Who We Are
OUR TEAM
Brett A. Perlman has had a multifaceted career spanning management consulting, senior government leadership, and nonprofit executive roles. He is currently an Impact Fellow in Residence at Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative where he focuses on strategies to address climate change as well as new energy technology commercialization. In addition, he is CEO of Gulf Energy Catalyst, an organization uniquely dedicated to advancing the clean energy ecosystem along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Brett is also a senior Advisor at Saoradh Enterprise Partners.
From 2017 to 2024, he served as CEO of the Center for Houston’s Future, where he led major initiatives tackling Houston’s toughest challenges, including the creation of the HyVelocity Hub, which secured a record $1.2 billion U.S. Department of Energy grant, and the formation of a coalition of more than 35 companies collaborating to build the foundation for the Gulf Coast’s clean hydrogen ecosystem.
Brett also served as a Commissioner on the Public Utility Commission of Texas, where he led the state’s landmark electricity restructuring. His consulting experience includes work with McKinsey & Company as well as his own firm, advising senior executives and private equity firms on clean energy and utility transformation. He has also served as an independent board director for public and private equity-backed companies and as a strategic advisor to numerous clean tech companies, including EnerNOC, Nest, and most recently, Quino Energy, a long duration energy storage start-up. Brett holds advanced degrees in public policy from Harvard University and in law from the University of Texas, and was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Northwestern University.
John Flory is President of the Clean Hydrogen Buyers Alliance (CH2BA) and works collaboratively with GEC on initiatives in clean hydrogen market development. John has worked collaboratively GEC principals for several years on issues such as hydrogen carbon intensity, standardized contracts, book-and-claim and certification.
John has over four decades of experience starting up, operating and consulting with a wide range of energy and environmental commodity companies and governmental entities. He brings a unique “hands on” experience of independent entities whose market infrastructure facilitates demand growth for entities of all sizes and credit quality. Such infrastructure experience covered transactions from real-time to 20 years in tenor and embodied risk principles consistent with the guidelines of the Commodity Future Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
Some indicative activities include:
Setting up the California Independent System Operator and California Power Exchange,
Co-founding North American Energy Credit and Clearing to be a capital efficient mechanism to bring exchange clearinghouse-style risk management practices to the physical power and natural gas markets;
Managing the use of AI systems for optimizing the use of energy storage, distributed generation, demand response, EV charging and renewable assets to reduce costs, and lower emissions while maintaining grid reliability
Hack Heyward is a renewable energy economist and hydrogen specialist who has spent much of his career based in China, where he developed deep expertise in the political economy of the energy transition starting in 2005. Originally educated in econometrics in the US and further trained at the Chinese Academy of Sciences - Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, he combines quantitative market analysis with first-hand operational experience in renewables equipment manufacturing.
Alongside this commercial track record, Hack has developed a strong reputation in renewable energy economics, particularly around China’s role in global P2X markets. He has contributed to technology and market analysis for leading data and research platforms, advising on electrolysis technologies, hydrogen carriers, and cost trajectories, and supporting long-term outlooks for low-carbon gases in NE Asia, Europe, and North America.