Business and defense professionals who understand how to navigate the complex, interconnected landscape of innovation, energy, and national security.
Meet the Team
Tom Hicks
Tom Hicks performed the duties of the Under Secretary of the Navy from 2014 to 2016 and again in 2017 representing the Department on all policy, budget, and strategy matters and serving as the Chief Operating Officer/Chief Management Officer of the Navy. In this capacity, Tom led the day-to-day business operations of the Department and served as Department’s senior official on Space, Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Enterprise, Defense Business Council, Financial Improvement and Audit Readiness, Military Health, Military Professionalism, Sexual Assault, Force of the Future, Transgender Integration, Women in Service, Secretary of Defense Senior Leadership Council, and Department of Defense/Joint Staff executive leadership working groups.
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Concurrent with this role, Tom served as Deputy Under Secretary of the Navy for Management as the Secretary of the Navy’s principal advisor on all business management functions including offices of the Chief Information Office, Strategy and Innovation, Business Operations, and Administration. In this capacity Tom was responsible for overseeing and executing the Secretary’s Innovation Vision to improve use of information, accelerate new capabilities to the Fleet, build an innovation network, and develop advanced war fighting concepts.
Prior to these roles, Tom served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy; the Secretary’s senior official on all matters pertaining to energy sourcing, energy efficiency, and alternative fuels managing an energy investment portfolio of $1 billion annually. In concert with the Secretary’s energy vision, Tom established the 1 Gigawatt renewable energy initiative announced by the President which resulted in the procurement of more than 1.2 Gigawatts of renewable energy and cost savings in excess of $100 million. Tom led the creation of the Department’s $800 million public-private partnership accelerating the capacity of the advanced alternative fuels industry to provide hundreds of millions of gallons per year of military-compatible, low-emission alternative fuel price-competitive with conventional fuel.
Prior to the Navy, Tom was Vice President of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) and International Programs with the U.S. Green Building Council. Tom oversaw the implementation and expansion from four to seven individual rating systems while increasing presence to more than 120 countries yielding nearly 70,000 building projects totalling over 12 billion square feet. Tom led the wholesale re-engineering of the certification processes and business model, development of the volume certification model, and both brand and reference guide fulfilment, driving ten-fold net revenue growth.
Prior to the USGBC, Tom was a Senior Program Manager with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR® program. Tom created and managed the ENERGY STAR commercial building rating system enabling measurement and tracking of building energy performance on a 1 to 100 scale. To date, more than 400,000 commercial buildings totalling over 35 billion square feet of floor space have been benchmarked using the ENERGY STAR rating system and More than 25,000 buildings have been certified as ENERGY STAR with a cumulative cost savings of $3.4 billion and a cumulative greenhouse gas emissions savings of 17 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent.
Tom received his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland and has completed coursework at The George Washington University, Said Business School at Oxford, and the Harvard Business School.
Acting Under Secretary of the Navy (2014-2016, 2017)
Deputy Under Secretary of the Navy for Management (2013-2017)
Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy (2010-2013)
Vice President, U.S. Green Building Council (2005-2010)
Ashley Patterson Beaty
Principal, Ardeidae Group
Ashley Patterson Beaty, has 20+ years’ experience spanning government relations, policy, and communications. Prior to Ardeidae Group, she was Vice President of Government Relations and Public Policy at Ameresco (NYSE: AMRC). Ashley also served as a Congressional staffer and worked as a television news producer covering the White House and Congress for the Washington Bureau of Belo Corp.
Ashley has participated in numerous clean energy trade associations and is currently focused on renewable energy, critical minerals, offshore wind, and energy tax policy. She serves on the board of the Low Carbon Fuels Coalition and is a member of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy. Ashley is also an advisor at the start-up company BTR Energy, where she works with electric vehicle automakers on low carbon transportation programs.
Ashley is principal of Ardeidae Group – a woman-owned Washington, D.C. advisory firm founded in 2019. Website: https://www.ardeidaegroup.com
Ashley holds a Bachelor of Science in Communications and a Master of Science in Broadcast Journalism both from Boston University.
Meredith Berger
Principal, KinleyOne
From 2021-2025, Berger served as the Senate-confirmed U.S. assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations, and environment, where she worked on critical infrastructure, providing oversight and policy for Navy and Marine Corps energy and water; infrastructure hardening and resilience; military construction; acquisition, utilization, and disposal of real property and facilities; environmental protection; safety and occupational health; and tribal and indigenous affairs. As Assistant Secretary, she established the role of, and served as, the first chief sustainability officer for the U.S. Department of the Navy. She was also the designated health and safety official for the department.
For the majority of the first year of her tenure, Berger concurrently performed the duties of the undersecretary of the Navy and was responsible for oversight and policy for defense and naval strategy, intelligence and intelligence-related activities, sensitive activities, special access programs, space activities, small business programs, the naval audit service, business operations, performance management, and risk management within the department. Previously, Berger served in senior roles in the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Florida Department of Financial Services, and Microsoft.
Joe Bryan
Principal, Muswell Orange, LLC
Joe Bryan is a Principal of Muswell Orange, LLC. Joe was formerly a Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense and the DoD’s Chief Sustainability Officer.
Joe previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy where he was responsible for policies relating to the Department’s installation and operational energy programs.
Joe has deep experience in government oversight and investigations and earlier in his career led investigations for the Senate Armed Services Committee. Joe served on the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Joe has consulted in Namibia and South Africa and began his career working on electricity restructuring and state-level policies to encourage the growth of clean energy markets.