Emerging Truck Technology: Who’s Driving This Rig and How Is It Powered?

As a Senior Associate with RMI’s Carbon-Free Mobility team, Jessie is dedicated to accelerating the clean energy transition and specializes in emissions reductions from heavy-duty transport. She works closely with the North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE) to advance electric truck adoption and her background also includes work on transit bus electrification, charging infrastructure buildout, policy, stakeholder engagement and facilitation, and project management.

Prior to joining RMI, Jessie served as the Sustainability Program Coordinator for the City and County of Denver. Jessie earned a M.Sc. in Human Dimensions of Natural Resources from Colorado State University and a BA in International Studies from the University of Missouri. Jessie is the Co-Lead of the Colorado Front Range Chapter of Women of EVs (WEV), a board member of Drive Clean Colorado, and a member of Women in Trucking (WIT). Jessie was a recipient of SAE’s 2020 Environmental Excellence in Transportation Award.

Apeksha is the Co-Founder and Chief Engineer at Gatik, a technology company with a mission to deliver goods safely and efficiently using autonomous vehicles. Gatik focuses on B2B short-haul logistics for the retail industry, and has established t he first autonomous Middle Mile logistics network i n North America, serving multiple Fortune 500 customers including Walmart and Loblaw.

Prior to this, Apeksha was the Perception Lead at Ford Motor Company's self-driving car unit where she designed effective and efficient feature detection methods to assist with online localization and developed perception algorithms f or autonomous vehicles. She also held the position of Lead Machine Learning Engineer at Otsaw Digital where she designed and developed state-of-the-art deep learning networks for autonomous navigation of the O-R3 patrolling robot i n a non-static outdoor environment.

Apeksha earned her M.S. (with a focus on Machine/Deep Learning) from Purdue University and has contributed towards research in areas including machine learning, cognitive science, and robotics.

Frances Guo is a Product Manager for Trucking at Waymo, an autonomous driving technology company with a mission to make it safe and easy for people and things to get where they're going. In her role, Guo is responsible for the product management aspects of commercial partnerships and motion control for Waymo Via trucking. Prior to Waymo, Guo was a Product Manager for Visual Analytics at Tableau and before that was a Product Manager at Samsara looking after cameras and safety. She holds a B.S. in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University. 

Lia is responsible for partner product, program, and operations functions at Aurora. Aurora’s mission is to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly.  Her team defines the products Aurora builds and runs the programs to deliver them with automotive, logistics, freight, and mobility partners. She also leads Aurora’s fleet and commercial operations, including an amazing team of truck and car operators, dispatchers, and operations professionals across North America -- with hubs in California, Texas, and Pennsylvania. 

Lia previously spearheaded efforts to build strategic automotive, technology, and transit alliances for Lyft and prior to that, and led Global Government Relations for Square, where she supported product expansion in both nascent and highly regulated financial services markets. Before joining the tech industry, Lia served in the Executive Office of the President of the U.S. Government as both a civil servant and political appointee working primarily with the U.S. Congress and foreign governments. Lia remains active in national security and economic policy as a Truman National Security Fellow.

Brenda Mejia is the Operations Manager at Gatik, a leader in autonomous middle mile logistics, delivering goods safely and efficiently using its fleet of light & medium duty trucks. The company focuses on short-haul, business-to-business (B2B) logistics for the retail industry, enabling its customers to optimize their hub-and-spoke supply chain operations, enhance inventory pooling across multiple locations, reduce labor costs and meet an unprecedented demand of today’s consumers.

As one of the early members on the team, Brenda has been responsible for leading Gatik’s overall human resources strategy, project management, digital media marketing, diversity and inclusion, organizational design and cultural development. She has overseen efforts that have resulted in: compliance and regulatory risk management, launch of a global workplace and women’s initiative; safety-first culture and specialized training programs to support the company’s mission and objectives.

Brenda earned her Bachelor of Arts from Cornell College and her Masters from San Francisco State University. As an analytically and artistically inclined serial hobbyist, Brenda understands the value of versatility in startup environments and is always looking to pick up a new skill.

Joanna Buttler is the Director, Autonomous Cascadia Program at Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA), where she plays an instrumental role in leading the company’s Autonomous strategy. Joanna has an extensive career at DTNA, beginning in 2006, and has held a variety of roles in marketing, product lifecycle, project management, IT controlling and as Chief of Staff for Daimler Trucks & Buses. In 2019 she took on the role of Director, Business Operations and Liaison for DTNA and Torc Robotics, an independent subsidiary of DTNA focused on the development of self-driving trucks.

Joanna is passionate to keep the world moving by making road transportation safer and more efficient. Combining her varied experience and connections to a strong, diverse network, she helps to keep DTNA at the forefront of technology, applying a customer-focused and collaborative approach.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz, Germany.