Sea Change Management

As a founding member of McKinsey & Company’s Environmental Practice, he specialized in the commercialization and marketing of environmental technologies. He also worked extensively with the firm’s corporate finance practice, focusing especially on entrepreneurial finance issues.

Mr. Merkl was also Vice President and co-founder of the CH2M HILL Strategy Group, a leading provider of environmental management consulting services worldwide. Most of his work concerned capital planning and the management of complex environmental risks.

Mr. Merkl holds an MBA with distinction from Harvard University, a Master of Regional Planning and Natural Resource Analysis form the University of California at Berkeley and a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Prior to co-founding Sea Change, Mr. Winship worked on a variety of market-based environmental engagements in his capacity as a Senior Associate at California Environmental Associates. Previously, Mr. Winship was a Senior Associate with Westbury Equity Partners, a New York-based $150 million growth equity fund. In that capacity, he developed, assessed and executed early-stage private equity investments in the software and business services market.

He also played an active advisory role by supporting portfolio companies with strategic and financial analysis. Prior to his tenure with Westbury, Mr. Winship developed and executed international merger and acquisition opportunities for AT&T Wireless Services, Inc. Before joining AT&T Wireless, Mr. Winship was an investment banking analyst with Lehman Brothers, where he participated in a wide range of corporate financing and M&A transactions.

Mr. Winship holds a Bachelor of Arts from Rice University.

Immediately prior to joining Sea Change Management, Mr. Elliott served as a senior research associate at Redefining Progress, a progressive think tank focused on sustainability. Previously, he worked and consulted for several groups active in ocean conservation issues including Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, Seaweb, Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the Pew Oceans Commission. In each of these roles, Mr. Elliott was responsible for forming recommendations on the environmental effects of different fishery and aquaculture practices.

Mr. Elliott holds a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard University (summa cum laude) and a Master of Science with distinction in Environmental Change and Management from Oxford University.

Prior to joining CEA, Ms. Kao worked for JPMorgan in New York as an investment banking analyst. As a member of the Natural Resources group, she specifically focused on the chemical and oil and gas industries, helping clients complete corporate mergers and acquisition transactions and numerous public debt and equity issuances.

Ms. Kao holds a B.A. in Political Economy and a minor in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley.

Prior to joining CEA and Sea Change, Ms. Dickie spent several years at Investors’ Circle, a national network of angel and institutional venture investors using private capital to promote the transition to a sustainable economy by investing in early-stage companies that have a social and/or environmental mission. Ms. Dickie has also worked with several mission-driven start-up companies and at JPMorgan’s Bay Area Equity Fund, a double bottom-line venture fund investing in San Francisco Bay Area’s low and moderate income neighborhoods.

Ms. Dickie has a BA in History from Stanford University (Phi Beta Kappa), and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, where she served as co-chair for the Global Social Venture Competition.