About Us

Alex Kozak is a Partner at Proteus Strategies and serves as the Policy Consultant at Reflective, specializing in guiding technology-focused organizations through complex policy and regulatory landscapes. Alex led global copyright policy strategy at Google and served in public policy roles at Google X and Creative Commons. He earned a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley.

Ali Akherati is the Data Scientist at Reflective, specializing in aerosol science, emissions, air pollution, and atmospheric modeling. He brings over a decade of experience as a researcher and consultant, including roles as a Senior Lead Consultant and Lead Data Scientist at Ramboll. Ali holds a Ph.D. and M.E. in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Atmospheric Chemistry from Colorado State University, and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic). He also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Davis.

Alistair Duffey is a PhD candidate in climate science at University College London. His research uses earth system models to simulate the climate impacts of stratospheric aerosol injection, with a focus on the Arctic region and on scenarios of low-altitude polar injection. As a Scientist at Reflective, Alistair leads work on developing data infrastructure to support the research community. In 2025, Alistair was selected as a fellow by the International Arctic Science Committee, and he contributes to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) as a member of the Fresh Eyes on CMIP group. He has actively contributed to discussions on climate intervention over recent years, including an award-winning talk at the Gordon Research Conference on Climate Engineering 2024, a key-note speech at Arctic Momentum, 2023, and an invited talk at Arctic Science Summit Week, 2025. Alistair holds a Masters in Physics from the University of Oxford.

Dakota Gruener is the CEO of Reflective and has over a decade of experience in global health policy and digital identity. She previously served as Executive Director of ID2020, focusing on digital identity solutions, and worked with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, on childhood vaccination initiatives. Dakota graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with dual degrees in Biology and Political Science.

Daniele Visioni serves as the Head of Data at Reflective, with extensive expertise in stratospheric aerosols and their interactions with atmospheric chemistry and climate dynamics. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University and a Cornell Atkinson Faculty Fellow. Daniele earned his Ph.D. with honors in Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry, an M.S. in Physics, and a B.S. in Physics from the University of L'Aquila in Italy. His research focuses on climate intervention strategies, particularly stratospheric aerosol injection, and he co-chairs the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP).

Douglas MacMartin, Chief Scientific Advisor at Reflective, brings over 30 years of experience in aerospace engineering and climate science. He is an Associate Professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University, focusing on climate engineering research. Previously, he served as a Research Professor at the California Institute of Technology and led Active Control research at United Technologies Research Center. Douglas holds a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto.

Duncan Watson-Parris is an Academic Collaborator at Reflective, specializing in atmospheric physics with a focus on aerosol-cloud interactions and the application of machine learning in climate science. He is an Assistant Professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute at the University of California, San Diego. He has won an NSF CAREER award, a Google Academic Research Award, the Alan Taylor visiting lecturer award as well as several best paper awards. Prior to this, he was a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford. Duncan is also keen to foster the application of machine learning to climate science questions more broadly and convenes the Machine Learning for Climate Science EGU session and co-convenes the “AI and Climate Science” discovery series that is part of the United Nations’ AI for Good program. Duncan earned his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester and his B.Sc. from Cardiff University.

Emily Kuhn is the Scientific Product Manager at Reflective. Her focus is on managing data infrastructure projects, including gathering and integrating user feedback for the Simulator and Cloud Hub, general team coordination, project management of the multi-scale modeling initiative, and aligning product direction with Reflective’s strategic goals. Prior to Reflective, Emily was a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at JPL, where she developed next-generation radio cosmology telescopes and led the development of future space mission concepts. She has a PhD in Physics from Yale University and a BS in Physics from Duke University.

Hugo Wagner serves as the Head of Engineering at Reflective, bringing a decade of experience in aerospace engineering and climate-focused initiatives. Prior to joining Reflective, he led the U.S. strategy for Airbus's hydrogen-powered aircraft program, aiming to decarbonize the aviation industry by fostering partnerships across government, industry, and academia. Hugo holds an M.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

Jake Dexheimer serves as a Product Designer & Software Engineer at Reflective, focused on the development and iteration of the SAI Simulator tool. His 7 years of design, entrepreneurship, and software engineering experience include co-founding Dawn Labs, which was acquired by FOSSA in 2019. Jake earned a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

John Orcutt is the Research Software Engineer at Reflective. He brings over a decade of software engineering experience in which he has frequently partnered with atmospheric, climate, and ocean scientists. Prior to Reflective, John has worked as a software engineer at Sofar Ocean, Tomorrow.io, and NASA. He has a M.S. in Atmospheric Science from Texas A&M University and a B.S. in Meteorology from Mississippi State University.

Justine Casio supports the team with scheduling, coordination, and day-to-day operations. She handles candidate communication in hiring and logistics for team retreats.

Kate Pellegrino is the Operations Manager at Reflective and brings a decade of experience in operations, strategy, HR, and finance at a variety of startups and nonprofits. In her role as the Head of Operations and Chief of Staff at Pioneer she helped climate tech companies across EV batteries, sustainable mining, sustainable aviation, and circular economy robotics win $36M in government funding. Her role at Reflective entails developing, managing, and improving all company operations and processes across finance, grantmaking, HR, and beyond. Kate earned a B.S. in Psychology at Northeastern University.

In his role as Reflective's Research Associate, Kion Yaghoobozadeh is involved in uncertainty roadmapping efforts, scientific communication, and grant-making work. He holds a Bachelor of Science with Distinction in Research in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences from Cornell University, where he completed an honors thesis on the impacts of SAI on ozone chemistry.

Marianna Linz, Reflective's Head of Research, brings expertise in a broad range of topics within climate dynamics, including large-scale patterns of winds and ozone in the stratosphere, temperature extremes at the surface, and global heat transport in the ocean. Marianna was an undergraduate at Harvard University before pursuing her PhD in Physical Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology joint program with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. She spent two years as a postdoc at UCLA and then joined Harvard in 2019. In her role as an Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering and Earth and Planetary Sciences, she uses theory, simple models, complex models, and observations to decode the relationships between winds or currents and the substances they transport so that we can better understand how the distributions of heat, carbon, and air pollutants will change in a warming world.

Rob Samek, Head of Strategy at Reflective, is a Senior Partner Emeritus and current Senior Advisor of McKinsey & Company. Throughout 30 years at McKinsey, his client focus was Energy and Materials (metals, mining, power, O&G, chemicals). Beyond working with the private sector, he also has substantial experience advising governments on energy, decarbonization, and economic development topics. For McKinsey, he established and led major global practices in Advanced Analytics/AI, Capital Projects, and Mining/ Metals and also led the development of McKinsey’s perspective on decarbonization pathways and associated challenges. Rob holds an MBA from Stanford University and a B.Sc in Chemical Engineering from University of Alberta.

Susanne brings 5 years of experience in solar geoengineering including a post-doctoral position at Météo-France developing a machine learning algorithm for SAI monitoring. Susanne holds a PhD in Earth, Universe and Space Science from the University of Toulouse and a Master of Science in Global Change Geography from Humboldt-University of Berlin.

Dakota Gruener is the CEO of Reflective and has over a decade of experience in global health policy and digital identity. She previously served as Executive Director of ID2020, focusing on digital identity solutions, and worked with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, on childhood vaccination initiatives. Dakota graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with dual degrees in Biology and Political Science.

Douglas MacMartin, Chief Scientific Advisor at Reflective, brings over 30 years of experience in aerospace engineering and climate science. He is an Associate Professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University, focusing on climate engineering research. Previously, he served as a Research Professor at the California Institute of Technology and led Active Control research at United Technologies Research Center. Douglas holds a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto.

Nan Ransohoff is the Head of Climate at Stripe, where she leads the company's efforts to accelerate the permanent carbon removal market through initiatives like Frontier, a $1 billion advance market commitment. Prior to her work in climate tech, she held leadership roles at Nuro, Uber, Nest, and Opower, focusing on product development and business strategy. She holds a BA from Harvard University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Thelma Krug is a former researcher at the Earth Observation Coordination at the National Institute for Space Research in Brazil, under the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communication (MCTIC). She was elected Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the Sixth Cycle of Panel (October 2015 – October 2022), after having been co-chair of the IPCC Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories from 2002 until 2015. She holds a PhD on Spatial Statistics from the University of Sheffield, UK.