Andy Klump

As an Eagle Scout who grew up as the son of a taxi driver in St. Louis, Andy was always interested in entrepreneurship, starting Handy Andy’s Lawn Care Services at the age of 12. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Economics from Northwestern University, worked in the dot com boom and bust in the late 1990s, and started his career in Asia with a summer internship with Intel’s software lab in Shanghai, China in 2002. That experience sparked his interest in building his career in Asia, even as others told him foreigners who couldn’t speak Mandarin would never succeed in China.

Andy completed his MBA from Harvard Business School, moved to Beijing, and sold desktops, laptops and storage for Dell Computer before receiving a promotion to National Account Manager for Dell. He learned Mandarin through this process, but more importantly learned how to adapt in a rapidly changing Chinese business environment, and later transitioned to the solar energy sector as Vice President, Business Development at Trina Solar. Andy helped lead the company’s international expansion, led procurement and global supply chain teams, and served on the IPO deal team for Trina Solar’s listing on the New York Stock Exchange. He supported the fundraising of nearly $500 million in debt and equity financing during the IPO and follow-on offering, participating in earnings calls and external presentations. Andy helped establish Trina Solar as one of the early leading globally recognized Chinese brands in the solar PV industry, growing the company by 10x in just two years.

In 2008, Andy founded and built Clean Energy Associates (CEA), establishing the company as one of the global solar industry’s most respected technical advisory firms. Under his leadership, CEA served global developers, IPPs, EPCs, and financial institutions with project deployments across 85 countries. Andy helped build the quality assurance platforms and infrastructure that made solar PV and energy storage supply chains more transparent and trustworthy across the world’s most complex manufacturing environments, and amidst constant regulatory changes. He scaled CEA operations across 15 countries and guided the firm through a successful sale to Intertek Group plc in 2022.

Throughout this process, Andy transformed the company’s internal culture, creating a bottom-up framework to support and develop leaders across all departments. Alongside his own evolution as a leader, Andy rebuilt the company’s core purpose, vision, and values, viewing CEA’s culture as the foundation for organizational cohesion and success across teams in 15+ countries. Through carefully designed written and oral communication strategies and playbooks that drew upon his own life journey, support for emerging leaders across the organization, and a commitment to celebrating company values at every turn, Andy fostered rapid growth inside CEA as well.

Andy’s work blends hard-won operational intelligence with an emphasis on integrity and purpose. In 2014, he and his wife co-founded K.I.D.S. IQ Project, a charity in Canada to support research and cures for intellectual disabilities (ID). In 2020, he co-founded IDefine, a nonprofit working toward treatments and cures for Kleefstra syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder impacting his daughter Natalya. IDefine successfully established a Center of Excellence at Boston Children’s Hospital. Following his exit from CEA, Andy relocated his family to Boston and became a more active member of IDefine’s board, and the cumulative total of funds raised for research has exceeded $5M over these two charities.

Today, based in Boston, Andy brings more than two decades of global operating experience, culture leadership, and platform-building expertise to founders, executives, and organizations. He works in partnership with purpose-driven leaders and organizations building at the intersection of clean energy, culture, and what comes next.