Mei Shibata

Mei Shibata is a serial entrepreneur who has successfully started and sold two

companies in the cleantech space over a 14-year period. Since the sale of her most

recent venture, Essense Partners, she has been serving as an entrepreneur-in-

residence with ADL Ventures and New York State. Through her roles, Mei works on

corporate and product-level strategies and incubates innovation opportunities that have

the potential to be spun out in the future. 

Mei has seen businesses from many different angles through her 25-year professional

experience: she started her career as a management consultant with Oliver Wyman,

worked in R&D licensing and marketing at Pfizer, was an equity research analyst

covering large cap med tech companies at Smith Barney, and was head of strategy at

ad agencies Havas and Interbrand before becoming an entrepreneur in 2008. As co-

founder of startup ThinkEco, Mei authored four patents in the cleantech space, won 20+

marketing awards, and was recognized as a New York Top 10 Energy Entrepreneur. In

her most recent role as founder and CEO of Essense Partners, Mei worked with various

city and state agencies, as well as with utilities across the country, to promote and

implement energy innovations.

Mei has a MBA from Harvard Business School, a MS in Medical Engineering from the

Harvard/MIT HST Program and a BA in Physics from Harvard College.