Mr. Hurlbert is a seasoned entrepreneur – with a thirty-year track record of building successful businesses with strong leadership teams. Mr. Hurlbert was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of The Year® in 2009 in the Houston and Gulf Coast Area and inducted into the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of The Year® Hall of Fame that same year. He was also a founding member of the Young Presidents Organization – Gulf Coast Region.
Mr. Hurlbert is currently a Managing Partner and Co-Founder at BrightMark Partners, a growth equity and management firm dedicated to providing capital and resources to venture, growth phase, and middle market businesses.
Mr. Hurlbert served as the President, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Houston based TAS Energy from December of 2001 to April of 2020. TAS is leading provider of high efficiency and modular cooling and energy systems for the data center, commercial, industrial and power generation markets. TAS was sold to publicly traded Comfort Systems (FIX) on April 1st of 2020. Under Mr. Hurlbert’s leadership, TAS grew from a “start-up” to a global leader in efficiency/capacity offerings to the industrial, power generation and HVAC industries, renewable energy – including building over 300MW of geothermal plants worldwide, and data center products and services. When TAS was sold to FIX, the company had over 750 employees worldwide and delivered over 2,000 modules to 33 countries globally.
Mr. Hurlbert is the Chairman of the Board at Clearas Water Recovery. Clearas utilizes patented, sustainable and proprietary technology to solve high nutrient wastewater challenges in the municipal and industrial water markets. In doing so, Clearas produces a valuable “bio waste” that can be sold into multiple vertical markets. Currently Clearas Water Recovery bio-waste is a sustainable substitute for hyrdro-carbon based products – i.e. it is being used to make foam for Addidas tennis shoes.
Mr. Hurlbert sits on the Board of Prostar Geocorp, a company pioneering geospatial intelligence technology in the energy infrastructure and transportation markets. Prostar utilizes a SaaS based business model and has multiple patents and is transforming the way large utilities, construction companies, and states departments of transportation track underground assets and utilities (i.e. natural gas pipelines).
Mr. Hurlbert sits on the Board of ATR SmartProcedures, a company pioneering digital transformation in the industrial industry by providing a SaaS based offering to take “paper based” operational, safety, environmental, and maintenance procedures and putting them in the cloud so they are easily accessible by plant employees. ATR has an impressive customer including Exxon, Chevron, Koch, and Commanche Peak.
Mr. Hurlbert served from 2012 to 2018 on the Board of Directors at Loenbro, Inc., a diversified energy services and construction company with more than 900 employees. At Loenbro, Mr. Hurlbert provided leadership direction and oversight for the organic and inorganic growth plan, capital partnerships, risk management, organizational development, marketing and business development, as well as general and administrative oversight. Mr. Hurlbert helped Loenbro founders monetize the business in 2018 with a large New York private equity firm.
Prior to joining TAS in 2001, Mr. Hurlbert served as the President and General Manager of a Pratt & Whitney Power Systems business unit, P2 Energy.
Prior to P2 Energy, Mr. Hurlbert served as President and CEO of the PIC Energy Group. While at PIC, Mr. Hurlbert initiated and closed a joint venture with PWPS, which lead to the formation of P2. This transaction was valued at over $150 million to PIC, which at the time had roughly $25 million in revenue. Mr. Hurlbert left PIC to lead the P2 entity.
Mr. Hurlbert is currently the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Local Bounti, a company pioneering sustainable
indoor agriculture.
Prior to joining PIC as the CEO, Mr. Hurlbert was named General Manager of Global Sales for General Electric’s Contractual Services business (GECS). Mr. Hurlbert was integral in building GECS from a “start- up” to over $7 Billion in backlog in just 24 months. GECS was known for pioneering the LTSA product line (long term service agreements) for GE’s gas turbine technology. LTSA’s became an industry wide standard. Mr. Hurlbert lead the team that developed out the product line, and built the global sales team from the ground up, starting with approximately 15 people and ended with over 150 when he left. When Mr. Hurlbert left GECS, the business had just closed $1 Billion in backlog in the prior quarter. A trend that continued after he left. GECS would go on to become one of the biggest success stories in the history of GE, and GE Power systems. While at GE, Mr. Hurlbert completed GE’s esteemed four-week MDC program at Crotonville.
Prior to GE, Mr. Hurlbert held the position of Director of International Business Development for Stewart & Stevenson (S&S), the world’s largest third-party operator of Power Plants. S&S Power division was purchased by GE.
Mr. Hurlbert joined the energy industry in 1990 in a position with North American Energy Services (NAES) a leading operations and maintenance company where he led sales in Latin America.
Prior to NAES Mr. Hurlbert served as a Valuation Manager in the Mergers and Acquisitions Group for the Geneva Companies. Mr. Hurlbert successfully valued over 75 middle market businesses, company valuations ranged between $20 and $150 million.
Prior to joining Geneva, Mr. Hurlbert was hired off the San Diego State University campus to work for the Ford Motor company in their esteemed “financial management” program. Mr. Hurlbert worked in Ford’s “Aerospace” division and was a financial analyst in Ford’s advanced “Star Wars” program.
Mr. Hurlbert has a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree from San Diego State and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the California State University – Long Beach.
Mr. Hurlbert is the past President and Chairman of the Turbine Inlet Cooling Association.
Mr. Hurlbert loves spending time with his wife and three daughters, Ellie, Kate, and Bella. He is also a competitive golfer, having won the 2010 Montana Mid–Amateur and the 2020 Montana Senior Amateur tournaments and other top regional and national golf events. Mr. Hurlbert has competed in 3 USGA events.
