Fortnightly Smartest Communities: Kimberly Britton

With the support of the Dentons Smart Cities & Communities Think Tank, PUF chose to honor Austin, Columbus, San Antonio, Spokane and suburban Birmingham as the Fortnightly Smartest Communities 2019.
 

PUF's Steve Mitnick: What is your role?

Kimberly Britton: I am the Chief Executive Officer of an organization called EPIcenter. The E, the P, and the I stand for Energy, Partnership, and Innovation.

When the city here was establishing what they called their new energy economy, they were in the midst of implementing their smart grid and smart meters. They wanted a significantly sized solar array. They were also thinking about; how do we want to sow economic development into our local communities that also will have global impact in energy innovation. The idea of EPIcenter was conceived.

We focus on incubating energy startups. They have a business model that's innovative. We work with startups from across the nation. We also have a thought leadership effort with a think tank and it does a global lecture series quarterly. We do an inner summit. Finally, we do an advisory service for organizations like utilities that need help expanding their innovation bandwidth.