Penelope Herscher
Board Chairperson, Embark Trucks
Penelope Herscher is an accomplished public company board director, executive, and entrepreneur, with more than 15 years of experience as a high-tech CEO in Silicon Valley and more than 15 years of experience serving on public company boards of directors. She currently serves as chair of the board of directors at SGH-SMART Global, Inc. and Lumentum Holdings, Inc., and, as a director at Faurecia SA and several other private companies.
Since 2004, Ms. Herscher held various executive positions including CEO of FirstRain, Inc., a privately held company in the unstructured data analytics space, CEO of Simplex Solutions, a publicly traded electronics design automation company, and C-level and senior executive positions for Cadence Design Systems, Inc. and Synopsys, Inc. She holds a BA Hons, MA in Mathematics from Cambridge University in England.
👤 Chair of the Board of Directors
👤 Chair of the Compensation Committee
Pat Grady
Partner, Sequoia Capital
Pat Grady has served as a Director of Embark since May 2018. Mr. Grady currently serves as a Partner at Sequoia Capital, which he joined in 2007, and is responsible for Sequoia Capital’s growth-stage investment business. Mr. Grady is an active senior business professional, and currently serves as a director of multiple companies, including, Amplitude, Attentive, Cribl, Drift, Namely, Okta (Nasdaq: OKTA), and Pilot. These ongoing memberships provide insight into the enterprise technology and financial services industry and developments.
During his career, he has also worked with companies such as HubSpot (NYSE: HUBS), Jive Software, MarkLogic, Medallia (NYSE: MDLA), OpenDNS, Qualtrics (Nasdaq:XM), ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW), Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), Sumo Logic (Nasdaq: SUMO), Sunrun (Nasdaq: RUN), and Zoom (Nasdaq: ZM), among others. Mr. Grady received a Bachelor of Science degree from Boston College.
👥 Member of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee
Elaine Chao
Fmr. U. S. Secretary of Transportation
Elaine Chao is the former U. S. Secretary of Labor and the former U. S. Secretary of Transportation. She is the first Asian Pacific American woman to be appointed to a President’s cabinet in American history. Prior to being appointed Secretary of Labor, she was President and CEO of United Way of America, Director of the Peace Corps, Deputy Secretary of U. S. Department of Transportation, Chair of the Federal Commission. She has also worked in the private sector as vice president of Syndications for BankAmerica Capital Markets Group and Citibank. She has also been a director on a number of Fortune 100 public and nonprofit boards. The recipient of 37 honorary doctorate degrees, she has a MBA from Harvard Business School.
👥 Member of the Audit Committee
Ian Robertson
CEO, Northern Genesis
Ian Robertson cofounded Northern Genesis and has served as its Chief Executive Officer and a member of its Board of Directors since its formation. He also served as the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of Northern Genesis Acquisition I from June 2020 until consummation of its initial business combination in May 2021 and has served as Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors of Northern Genesis Acquisition III since its formation in January 2021. Mr. Robertson is an active senior business professional and currently leads InfraStar Investments, an infrastructure investment fund management company.
In July 2021, he was appointed Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of Largo Resources Ltd. (TSX: LGO) (NASDAQ: LGO) and interim President of Largo Clean Energy Corp., a subsidiary of Largo Resources Ltd. Mr. Robertson co-founded APCI in 1988 and previously served as Chief Executive Officer and Director of Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp. from October 2009 through July 2020. During his leadership tenure, Algonquin grew to become one of Canada’s largest power and utilities companies, serving regulated electricity, natural gas and water utility customers in the United States and Canada and owning and operating a large portfolio of global renewable wind and solar powered generation capacity.
He has more than 30 years of experience in the origination and execution of global infrastructure investment initiatives and is committed to the concept of sustainable investing. Mr. Robertson previously served on the Board of Directors of Atlantica Sustainable Infrastructure plc (NASDAQ: AY), a publicly listed affiliate of Algonquin traded on the NASDAQ exchange. Mr. Robertson received an electrical engineering degree from the University of Waterloo, a Master of Business Administration from York University, and a Master of Law from the Law School of the University of Toronto. He is a professional engineer and holds a Chartered Financial Analyst designation.
👤 Chair of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee
👥 Member of the Audit Committee
Patricia Chiodo
Chief Financial Officer, Verra Mobility Corporation
Ms. Chiodo currently serves as the Chief Financial Officer of Verra Mobility Corporation, and served in the same capacity at ATS Consolidated, Inc. prior to its business combination with Verra Mobility Corporation, since June 2015. Previously, Ms. Chiodo served as the Co-President and Chief Financial Officer of Origami Owl LLC from September 2013 to April 2015. Ms. Chiodo also served as a director of Acme Lift Company from March 2013 to March 2015.
Prior to joining Origami Owl LLC, Ms. Chiodo was a consultant to privately held companies from May 2012 to August 2013, and was the Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for RSC Holdings, Inc. from April 2010 to April 2012. Ms. Chiodo holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Arizona.
👤 Chair of the Audit Committee
👥 Member of the Compensation Committee
Alex Rodrigues
Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer, Embark Trucks
Alex co-founded Embark and serves as Chief Executive Officer. Upon closing of Embark’s SPAC merger with Northern Genesis Acquisition Corp II, Alex will become the youngest CEO of a publicly traded company.
Alex started building robots at age 11. As a middle schooler, he won a world robotics championship competing against high school teams. While studying at the University of Waterloo, Alex and co-founder Brandon Moak built Canada’s first self-driving vehicle, a golf cart named “Marvin” that was used to take guests on tours of the campus. Alex is a Thiel Fellowship recipient and was accepted into Silicon Valley’s premier startup incubator Y-Combinator, where he launched Embark.
Brandon Moak
Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer, Embark Trucks
Brandon co-founded Embark and currently serves as Chief Technology Officer. In his role, he leads engineering and R&D at Embark, and has overseen development of the Embark Driver software, the core of Embark’s commercialization effort. Brandon also led the design and development of the Embark Universal Interface.
Moak is an experienced engineer and previously worked at Kindred.ai and Clear Blue Technologies.