Episode Details

Episode Summary

We released today Solar Maverick Podcast-Episode 59: Lessons Learned from Clean Energy Entrepreneur Laura Taylor, CEO and Founder of Silverline Communications. Laura Taylor discusses the journey over the last ten years of her company, Silverline Communications, an integrated marketing and PR agency focused on clean and emerging tech. She also shares her perspectives on the importance of mentorship and diversity within the clean energy market, and why public relations and branding is vitally important for the renewable energy industry. Laura also talks about The Cleanie Awards, the first-of-its-kind industry award designed to recognize innovators in the clean energy community.

Benoy Thanjan

Benoy Thanjan is the Founder and CEO of Reneu Energy, as well as an advisor for several solar startup companies. Reneu Energy is a premier international solar energy consulting firm and developer, and the company focuses on developing commercial and industrial solar, as well as utility-scale solar plus storage projects. The company also sources financing for solar projects and hedges both energy and environmental commodities. Reneu Energy has brokered $27 million in environmental commodity transactions.  

Benoy received his first experience in Finance as an intern at D.E. Shaw & Co., which is a global investment firm with 37 billion dollars in investment capital. Before founding Reneu Energy, he was the SREC Trader in the Project Finance Group for SolarCity, which merged with Tesla in 2016. He originated SREC trades with buyers and co-developed their SREC monetization and hedging strategy with the senior management of SolarCity, to move into the east coast markets. Benoy also worked at Vanguard Energy Partners, Ridgewood Renewable Power, and Deloitte & Touche.

Laura Taylor

Laura Taylor is Founder and CEO of Silverline Communications, a nimble, full-service integrated communications agency uniquely focused on the B2B technology sector. As CEO of Silverline, Laura counsels a wide portfolio of enterprises, crafting impactful communications programs tailored to engage and influence key stakeholders and ultimately, drive measurable growth.

Previous to Silverline, Laura co-founded and led global and national practice areas and served in management roles with regional high-growth ventures, accumulating over $1 billion in funding. During her tenure at Edelman, she was a founding leader of the agency’s award-winning global clean technology practice. In three short years, Laura led a team that grew the division from zero to a multi-million-dollar, international practice. A few years later, Laura built a clean technology division for Omnicom from the ground up. After establishing programs at the world’s largest and most prestigious public relations agencies, she founded Silverline Communications in 2009.

In addition to leading Silverline, Laura continues to innovate and seek opportunities to contribute to the clean energy sector. After realizing a severe shortage of clean tech industry award recognition, Laura launched The Cleanie Awards® in 2018 to highlight notable individuals and companies in the industry. She is a frequent Forbes contributor and serves as Chairwoman on myriad Boards, including Potential Energy DC, CleanTech Open Southeast, and Solas Nua Theatre Company. Past speaking engagements include the Mid-Atlantic Marketing Summit and the Energy Storage Annual Conference and Expo.

Insights from this episode:

• Details of Laura’s passion to be an entrepreneur and how optimism has shaped her journey.
• Benefits of being a mentor and making an impact in the lives of other entrepreneurs. 
• Strategies Laura employed to win support for Silverline Communications in the company’s early days.
• How to bran