Learn about the foundation’s board and key leadership.

As chairperson and president of the NREL Foundation, Wendolyn Holland’s work with clients in the sustainability sector is driven by purpose and passion. As Managing Director of Holland Consulting, LLC, she advises at the nexus of finance, technology, and policy, focusing on early-stage clean energy and sustainability technologies, the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle, and Native American communities. She has a particular expertise in tax strategy and policy. Her clients are both for-profit and nonprofit organizations, including the Wilma Mankiller Foundation.

Wendolyn served as Senior Advisor for Commercialization in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy from 2008 through 2011, as a member of the Senior Executive Service. She served in 2012 as Director for Strategic Development and Technical Partnerships at Savannah River National Laboratory, which serves DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. Prior to federal service, Wendolyn was involved with clean energy and water start-up firms. Wendolyn responded to the terrorist attacks of 2001 by joining GlobalOptions, a Washington, D.C. security, investigations, and counter-terrorism start-up, later serving as Vice President.

Alan Simon serves as a board member of the NREL Foundation, supporting NREL’s mission of advancing modern energy technologies and supporting the cleantech ecosystem. Alan is the CEO of North America Closeshoring, a strategic advisory firm that assists companies with technology-enabled reindustrialization, modern mobility, and clean energy projects. Alan is also the co-founder and president of Clean Helix Technologies, an early-stage venture that specializes in development and deployment of scalable decarbonization technologies.

Prior to his current roles, Alan spent nearly a decade with private investment firm The Broe Group and its affiliated entities, as a senior executive involved in strategic growth related to logistics, supply chains, cross-border projects, real estate, and energy. Alan has been a partner at law firms Dorsey & Whitney and Greenberg Traurig, where he handled mergers and acquisitions and international corporate transactions.

A board member of the NREL Foundation, Clint Vince is the Chair of Dentons’ US Energy Practice. He has handled complex energy transactions and negotiations, major project developments, and legislative and regulatory advocacy on behalf of public and private clients. Clint has handled more than 600 regulatory and litigation proceedings and appeared before trial and state appellate courts, numerous US District Courts, the US Courts of Appeals for the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, Tenth, Eleventh and District of Columbia Circuits, and the Supreme Court of the United States.

Clint also collaborates with leading energy and environmental think tanks and coalitions, including serving on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors for the World Resource Institute (2011-2021), as outside general counsel for the Alliance to Save Energy (2014-present), as leadership advisor to the Women’s Council on Energy and the Environment (2017-present) and as former Co-chair of the Keystone Policy Center and Co-chair of the Aspen Institute World Energy Forum (2015 & 2016) and served as past editor-in-chief of the Energy Law Journal.

As executive director of the NREL Foundation, Doug Arent focuses strategic issues and transformative programs to transform energy economies at speed and scale across the globe.

Arent has worked in research on energy and sustainability for more than 40 years, publishing extensively on topics including clean energy, renewable energy, power systems, natural gas, and the intersection of science and public policy.

Arent is a recognized global leader for clean energy including serving as a distinguished fellow of the World Economic Forum and a senior visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is a member of the Keystone Energy Board and the Global Advisory Board for the Yale Emerging Climate Leaders Fellowship. Arent also is an external fellow at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs’ Center on Global Energy Policy and was also a Fellow at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University from 2022-2024. He is the editor-in-chief of Renewable Energy Focus and is on the editorial board for the journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.

Arent most recent served as Executive Director for Strategic Public Private Partnerships at NREL. At NREL, he previously served as the deputy associate laboratory director for the Scientific Computing and Energy Analysis directorate, the founding executive director of the Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis, and the director for the Strategic Energy Analysis Center and the Integrated Applications Center. Arent was a coordinating lead author for the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He has been a member of the Policy Subcommittee of the National Petroleum Council Study on Prudent Development of North America Natural Gas and Oil Resources, the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change (2008–2010), and the Executive Council of the U.S. Association of Energy Economists.

Previously, Arent served on the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Steering Committee on Social Science and the Alternative Energy Future, and the National Research Council Committee to Advise to U.S. Global Change Research Program. He also served on advisory boards for the Post-Carbon Transition Project at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at Oxford University, U.K., and the Energy Academy of Europe, Netherlands.

Arent has a doctorate from Princeton University, a Masters of Business Administration from Regis University, and a Bachelor of Science from Harvey Mudd College in California.