Shefali Patel is a general management and technology executive. She is the former CEO and board member of SunDensity Inc., a venture backed Photonics start-up. She serves as mentor in residence at UACI and executive (CXO) Columbia Tech Ventures, advising start-ups in advanced materials, nanotech, energy/climate tech, B2B SaaS , building technologies and life sciences. She brings to bear 27 years of industry experience in semiconductor, energy, big data & analytics sectors. At SunDensity, she was responsible for company’s scale-up operations and growth through commercializing photonic smart coatings (PSC) in photovoltaic and architectural glass segments. Before joining SunDensity, she held strategy & marketing leadership roles at General Electric, bringing to market emerging & core technologies in industrial automation software-IIoT, power generation, storage, transmission and distribution, with an emphasis on new business models. Prior to GE, Shefali had a successful tenure as a senior member of technical staff at Motorola Semiconductor developing next generation microcontrollers & MEMs sensors (accelerometers for airbags & tire pressure monitors) for automotive applications. Her global experience spans R&D tech transfer, engineering management in high volume manufacturing, zero defect quality, sales enablement and customer relations. She earned a bachelors degree in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT, and a masters in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University focusing on semiconductor physics. Shefali was a Sloan Fellow and received her MBA at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. She specialized in disruptive innovation and general management with Clay Christensen, and regional innovation ecosystems with Scott Stern through an organized effort between private and public sector to improve Solar competitiveness in the United States. She co-founded Element 14, a MIT spin-off start-up to commercialize polysilicon technology for solar energy applications.