Maria Woodman

“I applied to HBS because I was interested in a strong general management program that would help me broaden my skill set and think about building threads of connection between seemingly disparate areas.”

From an early age, Maria Woodman (MBA 2018) had an appreciation for what happens when you flip a light switch—her father, an electrical engineer, designed power systems for large industrial facilities and also worked with utility companies. “It’s a pretty awe-inspiring thing when you think about the physical infrastructure—the supply chain—that needs to exist for that to happen,” says Woodman, who studied economics and math as an undergraduate, with a particular focus on power markets. “I was fascinated by the inefficiencies inherent in the legacy physical constraints of the traditional grid and the need to provide power reliably,” she says. As much as she enjoyed the theoretical work, however, Woodman realized she was more interested in changing the system than studying it.

That realization led her to EnerNOC (now Enel X), a company working to create a more dynamic power market by offering companies demand-side management solutions and incentive structures to improve energy efficiency. After six years of intense focus on a particular area of the industry, however, Woodman knew she needed to take a step back. “I applied to HBS because I was interested in a strong general management program that would help me broaden my skill set and think about building threads of connection between seemingly disparate areas,” she says. “One of the great things about the case method was being exposed to different ways of thinking. You get to consider problems through the lens of a different industry. Healthcare, for example, is similar to energy in some ways, in the sense that both are heavily regulated, quasi-public goods. So how can you draw lessons between the two that might not seem so obvious?”

Looking ahead, Woodman is interested in addressing the funding gaps that can occur for early-stage energy technology startups. Currently, she consults for ADL Ventures, a firm that couples internal corporate initiatives with a variety of nontraditional funding models, based on a firm’s individual business objectives. “There are a lot of interesting mid-cap companies in more challenging spaces like energy, water, advanced manufacturing, and construction that struggle to do in-house innovation because they don’t have the time or resources,” she explains. “For example, we might help implement something similar to a joint venture structure so that both the corporate entity and consultancy firm have an ownership stake. Then we would bring in a management team, spin it out, then spin it back into the company when it’s self-sufficient.”

Woodman is also a cofounder of Singularity, a startup using AI to dynamically manage an increasingly distributed grid. “Electric vehicles are going to change how the grid will operate,” she says. “In addition to the physical infrastructure, there’ll need to be a shift in the IT layer that ensures those assets can be coordinated and optimized. Singularity is using an algorithmic approach to achieve carbon reduction and sustainability, cost savings, and reliability through a more decentralized architecture.” Based on the research of a post-doctoral student from Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Singularity has received support from the Harvard Innovation Lab, Greentown Labs, and Schneider Electric. In 2019, it will begin to seek an initial round of funding. “This isn’t something I expected to be doing out of HBS, but I’m passionate about the space,” she says. “Now is the time to do something interesting.”

Woodman’s larger career objective is to continue working to help create nontraditional funding models that will spur even more growth and innovation in clean energy. “The grid as it exists today doesn’t look that different from the one envisioned by Thomas Edison when he put the first substation in lower Manhattan,” she reflects. “It’s amazing when you contrast it to the productivity curves of industries like cloud computing and medical diagnostics. It’s a big challenge, which suggests there’s a huge opportunity.

“We’re at an interesting point where the need is there and the opportunity is there,” she continues. “I’m a huge advocate for getting people involved in sustainable energy—so I’m going to put my money where my mouth is and build my career in this space.”