The Biomass Energy Resource Center (BERC), a national nonprofit that promotes biomass for efficient community-scale energy applications, is pleased to announce that it has named Brenda Quiroz Maday as its new executive director.
With more than a decade of experience in the environmental and renewable energy communities, Quiroz Maday has managed programs to promote renewable energy investment and increase sustainable economic development through both domestic and international partnerships among technical, business, and governmental stakeholders. She recently led a team that conducted US Trade and Development Agency market and financial assessments for projects seeking to increase trade in renewable technologies, including biomass, between the United States and Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Prior to that, as director of two successful small business development centers in northern Virginia, she managed staff and financial resources, led fundraising and strategic business planning efforts, and implemented financial and managerial monitoring and evaluation systems, tripling client and employee satisfaction and doubling program income every year.
“I am looking forward to being a part of the BERC family,” said Quiroz Maday. “Building on the organization’s success, I see great potential to develop new projects and forge new and beneficial relationships that will bring BERC to an even higher level of achievement.”
“Brenda Quiroz Maday is the ideal person to lead BERC into the future,” says Scudder Parker, president of BERC’s board of directors. “Her passion for sustainable development, renewable energy, and entrepreneurship will serve the organization and its strategic objectives well.”
Quiroz Maday holds a master’s in Business Administration from Georgetown University in Washington DC, a bachelor of science in Industrial Chemical Engineering from the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico City, and a certificate in environmental management from Germany.
Quiroz Maday succeeds Christopher Recchia as BERC’s executive director, who, after four years, returned to state government to serve as deputy secretary of Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources.
Founded in 2001, the Biomass Energy Resource Center (BERC) is an independent, national nonprofit organization headquartered in Montpelier, Vermont with a Midwest office in Madison, Wisconsin. The organization’s mission is to achieve a healthier environment, strengthen local economies, and increase energy security across the United States by developing sustainable biomass energy systems at the community scale. BERC partners with communities, schools and colleges, state and local governments, businesses, utilities, and others to make the most of their local energy resources.