#161: Rick Stockburger (BRITE) — Unleashing the Energy Revolution

Lay of The Land

Rick Stockburger, CEO of BRITE Energy Innovators.

Located in the City of Warren, just outside Youngstown in the Mahoning Valley, BRITE was founded in 2010 as a non-profit focused on the acceleration of energy technology in Northeast Ohio. Since then, and under Rick’s leadership, BRITE has helped over 600 companies, creating approximately 2100 jobs, and channeling >$250 million dollars into BRITE’s network of companies.

Providing signature start-up programs, a networked ecosystem, and strategic presence to unleash the energy revolution across Ohio, Appalachia, and the Midwest writ large, BRITE serves a variety of clients providing solutions to today’s challenges and defining tomorrow’s opportunities in energy storage, grid resilience, and mobility and transportation.

Rick comes to BRITE as a Northeast Ohio native, a decorated combat veteran serving the US over nearly 7 years in the early 2000s and in operations across the world, as well as a kindred believer to myself, in the power of storytelling, having spearheaded an award-winning “Red, White, and Blueprints: A Rust Belt Documentary” telling the stories of some of the most innovative initiatives, individuals and ideas in the Rust Belt from Detroit to Buffalo to Cleveland and beyond!

This was an awesome conversation — we cover Rick’s journey to BRITE, involving a serendipitous run-in with Dave Grohl (a fellow Warren, Ohio native), Voltage Valley, the dependency and interconnectedness of everything energy, some of the most compelling companies within BRITE’s network, including some who’s stories we’ve shared here on Lay of The Land like LAND energy (back on Episode 48), Octet Scientific (back on Episode 118) with their founders, Scott Colosimo and Onas Bolton respectively, changing perceptions about Nuclear, Rick’s learnings along the way, and ultimately the opportunity and ability for this region ability to lead in energy production, electrification of things, and energy storage going.

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LINKS:

https://brite.org/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickstockburger/

https://twitter.com/BRITEpeople
https://www.instagram.com/britepeople

Red, White, and Blueprints: A Rust Belt Documentary

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Past guests include Justin Bibb (Mayor of Cleveland), Pat Conway (Great Lakes Brewing), Steve Potash (OverDrive), Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group), Lila Mills (Signal Cleveland), Stewart Kohl (The Riverside Company), Mitch Kroll (Findaway — Acquired by Spotify), and many more.

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