2025 Net Zero Accelerator Info Session

The application for the 2025 Net Zero Accelerator is now live!

Come learn more about our one-of-a-kind program, now entering its 6th year, focused on piloting net zero (carbon, energy, water, and waste) solutions in the built environment. To date, we’ve helped accelerate the growth of over 100 companies, and we're eager to select and beging working with our next group.

Please come with your questions and find out how to get involved as a startup, pilot partner, or program advisor!

You can learn more about us and the NZA at NetZeroAccelerator.org.

About the Presenters

Colin Mangham

Director of Innovation, USGBC California

Colin has guided dozens of global brands (generating over $500 million in revenues) and hundreds of entrepreneurs (securing over $85 million in capital) through birth, growth, and rebirth. As Director of Innovation and a member of the USGBC California leadership team, he focuses on promoting, developing, aligning, and implementing innovation both within the organization and with the partners and communities we serve.

Since 2020, he has led the Net Zero Accelerator (NZA), helping startups accelerate the commercialization of cleantech innovations that drive progress toward net-zero energy, carbon, water, and waste. He has hands on guided the success of 89 companies, and with engagement ranging from 1:1 advisory to workshop facilitation to pitch sessions and panel discussions at major industry events.

With extensive international experience—having traveled to 33 countries and conducted business in many—Colin champions our International Gateway, an initiative born out of the NZA. This program facilitates market entry for growth-stage companies focused on expanding into California while also exporting the thought leadership of USGBC-CA and its partners across the state, the world’s fifth-largest economy.

Colin’s mentorship and guidance are further informed by his C-suite roles including CMO, CCO, and COO as well as President and co-founder of Morpho Energy, a renewable energy company unlocking the idle asset value of commercial and industrial rooftops through solar, storage, and energy efficiency measures. Additionally, his approach to Natural Innovation™ integrates deeply human motives with nature’s operating principles to develop impactful brands and go-to-market strategies.

His “Find Your Woods” TEDx and appearances on CNN’s “Going Green” have helped establish him as an internationally recognized voice for biomimicry and nature-based innovation. As a Liverpool MBA and LSU Tiger, Colin lectures frequently at universities including UCLA, USC, LMU, DePaul, The University of Helsinki, and the ESB Business School at Reutlingen University (Germany), where he recently served three years as Visiting Faculty.

Colin’s certifications include Biomimicry Specialist, LEED Green Associate, and Living Future Ambassador. Colin has been an Angeleno since 1998 and is now rooted in the hills with his wife, kids, cats, and whatever neighboring species happen along.

Ben Stapleton

Executive Director, USGBC California

A native Angeleno, Ben Stapleton is a recognized sustainability leader who brings a creative mind and consultative approach to a wide range of projects with a focus on building teams and designing programs to deliver impactful results. His current work is based on coordinating an ecosystem leveraging the built environment as the entry point and connective fabric to help create a more sustainable society for all as Executive Director for the U.S. Green Building Council California.

In his time at USGBC-CA, he has strengthened the foundation of this leading, membership-based sustainability organization while developing and delivering a portfolio of community engagement and education focused programming centered on climate justice, high performance buildings, occupant health, corporate sustainability and regional resilience; establishing talent development and a people first philosophy as the pillars of the brand.

Previously, he launched and then managed the La Kretz Innovation Campus in Downtown LA while leading operations, finance, and major program initiatives for the LA Cleantech Incubator (LACI). The Campus has become an epicenter for sustainability in the region and an iconic green building for the City of LA, featuring events with prominent thought leaders, while being home to a community of cutting-edge businesses and nonprofits. During his time at LACI, the team worked with 80+ companies to raise $225M+ in funding, create 1,800+ jobs, and deliver $400M+ in long-term economic value for the City of LA.

His other work has included real estate advisory, energy efficiency consulting, facilities operations, site selection, and project management as well as business and strategy development for a wide range of companies and real estate investors. He serves on a number of boards where his talents and insight have proven invaluable in managing, negotiating, and executing on complex real estate projects while delivering technology startups and community engagement programs that exceed expectations.

He is a recipient of JLL’s distinctive Da Vinci Award for Innovation, the Los Angeles Business Council’s Community Impact Award, Stratiscope’s Impact Maker to Watch Award, and CoStar’s Power Broker designation in the Los Angeles market. Representing competing schools in Los Angeles, Stapleton holds a MBA from the USC Marshall School of Business as well as a Bachelors of Arts degree in Economics from UCLA. Ben is a LEED AP O+M, ENV SP, and WELL AP certified green building nerd driven by a connection to nature while being inspired by the people around him.