Based in New York, Mr. Austin has been a Venture Partner with Bright Capital since 2012, where he focuses broadly on alternative energy, resource and energy efficiency, distributed generation, water, advanced materials and cleantech, providing leadership and strategic guidance for Bright Capital’s investment strategy and portfolio companies, including serving on the Boards of Agrivida, QM Power and Ener-G-Rotors.   

 

Prior to Bright Capital, as Managing Director of Chandler Reed LLC, Mr. Austin served as a strategic advisor to CEOs of public and private growth stage companies, new ventures and tech start-ups, and was a consultant at UNDP’s Sustainable Energy & Environment Division in the area of sustainable technologies globally, as well as to other UN agencies.  He has applied his knowledge of finance and marketing, intellectual property, technology commercialization and strategy across a broad and diverse range of industries.  Earlier, Mr. Austin has been a serial tech entrepreneur in the fields of electro-optics, medical devices, and materials manufacturing systems.  As a start-up entrepreneur, he has patents issued in 30 countries and has won international design awards.

 

Mr. Austin is an advisor to tech start-up incubators and accelerators, and is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) with NYSERDA and the SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, as well as serving on the National Renewable Energy Lab’s (NREL) Investment Advisory Board.  Mr. Austin has mentored entrepreneurs in different regions of Africa, and spoken at conferences from Krasnoyarsk to Kingston, from Beijing to Bilbao, on venture investing, entrepreneurship, strategy, innovation and sustainable technologies.  Mark Austin is a graduate of Williams College.