our story

Brandt Hastings is a revenue executive with two decades of experience building innovative business models and driving transformational growth for global companies such as iHeartMedia and Clear Channel Communications. In addition to his role as Interim CEO, Brandt leads Volta's advertising and charging solutions businesses to deliver measurable impact to top international brands, agency partners, commercial properties, and retail locations. Brandt has led Volta's strong revenue growth and expanded the company's site partner relationships significantly since joining the company in 2020.

Jim brings 20 plus years’ experience to Volta in handling legal issues for technology companies. Much of this came as a Partner at Ropes & Gray, based in San Francisco, Tokyo and Boston. Jim also has a B.S. in Computer Science and worked as a programmer analyst at a start-up before attending law school. Jim lives in San Francisco with his wife, where he also is active in the Solidarity / Social Justice Committee at St. Ignatius Parish. Their four children decided they should get an Audi E-tron. Until that arrives, they’re riding the big electric buses in San Francisco or pedaling around town.

Francois comes to Volta with more than 25 years of experience as a senior finance professional working in areas such as IPO finance and readiness, tax, compliance, accounting, strategy, business operations, mergers and acquisitions, financial planning and process design - with a particular focus on growth stage strategies. During his time at Uber, Francois was part of the team that scaled the company globally, orchestrating the launch of Uber in more than 100 countries and guiding its global growth plans. He helped to build Uber as it went through both the IPO and post-IPO process. Under his leadership, Francois built and coordinated a team of 200+ global professionals. He also served as a Board Member of Uber International CV.

With over 20 years of experience in marketing, data and technology, Nadya comes to Volta with a background spent building and scaling emerging business models. Previously, she was responsible for leading Marketing and Business Development at PlaceIQ, the leader in location intelligence, creating awareness, adoption and revenue growth. Prior to joining the PlaceIQ team, Nadya held positions overseeing marketing, corporate strategy, business development and M&A for Experian’s Marketing Services $1B global business, where she was a founder of Experian’s global Audience Services platform. Nadya has worked extensively in the Media, Consumer Products, Retail, and High Tech fields, with global brands such as Mars, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, T-Mobile and AMEX.

Drew has 20 plus years as a media and digital media operator and investor. He was the former CRO at GLAMSQUAD and previously held senior leadership roles at Korn Ferry, Clear Channel, Greycroft, Intercope Geffen A&M Records, News Corp., BMG and Warner Music. Drew recently ended his term as the Chairman of the Board of the Becket Chimney Corners YMCA and Berkshire Outdoor Center, one of the oldest independent YMCA organizations in the country. Drew lives in New York City with his wife and two boys, loves the ocean, skiing, music, reading and cooking. He is anxiously awaiting an electric vehicle charging station in his city garage, so he can get a new Tesla Model S. In the meantime, he happily drives around in his Jeep Wrangler with no doors or top!

Praveen Mandal is a former engineer turned serial entrepreneur who jump-started the electric vehicle charging industry through the co-founding of ChargePoint in 2007, where he also served as its President. He is the recognized inventor of the “networked charging stations” concept, a pioneering idea that helped drive the adoption of charging stations by all industry stakeholders. Mandal serves as the Chief Technology Office of Volta Charging, is the Co-Founder of 2predict, a team of data scientists providing advanced machine learning solutions for innovative companies and an MIT Connection Science Fellow. Mandal is a seasoned R&D executive whose teams have, additionally, pioneered industry recognized, market leading technologies in broadband access and high-performance compute industries; the latter accelerating computational intensive workloads for research and scientific communities. He has been awarded 10 patents.

Julie brings over two decades of experience to Volta, with deep expertise scaling organizational design, change management, leadership development, and championing fair and equitable People practices in high-growth technology companies. Gaining mastery of running a well-oiled HR shop during the first dot-com boom, Julie has practiced her craft primarily in the tech industry, leading startups through growth (and contraction), regularly poking at traditional approaches, establishing leading practices, gaining insights into what motivates and inspires folks, and creating an environment for them to do their best ever work. Most recently, Julie led the global People functions at Komodo Health, Culture Amp, and Atlassian. She's an advisor for early-stage companies in the peopletech space, and actively supports, advocates for, and invests in female-founded and -led businesses.