Andi Kleissner

Founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer, Amped Innovation

2024 C3E Entrepreneurship & Commercialization Award Winner

Andi Kleissner has dedicated her career to product innovation and social enterprise. She is a Founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Amped Innovation, a designer and manufacturer of high-performance, off-grid solar systems and appliances for solar-rich environments. Kleissner has deep expertise in solar technology and has led the company’s growth across emerging markets.

Before founding Amped, Kleissner led a hardware engineering team at QuantaLife, a Silicon Valley biotech startup, which was acquired by BioRad Laboratories, a global leader in life science research and clinical diagnostics products. During her tenure, she launched an Automated Droplet Generator, which simplified digital droplet polymerase chain reaction (PCR) processing and which remains a flagship technology for BioRad’s product line. Early in her career, she designed and installed microgrids in rural Sri Lanka for Lanka Gasifiers. Kleissner has garnered global market, product, and manufacturing experience through service with a number of organizations, including IDEO, a global design firm where she worked while living in China, and D-REV (now Equalize Health), where she met Amped Co-founder, Kurt Kuhlmann.

Kleissner holds an MS and BS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and was a Mayfield Fellow.