Title: Director, Commercialization Practice
Category: Managing Professional
Education: B.S. and M.E. Electrical engineering, MBA
Mario is both an innovation and emerging business specialist and an accomplished corporate growth and strategic change agent. Mr. Larach has over 19 years of successful business development and strategic marketing experience, including operational roles for business start-ups, corporate expansions, and divisional turnarounds for both publicly and privately held companies. Mr. Larach’s experience in driving corporate revenue growth through new business opportunities and innovation includes the successful creation of a multi-million dollar Intellectual Property Portfolio Management and Licensing business unit with worldwide Fortune 500 clients, restructuring to profitability and leading market position a $100M corporate group, opening highly profitable new markets through creation of a new strategic business unit for a $1B corporation, and generating over $48M in contract awards through strategic positioning for an emerging technology company.
Spanning a wide array of industries, Mr. Larach’s functional experience includes overall profit and loss responsibilities for operations, R&D, sales and marketing, developing and launching new products and services, creating new markets and channels of distribution, and commercializing new technologies.
Mr. Larach is recognized within the San Diego community as an innovation and emerging business specialist in the energy and clean-tech sector. As both a Clean Tech San Diego member and a CONNECT Entrepreneur-In-Residence he has engaged with a wide portfolio of organizations and companies spanning the water, biomass, solar, next generation wind, geothermal, hydrogen, and biofuel industries. His forte in the clean-tech sector has been researching, identifying, and screening emerging technologies – and assisting companies in building their technology platforms and positioning them for growth and success. The U.S. DOE has leveraged Mr. Larach’s experience by seeking his assistance as an expert reviewer for proposals submitted in response to RFPs issued by the DOE individually or jointly with the USDA. Mr. Larach also assists emerging companies with securing private or grant funding and identifying strategic partners.
Mr. Larach currently serves as Chairman and CEO of Kai BioEnergy Corp., an algal biofuel company and member of the National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts (NAABB) consortium which was awarded upward of $48 million by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to develop a systems approach for sustainable commercialization of algal biofuel.
Mr. Larach resides in Del Mar, CA with his wife and two children. He is an avid classical guitarist and was the co-founder of the former GuitarAficionado.com. In the wee hours of the morning he can be found blogging at his online venue “Café with Mario”.
Mr. Larach holds an MBA from the University of Chicago together with both a ME and BS in Electrical Engineering, along with certification in Manufacturing and Engineering Productivity, from Cornell University.