Susan Seilheimer Brennan is a transformative leader with expertise in driving innovation and strategic growth across the energy transition and traditional manufacturing industries. Susan brings her “hands on” style to the boardroom. As a lean practitioner with expertise in manufacturing and supply chain, she thinks outside the box and has the experience to look at problems from a global as well as production floor perspective.

As an Independent board member for Senior PLC, a UK Industrial with highly engineered solutions for thermal management and fluid conveyance, Susan’s experience as a leader in Silicon Valley gave her credibility to lead challenging conversations in the board room around optimizing Intellectual property and technology leadership versus traditional build to print revenue to encourage management to think differently about this storied industrial company. She was part of the team that managed an offer from an outside firm that kept the organization intact versus selling. Her years in automotive and energy allowed her to speak credibly and provocatively in board discussions with a real-world perspective of manufacturing and engineering leadership, that Senior continues to enjoy. In her 9 year tenure, Senior restructured its footprint to optimize its core IP for revenue and cash.

With leadership roles at 5E Advanced Materials (CEO), Romeo Power (CEO), Bloom Energy (COO), and as a Manufacturing General Manager at Nissan and Ford Motor Company, Brennan built her career across the mining, chemicals, battery, automotive, and energy sectors. She excels in leading both early-stage startups and large-scale enterprise, with successful guidance through complex transitions.

As CEO of 5E Advanced Materials, Brennan developed a strategic framework that resolved long-standing business challenges, reorganized priorities, and managed the P&L to drive growth. At Romeo Power, she led the company through significant supply chain disruptions, navigating the organization through the pandemic and orchestrating a strategic exit via acquisition.

Brennan played a pivotal role at Bloom Energy to scale the company, achieve cost leadership, and set the stage for a successful Initial Public Offering (IPO). Susan’s ability to manage organizational change while building a team resilient to market and ongoing technology advancements.

Brennan brings a thoughtful, yet calculated approach to risk, an understanding of the critical role that culture and people play in early-stage companies, and a track record of delivering success where others have failed.

She holds an MBA from the University of Nebraska – Omaha and a Bachelor’s degree in Microbiology from the University of Illinois – Champaign-Urbana.