Our Team
The NACFE team is composed of seasoned professionals with experience in the transportation industry. Each brings unique skills to the organization to help us achieve our goals. Select a team member’s image for biographical information and contact details.
Directors
Mike Roeth is NACFE’s Executive Director. He sets the direction for the organization and determines which projects NACFE should undertake and where to focus its efforts on improving freight efficiency. He also serves as the trucking lead for RMI. Mike has worked in the commercial vehicle industry for more than 40 years and his specialty is brokering green truck collaborative technologies into the real world at scale. Mike was named an Industry Influencer by Fleet Owner and awarded the prestigious SAE 2020 L. Ray Buckendale Lecturer and manuscript author in 2020. He understands the customers, operations and intricacies of the commercial vehicle industry having held various positions with Navistar and Behr/Cummins.
Kim Ehrenhaft is the Design Director. In this role, she works on NACFE’s Confidence Reports and Guidance Reports and is responsible for its social media efforts and website. Kim has been involved in the trucking industry since 1993 and has served as managing editor/production manager at Successful Dealer and Truck Parts & Service, and production manager at Heavy Duty Trucking and Heavy Duty Aftermarket Journal.
Rick Mihelic is NACFE’s Director of Emerging Technologies. In this position he spearheads NACFE’s work on electric, hydrogen fuel cell and other alternative fuel medium- and heavy-duty trucks. He also contributes to NACFE’s Confidence Reports and writes blogs that are regularly published in CCJ. He is also president of Mihelic Vehicle Consulting LLC and has 40 years’ experience in the trucking and aerospace industries including 20 years in commercial vehicle development for PACCAR and Peterbilt. He received the 2016 SAE L. Ray Buckendale Award and 2020 SAE Crawford award.
Yunsu Park is NACFE’s Director of Engineering. His responsibilities include analyzing data for NACFE’s Annual Fleet Fuel Study and Run on Less events. He has authored several Confidence Reports for NACFE and is an independent consultant to the trucking industry. Yunsu’s area of interest is in data collection and analysis, and technology implementation, particularly as it relates to human behavior. Prior to NACFE, Yunsu was CTO for a technology start-up working with fleets on driver behavior and incentives and held various roles in finance and engineering at Navistar.
Denise Rondini is NACFE’s Director of Communications. Her responsibilities include handling NACFE’s internal and external communications efforts as well as media relations. She also is on the teams that develop Confidence Reports and Guidance Reports. Denise has 40 years’ experience in the trucking industry as editor of several industry publications. She is also president of Rondini Communications, a full-service communications firm specializing in the trucking industry. She is the recipient of SAE International’s 2019 Environmental Excellence in Transportation Award.
NACFE Team
Rachel Ellenberger has joined the NACFE team as Industry Engagement Manager. In this capacity she will help manage NACFE’s relationships with various members of the trucking industry and sponsors. Rachel has worked in the alternative fuel industry for several years and now is the owner of Green Seed Collective, LLC, a consulting firm dedicated to cultivating project management and strategic growth solutions for groups dedicated to changing the world.
Pepe Gutierrez is NACFE’s Director for Industry Engagement in Mexico and Latin America. In this role, he will be reaching out to OEMs, fleets, and industry suppliers to share information in order to improve freight efficiency. He also will be collecting information that applies to transportation in that region and communicating benefits, challenges and payback on fuel-efficiency options to help fleets adopt fuel efficiency technologies.
Pepe has a 28-year background in the trucking industry, including sales and operations positions with several companies.
Andrew Halonen is NACFE’s Lightweighting Consultant. In this role he helps NACFE with its work on helping fleets lower the weight of their tractors and trailers. Andrew is also president of Mayflower Consulting, LLC, a lightweighting consultancy that provides strategic marketing, market research and business development for high tech clients. He works with castings, extrusions, brakes, and new material development programs. Recent research includes automotive material benchmarking, crash management systems, EV material selection, and the investigation of composites for trucking.
Kevin Otto is NACFE’s Electrification Team Lead. In this role he provides consulting services and has authored a number of Confidence Reports and Guidance Reports. Otto spent 40 years at Cummins where he held a number of key positions in Technical Service, Engineering, Quality and Program Leadership in several of the Business Units. Otto has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. He is involved in the Technology & Maintenance Council and was awarded the Silver Spark Plug in 1999.
Dave Schaller is a NACFE Advisor. As a Navistar employee for 27 years, he held positions in production design, research, program management, dealer sales training, marketing, product line management, and strategic product planning. A marketing role allowed him to spend many days in truck stops, fleet offices and dealerships in five countries learning about what the industry desired and why.
Jeff Seger is NACFE’s Clean Energy Consultant. In this role he will be working on a project around the messy middle, helping scale electric and hydrogen solutions, looking at sustainability and intermodal and assisting with various other Confidence Reports including one on the driver’s effect on fuel efficiency. Jeff has 38 years’ experience in the commercial vehicle market and has knowledge and expertise around powertrain integration, electrification and internal combustion engines. He is an expert in understanding the technical and business challenges of new technology and successfully finding reliable and profitable solutions.
RMI Partner Team
Nocona Sanders is a senior associate in the Carbon-Free Transportation team at RMI. He uses various analytical methods to support electric vehicle adoption efforts with a specific focus on medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. Prior to joining RMI, Nocona was a senior associate at Gladstein, Neandross & Associates where he used technical analyses on the total cost of ownership, greenhouse gas emissions inventories, and fleet energy use profiles to inform the deployment of electric vehicles and their charging infrastructure.
