Ken Alston is an investor in climate tech. He is currently a venture capital investor at the Climate Pledge Fund at Amazon. Prior to this role, Ken worked at New Energy Nexus and CalCEF Ventures. Prior to this role, Ken worked as a Presidential Appointee of the Obama Administration at the U.S. Department of Energy. At the U.S. Department of Energy, he worked as Special Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Energy. At DOE Ken’s work included launched the Department’s Clean Energy Investment Center and worked on climate finance initiatives in support of the Paris Agreement in 2015.

Ken’s past experience also includes the White House National Economic Council, investment firms Penta Group and Investor’s Circle, technology startup Simbol Materials, and strategy consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton.

He is a board member of Clean Energy for America, and has pas served as Vice Chair of Clean Energy Works, as well as serving as a past board member of RE-volv.

Ken is a frequent speaker at conferences, and past events include the Global Climate Action Summit, ChinaWeek, POWERGEN Africa, and the Conference on Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Green Energy Finance.  He has judged startups competitions on behalf of the MIT Clean Energy Prize, the Clean Energy Leadership Institute (CELI), the Berkeley Cleantech University Prize, and Cleantech Open, as well as guest lectured at Stanford University, the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins University. 

He holds an MBA and MS from Stanford University and a BA from the University of Virginia in Economics.