Wayne retired in 2020 after over 35 years of experience in the energy, chemical and environmental industries including nearly 20 years in chief executive roles. During his career, Wayne had a long, successful track record of fundraising and building partnerships with Fortune 500 companies to rapidly bring new technology to commercial deployment. Most recently, he was the CEO for ALD NanoSolutions, a company with a unique technology for creating nano-scale coatings on materials using atomic layer deposition. In January of 2020, he successfully merged the company with ForgeNano to create a global dominant position with this technology. Prior to joining ALD NanoSolutions, he was the CEO and a board chairman for Sundrop Fuels. There he raised over $200 million to develop a biomass-based cellulosic gasoline for large-scale biofuels production to meet mandates from the US Renewable Fuels Standard. Prior to joining Sundrop Fuels, he was the founder and CEO of Velocys, Inc., a microchannel chemical process technology company.
Wayne spent much of his early career in various management and engineering positions at Exxon and later at Battelle Memorial Institute. He received engineering degrees with his B.S. from Texas A&M University, an M.S. from the California Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. In addition, he complemented these with the Executive Management Program at the University of Michigan Business School.
Living in the Longmont area for the past 15 years, since retirement, he volunteers with a number of organizations including serving as Chair of the Board for The Reentry Initiative, working at his church, UCC Longmont, and mentoring several executive directors of non-profit organizations as well as young CEOs of startup companies. He is widowed with two adult children and two grandchildren.