Whitney Kopanko
Chair
Whitney is Director of Marketing and EV Program Manager for Sonny Merryman, known to many as “Virginia’s Bus Company.” In her role as EV Program Manager, she provides support for the program in many facets, including grant and funding project management, new business and partnership development, customer education, community support and engagement, operations and deployment support, and performance analysis and reporting. Over the last three years, Whitney has worked with 40+ Virginia school divisions to successfully procure and deploy their first electric school buses. In addition, Whitney has built relationships with many partners within the electric transportation industry, including project partners, Dominion Energy and Virginia Clean Cities, to provide a holistic support model for customers. Whitney holds a B.S. in Business Administration: Marketing and a Master of Business (M.B.A.) and has been with the Sonny Merryman company for 8 years.
Natalie Van Dyke
Vice Chair
Natalie is the Sales Director for Renewable Energy and Sustainability Strategies at Electratherm. Prior to that role, she was the transport sales manager for North America for Bitzer US, where she supported program innovation and technology integration of a range of BITZER products. In this role, she was involved in transit in bus and passenger rail, especially vehicle air conditioning. Natalie has made community improvement, air quality, and domestic energy security cornerstones of her work. Prior to this role, Natalie was Digital Marketing Manager at Sonny Merryman.
Erin Puryear
Treasurer
For over 30 years, Erin has worked in the electric utility industry in a number of different capacities including rates, regulatory, retail electricity, energy marketing/trading, and member services. As the Manager of Member Services & Energy Innovation Planning at Old Dominion Electric Cooperative, her responsibilities include member communications, the development and coordination of energy efficiency and demand response programs, strategic electrification initiatives, particularly transportation electrification, and load research activities for ODEC’s 11 member-owner distribution cooperatives. She serves on the G&T Managers’ DER Subcommittee and NRECA’s DER Membership Advisory Group.
David Robinson
Secretary
David Robinson is the Founder and Creative Director of Birch Studio, with decades of experience providing creative and technical solutions. David developed the Flux Report, a one-pager that presents data for various clean energy technologies and presents them in a visually-engaging format. The Flux Report was adopted by a dozen Clean Cities Coalitions for co-branding and distribution. He earned a BS in Architecture from the University of Maryland, has advanced knowledge of Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and is proficient in HTML, CSS and PHP and WordPress development. David is an executive board member of Virginia Clean Cities, finds deep satisfaction on a mountain bike, and works to make a more sustainable lifestyle easier for everyone.