Emily Kirsch

Founder and Managing Partner, Powerhouse Ventures

2017 Entrepreneurship Award Winner

Emily Kirsch is the Founder and Managing Partner of Powerhouse Ventures, which invests in seed-stage startups developing innovative software across energy, mobility, and industry. Powerhouse Ventures is backed by some of the world’s largest corporations in energy, utilities, automotive, finance, and tech—including Constellation, American Electric Power, Microsoft, UBS, Toyota, TotalEnergies, and more.

Kirsch is also the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Powerhouse Innovation, a best-in-class consulting firm that partners with leading corporations, investors, and utilities to source and evaluate disruptive startups shaping the future of energy and industry. 

In addition, she is the Founder and Host of Watt It Takes, a podcast with over 1.5 million downloads that features the stories of founders building the most transformative companies across energy, mobility, and industry. 

Kirsch serves on the Board of Directors of ThinkLabs AI, which is developing a physics-informed, autonomous grid orchestration co-pilot, and Sesame Sustainability, a platform for simulating, optimizing, and analyzing industrial decarbonization projects and investments. She also serves on the Leadership Council for Activate, a fellowship for breakthrough cleantech innovators, and was named a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader in 2019.

Kirsch has been recognized as a top female early-stage investor by Business Insider and as one of the “Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business” by the San Francisco Business Times. Her work has been cited in Bloomberg, The Guardian, and The New York Times.