Investment Team

The Chevron Technology Venture Investments team keeps abreast of developments across the entire technology spectrum. We understand the broad scope of Chevron's operations, and we work closely with our portfolio companies as promising ideas are transformed into full-fledged, sustainable businesses.

Located in San Ramon, California, and Houston, Texas, we screen more than 400 opportunities per year and manage more than $250 million in strategic investments.

Trond Unneland

Trond Unneland, Managing Executive

Trond Unneland has over 20 years of domestic and international experience in exploration, petroleum engineering, offshore oil production operations, information technology and venture capital.

Unneland began his professional career as a petroleum engineer with Statoil in Bergen, Norway, working in offshore oil production operations. After serving in various positions of increasing responsibility, he was then named vice president of information technology. Unneland joined Chevron in 2000 as technology account manager for Chevron Energy Technology Company. In 2004, he was named country manager for Chevron Denmark where he was responsible for leading all of the company's upstream operations. In 2006, he became country manager for Chevron Norway responsible for Chevron's upstream business. Unneland assumed his current position leading the venture capital team in 2007.

The author of numerous articles on reservoir management and well dynamics, Unneland has been cited as an expert source in more than 90 international technical papers. He has been recognized three times by the Society of Petroleum Engineers for his service to the organization. Unneland is a board observer on Southwest Windpower, DynaPump and BrightSource.

A native of Norway, Unneland has a Bachelor of Science in petroleum engineering and a Master of Science in reservoir engineering from Stavanger University. He later received his doctorate in technical sciences from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He has served as a visiting scholar at Stanford University and has worked for the Norwegian industry attaché at the Royal Norwegian Consulate General in San Francisco, California.

Mike Brooks

Mike Brooks, Venture Executive

Mike Brooks has more than 25 years of experience in a wide range of areas including: chemical plant operations management; refinery planning and scheduling; distributed control and instrumentation project implementation; advanced control application development; as well as development of process information management systems and graphical user interface products. He also has 12-years experience with various software companies including director of products and technology at Wonderware. Brooks was also co-founder of INDX where he led marketing and product development efforts for the model-based visualization product that he invented. Brooks focuses on software architecture technologies to support operational activities for all Chevron refineries and the company's supply chain. Brooks is currently a board member for the Manufacturing Enterprise Systems Association and User Council chair of the OpenO&M initiative that drives interoperability standards for manufacturing.

Brooks earned a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from Bradford University in the United Kingdom.

John Hanten

John Hanten, Venture Executive

John Hanten has more than 30 years of experience in the petroleum industry, primarily in upstream petroleum technology. Initially joining Chevron in 1978 as a research geophysicist, he has subsequently held varied supervisory and management positions of increasing responsibility in application development, technical services management, strategic planning, operational management and e-business development. In 1995, as strategic planning manager for Chevron Petroleum Technology Company, Hanten pioneered the internal use of web technology to streamline communications and other business processes. Most recently he was a senior consultant with Chevron e-Business Development Company working on new venture startups and internal Web initiatives.

Hanten has been active in industry standards and e-business initiatives and served as an elected board member of the Petrotechnical Open Software Corporation from 1999 to 2001 and chairman during 1999 and 2000. He participates as a board observer for Artificial Muscle, Axxon, BlueArc, Deepflex, Metacarta, OpenSpirit, Radiance Technologies, Schemalogic, SpectraSensors and Tradecapture.

Hanten earned a Bachelor of Arts in earth science from the University of Minnesota, a Master of Science in geophysics from Purdue University and a Master of Business Administration from St. Mary's College.

Don Riley

Don Riley, Venture Executive

Don Riley has more than 30 years of experience with Chevron. Early in his career, he led research efforts in advanced 3-D seismic processing and supercomputing technology at the company's La Habra, California, research laboratory. In 1999, Riley co-founded Chevron's first venture investment group, Chevron Technology Ventures, which developed a portfolio of investments in information technology, material science and biotechnology startups. Prior to that, Riley was chief geophysicist for Chevron U.S.A. and Chevron Canada, where he was also general manager for human resources. He is currently a board observer for Apprion, Codexis, Ember, FiveStar, Konarka, MicroFabrica, Microseismic, Moblize, Sicortex, Sub-One Technology, and Stingray Geophysical.

Riley received doctorate and master's degrees from Stanford University in geophysics and also holds a Bachelor of Science in geophysics from the University of Tulsa.

Matthew McElhattan

Matthew McElhattan, Principal

Matt McElhattan has more than 10 years of industrial experience serving in both technical and consultative capacities at small private companies and large public companies. Prior to joining the venture team, McElhattan worked for Chevron's Oronite division where he was responsible for the transfer of technical knowledge on Oronite's products to customers and employees. McElhattan was a management consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers' supply chain practice where he was involved in assessing and deploying Web-based supply-chain models and completing integrated supply-chain analysis for a variety of clients. Earlier McElhattan led market analysis and technology feasibility studies for Ducker Worldwide focusing on market size, configuration, target customers and applications for various industrial technologies. He was specifically focused on the introduction of new industrial motor technologies and supervisory control and data acquisition equipment which is a focus area for Chevron's operations.

McElhattan has a Bachelor of Science in industrial engineering from Purdue University and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Southern California.

Richard Pardoe

Richard Pardoe, Principal

Rich Pardoe has more than 20 years experience working in variety of technical industries. Prior to joining Chevron, he was the field manager for a small start-up company organizing field trials and gathering data. Pardoe joined Chevron as a process engineer supporting the sale of specialty catalysts for hydroprocessing units in Asia and Europe. Pardoe also participated in and led design teams for resid desulpherizers and hydrocracking units in Japan and Poland. Pardoe then moved to Chevron's Supply and Trading organization working on the scheduling and delivery of Chevron's California crude oil production as well as marine deliveries to Chevron's California refineries. Pardoe joined the company's venture capital group in 2006.

Pardoe has a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from the University of California, Davis.

Colleen Mazza

Colleen Mazza, Business Support

Colleen Mazza joined Chevron Technology Ventures in 2002 as an administrative assistant. She provides administrative, planning and data management support and maintains back office systems and processes. In addition, Mazza acts as the principal administrative contact for portfolio companies and venture capital limited partnerships. Prior to joining Chevron, Mazza worked as an accounting analyst and an office manager.

Mazza has a Bachelor of Science in finance from Brigham Young University.