Founder, and Chairman, VAST Power Systems, LLC
Gary Ginter is a serial entrepreneur who helped develop multiple organizations. Two were sold for over $750 million. Gary founded, led, and now chairs VAST Power Systems, LLC.

Co-Founder, Chicago Research and Trading (CRT)
Gary was a founding partner and helped lead Chicago Research and Trading Group, a world-class futures and options market-maker. After 17 years, “CRT was sold to NationsBank for $225 million cash plus other considerations. CRT had 750 employees, $250 million in capital and offices in cities around the world. It owned more than 150 memberships on 19 securities exchanges and traded approximately 75 options and futures contracts on interest rates, equity indexes, petroleum and foreign exchange, as well as other instruments. CRT Government Securities Ltd. was one of 38 primary dealers that reported to and traded U.S. government securities directly with the Federal Reserve.” Baltimore Sun Times

Managing Director, Globex
Gary served as the first Managing Director of Globex. It was the first futures and options electronic exchange founded by the CME Group with the Chicago Board of Trade and MATIF, the French futures exchange. Globex totally disrupted the futures industry. Almost all trading floors for futures worldwide have closed, having been replaced by Globex. Today, over 90% of all trades worldwide in futures and futures options are done through Globex.

Partner, Hull Trading
Gary was a partner at Hull Trading Group, Chicago which was sold to Goldman Sachs for $531 million. Ginter was offered a partnership in Goldman Sachs in that transaction. He declined to devote full-time to VAST Power Systems.

Founding Member, Efficient Capital Management
Gary was a founding member of Efficient Capital Management, LLC. This is a highly regarded investment firm that has been a leading innovator in managed futures investment worldwide for 25 years. ECM manages risk-adjusted returns and risk hedge overlays for $2.5 billion in portfolio exposure for large institutions, family offices, and high net worth individuals. ECM’s customer base is primarily large European institutions with significant North American participation as well. Gary continues as an active advisor to the Founding Member and his executive team.

Co-Owner, Access Innovations, Inc.
Gary has been one of three owners of Access Innovations, Inc. (Aii) for 39 years, offering counsel and advice to the co-founders. Aii is the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application. Aii provides innovative content management solutions from workflow design to full implementation. Aii offers both services and software.

Aii’s Data Harmony software enables users to build and maintain all types of controlled vocabularies, create and capture metadata, and manage rule-based automated indexing. The software is XML-based, Unicode aware, written in platform-independent Java with local or remote client TCP/IP interface, and proven in production since 1998.

Non-profit Involvements
Gary was the Angel investor for many startups in communities of need worldwide, both in rural Africa, Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as in inner city Chicago. He has served as Chairman of many non-profit organizations, several of which he helped found. He has served as a member and briefly as Vice Chairman of InterVarsity, a mega Christian ministry to college students in the USA. He helped found and lead Paraclete Mission Group (https://www.paraclete.net). Paraclete associates have served hundreds of organizations and churches in dozens of countries, working as counselors, consultants, mentors, and trainers.

Family and Church
Gary has been married to Joanna for 54 years. They have 4 children and 14 grandchildren. They have lived for 45 years in an economically marginal area of Chicago’s westside. As part of Circle Church, they moved into the Central Austin district of Chicago’s westside seeking to learn firsthand how to better bridge the gap between Black and White, rich and poor.

“It has been the context in which we raised our family and learned to trust our Lord more deeply. We are deeply grateful for the experience of living our lives among the poor and have learned so much from being here. I am a better entrepreneur and a more resilient individual because we have shared life with strong people who are very different from us.”

David L. Hagen, PhD, is Chief Scientist with VAST Power Systems, LLC. He invented VAST’s breakthrough progressive and scalable combustors for gas turbines. He proposed the transformative Platform Technology combining Argonne National Lab’s reactive CFD modeling with Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s neural network data reduction. Two DOE HPC4Mfg modeling grants quantified that VAST’s ultraclean scalable combustion achieves emissions below California’s stringent 2 ppmvd NOx and CO limits, without catalysts. VAST power systems using this scalable combustor will likely qualify for Best Available Combustion Technology (BACT) etc., ensuring commercial priority in EPA non-attainment regions.

He was awarded 23 US patents, with 17 issued to VAST, and more pending. These are highly rated with over 1,500 forward citations to the 17 VAST patents.

With a doctorate in Mechanical Engineering Design, and a master’s degree in Physical Chemistry, from the University of Minnesota, on top of a Bachelor’s in Physics and Chemistry, David has extensive research training. He has applied that to a variety of energy areas from methanol fuel to flywheel energy storage, solar thermal power to biomass gasification, alluvial mining to coconut processing, and from ultra-precision instrumentation to software and patents. David’s broad spectrum of consulting includes cross-cultural projects from Mozambique to Papua New Guinea dealing with natural resources and power. website.vastpowersystems.com

• Extensive research and development on wet combustion, power systems, hydrocarbon recovery, etc., filing 27 patents.
• Broad experience in solar power, energy storage, Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, and sustainable energy.
• Thoroughly reviewed methanol as a sustainable fuel.
• Wrote a detailed 330-page review of solar energy to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gases.
• Worked extensively on coconut food processing and energy use to increase tropical smallholder revenues by > 500%.
• Lived 21 years in Australia and India; speaks Nepali.
• American Society of Mechanical Engineering, Life Member
• Maquis Who’s Who Honored Listee 2023

Scholar Profile: David L. Hagen; ORCID ID: 0009-0006-6976-0886.

Since his graduation as an engineer from Purdue University, John has led product development for decades. He has driven development of real-time data acquisition, automation, product design and led the use of advanced computer-aided tools and advanced processes for design optimization with cross functional teams.

John has been a C-level executive for multi-billion-dollar, multi-national design and manufacturing organizations, with experience leading international teams in powertrain development, wind turbines, electronics and software development, new product development, engineering services and operations. This includes serving as Chief Technology Officer for multi-billion-dollar, multi-national design and manufacturing organizations, Cummins (engines, gensets, components) and Suzlon (wind turbines), where his teams were not only cross-functional but cross-cultural as well: managing not only the technical challenges but also the cross-cultural challenges.

John set up and managed worldwide R&D Centers overseas - living overseas and managing operations in Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, India and China. He has driven organizational efficiencies, to reduce time and cost in product development, while improving product quality and end-customer satisfaction. He is thrilled to help drive the commercialization of the VAST technology to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and overall fuel consumption. He sees the VAST technology as a critical component in support of the energy transition.

View John's Resume.

With degrees in both electrical engineering (B.S.E.E.) and mathematics (B.A.) from Cedarville University in Cedarville, OH, Allan is experienced in manufacturing. He has extensive short-wave, AM & FM broadcast, and IT experience in management and technology at an international level. His skills give him the ability to work effectively in many different areas. He has served as the coordinator for the internal office systems and for the information technology services required by VAST’s virtual office approach.

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He also served as a team member on both the computer modeling and the combustion empirical testing. He developed IP and wrote patent applications.

• B.S.E.E. and B.A. from Cedarville University.
• Researches and models combustion systems and cycles.
• Drafts & manages patents both internally & with outside IP counsel.
• Born in South Africa and raised in eSwatini (Swaziland).
• Maintained emergency telecommunications and internet access for front-line relief operations after Pakistan’s devastating earthquake of 2005.
• Installed satellite uplink in Slovakia and managed operations of high powered shortwave and AM radio transmission equipment in eSwatini.
• Technical consultant for media ministries in South Asia.

Kenneth C. McKenzie is a founding investor in VAST and a member of the Executive Committee. Ken attended the University of Southern California, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Zoology. After graduation in 1964, he was awarded a scholarship for study at St. Catherine's College, Cambridge University, England. During the Vietnam war, he enlisted for service in the US military and was Commissioned as an Artillery Officer, US Army, in 1966. He volunteered for Airborne and Special Forces training. He graduated from the John F. Kennedy Center for Special Warfare and Jump Master School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 1967. After earning his Green Beret, he served in the US Army 3rd Special Forces Group, the 5th Special Forces Group, and the 25th Division, Vietnam. He was decorated with the Silver Star for Gallantry in Action, Bronze Star for Valor, and Purple Heart for wounds received. After the military, he joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation as Special Agent and was assigned primarily to fugitive and bank robbery squads in Washington Field Office, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. He owns the record in Los Angeles for the largest bank robbery crew ever arrested, eleven men in all. After the FBI, Ken started a real estate development company which he currently owns and manages. Married with one son and now living in Florida, he has dedicated his life to various charitable projects and one podcast centered around prison reform.

Warren was the Managing Partner of Coopers & Lybrand (now PwC) in West Palm Beach and a Partner in Miami and Tampa. He has been licensed as a CPA in Florida since 1970 and received designation as Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA) in 2012. After public accounting Warren co-founded a firm focused on M&A consulting and established a broker-dealer affiliate registered with the SEC. He held Series 7, 24 and 28 securities licenses during the broker-dealer’s membership in FINRA.

Warren also served as the CFO of a $140 million non-profit healthcare company, which included Hospice of Palm Beach County. Prior to joining management, he served the organization for several years in a voluntary capacity as Treasurer and Vice Chairman of the board.

Benjamin Hopwood is a highly experienced global operations executive from Denver, Colorado, with significant expertise in consumer and commercial product commercialization, supply chain management, and business development. With over 20 years of experience, predominantly in Asia and North America, he has effectively scaled both venture-funded and privately-owned corporations. Benjamin excels in developing high-performance teams in areas like product design, engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, and fulfillment, focusing on improving business value through quality, delivery, safety, and cost management, while ensuring customer satisfaction.

Fluent in English and proficient in Chinese, Benjamin has a Deep Learning Specialization and is a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt. He authored "Wal-Mart China: Sustainable Operations Strategy," showcasing his insights into international business. Currently, he holds key positions at Agentic.Solutions and Techlok Solutions in Denver. His previous roles include Chief Operating Officer at Gembah and General Manager for Beckett Asia Pacific. His academic background includes an MBA from Tsinghua University, a Tsinghua-MIT International MBA, and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Throughout his career, Benjamin has demonstrated his ability to align corporate strategies with operational execution and lead global teams across various sectors.

Amy is a wife, mother, and enthusiastic member of the VAST Power team. She studied Business Administration at Columbia International University, earning her BBA and a place in the Epsilon Delta Chi Honor Society. Originally from western North Carolina, she loves hiking and exploring God’s beautiful creation.

Throughout her more than fifteen-year career, Amy has worked alongside several small businesses, providing services in accounting, the creation of detailed company databases, and general office administration. She loves working with others and being a part of such a dynamic company!

At VAST Power Systems Inc., Amy’s usual duties range from researching a wide range of business topics to compiling data and reports pertinent to the day-to-day decision making of senior leaders. She also provides analysis of environmental regulations and industry standards in the realm of technological development.

Eric Donaldson is part of the business development team and the patent writing team. Eric has a passion for disruptive technology development and operational excellence. He has a broad market background including Medical, Aerospace, Automotive, Defense, Consumer Electronics, Printing/Publishing, Materials, Data Storage, Automation.

Dr. Albert (Al) Erisman, Seattle, WA.: 32 year career at Boeing, Director of Technology. Honored as inaugural Boeing Senior Technical Fellow. On Committees for: National Science Foundation, National Academy of Sciences, National Institute for Standards & Technology. On the Review Board of the Computing Division, Los Alamos National Labs. Al authored:

• Direct Methods for Sparse Matrices: Second Edition Oxford University Press
• Electric Power Problems: The Mathematical Challenge; Soc. Industrial & Applied Mathematics

Hugh Johnson is a prolific entrepreneur and investor. With 30 years of business experience and a focus on the commercialization of start-ups, his entrepreneurial enterprises are very diverse, including an advertising agency, restaurants, arcades, an arbor-care business and a golf club.

He manages the Northern Indiana Angel Investors Network, and The Noble Endeavors Fund - a private equity syndicate. He and his team have brought six viable start-ups through pre-seed and seed funding rounds. Successful start-ups include medical devices, tire reclamation pyrology, texting technology and multi-drone search and rescue software. 

Hugh’s most repeated quote: “It starts with vision - having it, and inspiring it.”

Gary L. Neidig is the President/CEO of Indiana Technology and Manufacturing Companies also known as ITAMCO.  Its core business is metal machining of precision gears and machined components and is a leading innovator in Additive Manufacturing (AM). It recently completed the sale to Siemens of an ITAMCO AM Software spin-off.

Mr. Neidig graduated from Bob Jones University with a B.S. in Business Management, and a Minor in Computer Science.  He is an active coder and has written Engineering as well as Business System applications.

He has served in roles of (1979-2000) Customer Service, Engineering, and (2001 – present) Executive Management during his 42 years in manufacturing, while overseeing technology development for Advanced Manufacturing.  During his career, he has helped develop ITAMCO from a small 24,000 sq/ft. facility to a totally integrated manufacturer with over 500,000 sq/ft.

Mr. Neidig has served on numerous charitable board/committees including:

• 2014 - 2017, Boys and Girls’ Club of Marshall County
• 2016 – present, Startup South Bend-Elkhart, Entrepreneurship Board
• 2018 – present, South Bend – Elkhart Partnership Board
• 2018 – present, Marshall County Entrepreneurship Board
• 2016 – 2020, AGMA – Board of Directors
• 1981 – 2023, Grace Baptist Church and School Board
• 2016 – 2023, MxD – Formally,DMDII– Executive Board
• 2019 – present, LIFT Network – Laboratories at University of Notre Dame – Advisory Board
• 2019 – 2023, Indiana Aerospace and Defense Consortium – Advisory Board
• 2021 - present, Marian University – Ancilla – Board of Visitors
• 2024 – present, MxD – Board of Directors

Honors: 2022 - Doctor of Business Administration, honoris causa, Marian University

Mark has led new ventures throughout his career, assisting highly competent market and industry specialists to create feasible business plans, secure funding, and execute those plans. Mark is committed to achieving timely and financially sustainable results, while upholding the core values of sharing the benefits and advancing the lives of every contributing member and their families.

Since 2017, Mark has served as the Chief Financial Officer & Director of Economic Development of Together Chicago whose teams work to interrupt violence and drive financial flows from the global marketplace back into Chicago’s urban landscape by stabilizing and growing businesses in distressed neighborhoods, helping them enter the supply-chains of large corporations, and transforming them into sustainably profitable businesses that provide career advancement opportunities for their staff.

Prior to that, Mark spent 25 years as a new venture executive spanning aeronautical and automotive systems manufacturing, robotic solutions for environmentally vulnerable applications, and specialty food product development and launches.

Mark got his start at a $300M family-owned manufacturer in Chicago, where he was mentored by the CEO and financial team to study new markets, develop business plans, and allocate capital for their dozen international subsidiaries.

Mark earned his MBA from the University of Chicago, speaks Spanish, German, and French, and enjoys lecturing on economics, finance, and social enterprise. Mark mentors start-up entrepreneurs in construction, IT services, and specialty food products. He loves mountain hiking and singing with his wife of 36 years. Together they have six adopted adult children.

Purpose
Hannah Stolze is an academic in the field of global supply chain management and a recent Fulbright scholar to Indonesia. In a previous life, before becoming an academic, mom, and wife, she was a solider with occupational specialties in psychological operations, ordnance, and broadcast journalism. She is the daughter of missionaries who buried their first child in the mission field and moved home during a civil war. Hannah grew up in a paradox of blue-collar America with a global worldview. This inspired in her an insatiable work ethic and desire for wisdom and to have impact in the world.

Values
More than anything else, she values authenticity, integrity, servanthood, valor, and mercy.

Hannah strives to live her life in a way that is consistent with her beliefs with the hope that wisdom guides her steps. She’s had plenty of missteps in her life, but Hannah found over the years that authenticity and integrity will outweigh mistakes along the way. She believes that when we serve others, everyone is blessed. Whereas, when we serve only ourselves, only one person gets ahead at the expense of others.

Her very favorite words in ancient Hebrew wisdom texts are chayil and hhesed.

These two terms capture the best of everything you should learn and be as a soldier, a mom, and an academic. They mean valor and mercy – two things that Hannah aspires to every day. While they are unfamiliar terms in our everyday vocabulary, the word chayil was used in ancient war hymns to describe mighty men in battle and lady wisdom in her unattainable excellence. The word hhessed captures the English words mercy, kindness, and enduring love. At the end of her life, Hannah hopes that her work and relationships with others are defined by valor and kindness, might and mercy, excellence and enduring love.

Academic Work
Hannah is the inaugural William E. Crenshaw Chair in Supply Chain Management at Baylor University in the nationally ranked Hankamer School of Business.

Hannah is also the founding director of the Wheaton College Center for Faith & Innovation. Before her previous joint appointment as associate professor of supply chain management at Lipscomb University and Wheaton College, she was an assistant professor of supply chain management in the marketing department at Florida State University.

She earned a Ph.D. in Business Administration at the University of Tennessee, where she specialized in logistics and marketing. Prior to that she earned an MBA at Lindenwood University and worked in packaging imports. She has a Bachelor’s of Arts from Carthage College with a dual major in International Political Economics, Mandarin, and a minor in Asian Studies. Her previous career was in the United States Army. She served in multiple capacities including, psychological operations, ordnance, and as a broadcast journalist in public affairs.

Academic Interests & Focus
Hannah conducts applied business research with a focus on sustainability (including environmental, economic, social and humanitarian impacts) and transformative impact. She has partnered with over 40 Fortune 500 firms on research projects and in data collection. Her work has been published in multiple academic journals including, the Harvard Business Review, Journal of Operations Management, Journal of Supply Chain Management, and the Journal of Business Logistics.

She recently served as a Fulbright Scholar in Indonesia on a teaching grant where she lectured in undergraduate courses and taught graduate supply chain courses at Universitas Pelita.

www.hannahstolze.com
View Hannah's Resume.

Mr. Urrea is a Managing Partner of United Global Group, LLC, an investment, brokerage, advisory, and consulting firm comprising of a global network. Mr. Urrea has an unparalleled network of relationships in the global arena and intimate engagement with business and government leaders around the globe. Mr. Urrea has evaluated and structured cost-effective business plans for the past 20 years working in a variety of industries, including: commodities trading, oil & energy, business brokerage and have dealt with a range of financial, strategic and operational issues ranging from business valuation to corporate governmental growth strategy, due diligence and creation of bilateral as well as unilateral contracts. Mr. Urrea is a board member and sits on various boards including The Wheelchair Foundation, Airline Ambassadors Int’l, Les Heritiers, Push To Open, and Gentlemen of the Garden.