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 35 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.
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. He also is an associate editor for the SAE Journal of Commercial Vehicles and active member of multiple SAE and TMC groups.
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.
Dave Schaller is NACFE’s Director of Industry Engagement. His responsibilities include interfacing with fleets, OEMs and suppliers, writing reports, conducting workshops, giving presentations, and running the social media groups. Dave works closely with the drivers, fleets and sponsors for the Run on Less demonstrations. 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.
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.
NACFE Team
Ed Chipalowsky is NACFE’s new Vehicle Service And Support Manager. In this role he will be reaching out to OEMs, fleets, vendors and municipalities to learn about their challenges in not only developing curriculum for EV technicians but also how to recruit and develop future EV techs. Ed has an extensive background in trucking and education, with more than 40 years’ experience as a technician manager and trainer including serving as a diesel technology instructor in both college and career and technical education high schools.
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 will also 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 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.
John Richardson is NACFE’s Electrification Consultant. His focus is on NACFE’s work with the electric truck infrastructure. He has worked in the electric vehicle infrastructure charging space for 12 years. Prior to joining NACFE he spent four years at Electrify America, LLC helping launch a nationwide high-speed charging network. At Nissan North America Richardson worked to deploy fast charging stations at Nissan dealerships and within communities. He initially entered the BEV charging space in 2010 with AeroVironment, serving as its national contractor manager.
Jack Roberts is a NACFE Consultant with responsibilities for the organization’s work on autonomous trucking, blogging regularly on the topic. He is a transportation journalist who has been covering North American commercial vehicles for 25 years and has developed a reputation as a leading authority/futurist concentrating on new trucking technology, including autonomous vehicles, battery-electric trucks and emerging blockchain technology.
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
Rob Graff is Senior Technical Consultant to NACFE from RMI where he assists and leads a variety of projects. Rob has a background in energy and climate change policy. Rob worked at the metropolitan planning organization for Greater Philadelphia, where he established and led the Office of Energy and Climate Change Initiatives. He led the creation of the region’s electric vehicle action plan as well as the Interagency Battery Electric Bus Dialogue, which brought together 11 of the nation’s largest transit agencies to discuss the opportunities and challenges of transitioning to battery electric buses.
Ari Kahn is the Carbon-Free Mobility Manager at RMI and works as a consultant to NACFE to focus on increasing medium- and heavy-duty truck electrification, including addressing the gap between the power trucks need and the electricity the grid can provide. Ari has spent 12 years working to increase electric vehicle adoption. His career includes roles in government, a distribution utility, the private sector, and non-profits including serving as electric vehicle policy advisor to the Mayor of New York and working at Con Edison, New York City’s distribution utility.
Dave Mullaney is Principal, Carbon-Free Mobility at RMI, where he focuses on fleet electrification, particularly for trucks, and logistics decarbonization. Dave leads RMI’s trucking electrification work in the United States, India, and China. He is also building up RMI’s capabilities in data science to drive vehicle electrification and transportation decarbonization. Dave has worked globally with policymakers at every level of government to craft and implement freight decarbonization policies. At the local level, Dave has worked with policymakers from Beijing, Shenzhen, Delhi, and other cities to design and implement urban logistics and trucking electrification policies.