Ndustrial Promotes Laura Nichols to VP of Operations as Demand for AI-powered Energy Optimization Grows

Company’s first-ever dual role of Vice President of Operations and Chief of Staff to promote the next era of scale and innovation for industrial energy intensity leader

RALEIGH, N.C., Oct. 15, 2024: Ndustrial, the AI-powered energy intensity platform for industry, is pleased to announce the promotion of Laura Nichols to Vice President of Operations, where she will play a central role accelerating the company’s rapid growth trajectory. Nichols will retain her role as Chief of Staff where she partners with and advises executive leadership and helps determine meaningful indicators that measure the company’s success.

In her expanded role, Nichols will be instrumental to scaling operations, enhancing best practices, and advancing operational excellence to support Ndustrial as it enters a new era of growth.

“In just one year, Laura has made a significant impact in fueling Ndustrial’s success,” said Ndustrial Founder and CEO Jason Massey. “Her third day on the job was a board meeting and Laura’s onboarding was to jump in the middle of a complex strategic fundraise. She dove in head first to navigate partner expectations and operational nuances in a complex industry. I couldn’t think of a better person to help guide the company as we take on a massive opportunity helping the industrial market to reduce energy costs and emissions.”

For the past decade, Laura has helped companies deploy cross-functional initiatives, change management, global internal communications, and forecasting. She began working with Ndustrial in August of 2023 as the Chief of Staff, working side-by-side with the CEO Jason Massey to close the company’s Series B fundraise. Before Ndustrial, Laura led strategic initiatives at Puppet, the global DevOps leader enabling infrastructure automation and configuration management, where she scaled a global Objectives & Key Results (OKR) program and operationalized Puppet’s successful integration with Perforce Software during its acquisition in 2022. 

“Ndustrial stands out in its ability to put production-normalized energy data to work to drive meaningful outcomes for legacy industries,” said Ndustrial’s VP of Operations and Chief of Staff Laura Nichols. “Our work at Ndustrial is deeply mission-centric, and there is a common thread of purpose that drives collaboration across our company, customers, and partners. We have big plans ahead, and I’m excited to partner with our brilliant team to deliver energy and carbon savings at industrial scale.”

Nichols’ promotion comes at a time of notable momentum for Ndustrial with highlights including:

• Latin America expansion: Deployed its technology at more than a dozen industrial facilities from Chile to Mexico to drive down energy costs and emissions.
• Series B fundraise: Announced the initial close of $18.5 million in a Series B funding round co-led by ABB and GS Energy.
• ABB and GS Energy partnerships: Partnered to unite hard-to-access energy and production data in real time to deliver transformative economic and decarbonization value for industrial customers.
• Expanded leadership team: Recently welcomed Laura MacLachlan as Chief People Officer and Manuel Aguirre as VP of Supply Chain Electrification.

About Ndustrial

Ndustrial provides software and services to help the $60B industrial market combat inflation and climate change by optimizing energy intensity — the crucial metric of energy, emissions and cost required for one unit of production. By uniting production data with energy usage for some of the most complex, energy-demanding operations in the world, Ndustrial’s AI-powered solutions enable smarter energy decisions in real-time. The company has helped customers like Lineage, ABB and W.L. Gore (makers of Gore-Tex) avoid over $100M in energy spend to date. Learn more at ndustrial.io.