Mei Shibata
Venture Partner - Energy
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.
