working, Kevin enjoys spending time with his fiancée and his dog Kota, and skiing in the woods of the Green Mountains.

 

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Mary Panks-Holmes
Director of Client Strategy

Mary joined NativeEnergy in 2009. As Director of Client Strategy, she plays a number of roles in the organization, including leading the development of the firm’s strategic network, generating new business for the firm, and designing client strategies. Mary manages relationships with key collaborators like Natural Capitalism Solutions, MS&L Group, and Interface Raise. Before joining NativeEnergy, Mary worked as a consultant, developing marketing, corporate image, sales and growth strategies.
 
Born and raised in Traverse City, Michigan, Mary attended DePaul University in Chicago, studied Industrial and Organizational Psychology at Western Connecticut State and Behavioral Sciences at Grand Valley State. She recently completed Presidio Graduate School of Management’s Climate Change Intensive.

 

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George Hoguet
Director, Project Marketing

George Hoguet has more than 38 years in sales and marketing. With a BSEE from the University of Dayton, Ohio, George spent 28 years in the electrical power and controls industry advancing to senior posts including Automotive Marketing Manager and Director of Product Marketing with the Square D Company. In 2001, he made a major career shift into the environmental field leading the policy-based Cool Pennsylvania Coalition for Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future, and later worked as the Million Solar Roofs coordinator in Philadelphia. George joined NativeEnergy in 2004 to help the company advance its farm-based energy offerings, and relocated to Vermont in 2007.

George is a member of The Climate Project, the 1000 trained presenters for Al Gore's slideshow from the film, An Inconvenient Truth, and has been a member of Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future, Penn Environment, the Alliance for a Sustainable Future and a Steering Committee member of the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia. He is our representative to the Vermont Business for Social Responsibility network.

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Brian Killkelley
Director, Supply Origination & Management

Brian KillKelley is Director of Supply Origination at NativeEnergy. Brian has 20 years of experience in the energy business including utility power plant operations and engineering, Clean Air Act compliance planning and alternate fuels development at New York State Electric & Gas, residential energy auditing at Conservation Services Group, and Director of Renewable Development at Green Mountain Energy Company. Brian co-founded a wind development firm based in Vermont and has provided consulting services to businesses in the renewable energy industry. He is a licensed professional engineer and has an MS in Solar Energy Engineering.

 

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Adam Scherr
Sales Advisor

In December of 2006, Adam began his work with NativeEnergy as most would suspect, as an intern ‘jack of all trades’, doing anything and everything, from marketing to furniture assembly. In the summer of 2007, Adam had a brief tryst with the central pacific while conducting oceanographic research on the effects of climate change. He would return to Burlington and finish his collegiate career, completing his degree in Political Science at the University of Vermont. After celebrating his graduation, he renewed his efforts as a new fixture of NativeEnergy’s inside sales team. The product of an upbringing in Washington D.C. and a New England education, Adam brings a unique and fresh perspective in a range of industries including international ecotourism, political campaigning and public relations. He enjoys cycling, skiing, sailing, surfing, and just about anything else that involves the ocean.

 

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Jonny BearCub Stiffarm
Director Development Manager

Jonny BearCub Stiffarm, an enrolled member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine & Sioux Nation, is the Business Development Manager for NativeEnergy. She brings a wealth of experience in negotiation, small business development, contracts, and leadership. She served in Mayor Wellington Webb's administration as the Deputy Director of the Mayor's Office of Contract Compliance for both the City and Denver International Airport and his Native American Indian Liaison to the local, regional and national Indian Nation entities. She received her undergraduate from Brigham Young University and a juris doctorate from the University of Minnesota School of Law.

 

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Robert Gough

Bob Gough is an attorney with graduate degrees in sociology and cultural ecology, with over 30 years experience and two fellowships on tribal cultural and natural resource issues.

The first director and now a consultant to the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Utility Commission, Gough participated in WAPA negotiations for tribal allocations of federal hydroelectric power. He is the secretary of the Intertribal Council On Utility Policy, an organization composed of federally recognized Indian tribes in the Northern Great Plains providing a forum on rights and resources for utility services on tribal lands, and co-chairs the national assessment's Native Peoples/Native Homelands Climate Change Workshop.

Gough contracts with the DOE -Wind Powering America program's Wind Powering Native America Initiative, and co-directs the NativeWind.org and EnergyIndependenceDay.org campaigns supporting partnerships between ICLEI-Cities for Climate Protection and the Intertribal COUP tribes interested in building sustainable homeland economies based upon renewable energy.

 

 

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Chip Comins

Chip Comins is Managing Director of American Spirit Productions based in Carbondale, CO. He also founded and produces AREDAY - American Renewable Energy Day, advocating for renewable energy solutions to global warming and climate change. He produced the Public Service Announcement “Native Wind Powering America” that debuted at the Clinton Global Initiative, was an official selection of numerous environmental film festivals and broadcast nationally on Link TV. Chip is currently directing and producing the feature length documentary “Native Wind” documenting the environmental justice plan of the Intertribal Council On Utility Policy (COUP) to develop the richest wind regime on mother earth bringing economic development to impoverished Native American tribes on the Great Plains. He recently produced Engaging America’s Renewable Spirit, at this year’s AREDAY event held in Aspen, CO.

 

 

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Steve Allenby

Steve has been in the energy field for over 26 years. He worked for 14 years for an investor-owned utility in the Northeast, the last 6 of which as Senior VP of Operations and Marketing, and President of the utility's unregulated energy services subsidiary. Steve has developed considerable expertise in the development and financing of the federal energy efficiency and renewable market. He has written 3 reports for ESource dealing with federal energy efficiency and utility privatization. On behalf of the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), Steve was a principal drafter of a model energy efficiency services agreement between the Edison Electric Institute and the Department of Defense.

Steve is the Chair of the Biomass Energy Resource Center (www.biomasscenter.org), a member of the Northern Forest Alliance Steering Committee, a member of the Efficiency Vermont Advisory Board and a member of the Vermont Public Television Board of Directors. Steve and his wife, Nancy, have three grown sons and live in Proctor, Vermont. Steve enjoys helping coach the local high school basketball team, being a youth group leader with Nancy and sailing and kayaking on Lake George.

 

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