Praveen Penmetsa

CEO

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Praveen’s passion for helping other audacious visionaries through complex product development and his firm belief that "its not just what we do, it's how we do it" is the drive behind Motivo. Praveen brings over two decades of hands-on experience in translating creative visions into products. His formative years in building racecars and new mobility solutions under highly compressed timelines eventually resulted in the development of the Motivo Way and his philosophy on managing innovation. He loves the creative energy that permeates the product engineering lifecycle especially on seemingly impossible projects. Outside of Motivo, you will find Praveen at the local race track with his vintage BMW.

Birgit Snodgrass

Chief Financial Officer (CFO)

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Birgit brings more than 35 years of financial expertise and analysis as well as a keen sense of business acumen to the Motivo team. Her financial career has spanned over a wide variety of industries, from working for the LA Rams Football team to non-profits, from manufacturing and distribution organizations to the Aerospace, Defense & Space industry, where she learned to navigate the complexities of Government contracting. She has spent many years volunteering as Treasurer on several non-profit boards and enjoys sharing her experience and knowledge with those around her. In her free time, you can find Birgit spending time with family and friends, enjoying a good glass of wine, hiking the local mountains and canyons, visiting museums and creating art. She also loves to travel and takes every opportunity to visit new countries, meet local people and explore new cultures.

Dr. Zachary Omohundro

Senior Scientist

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Dr. Zachary has a double degree in electrical and mechanical engineering, and a PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon. He has worked for a NASA subcontractor and a start-up prior to Motivo. He specializes in highly modular robotic architectures, self-reconfigurable robots; multiple robots that not only collaborate, but mechanically join together to form a more capable robot; robots with parallel kinematic structures; using analog control and oscillation to achieve high level functions such as a walking gate; tighter integration of electrical and mechanical components; systematic methods of evaluating engineering trade-offs across multiple disciplines; sensor fusion techniques and designing for fault tolerance/redundancy in sensors. He ensures that even the most complex system design is extremely practical so it can be quickly validated and implemented.

Daniel Samarin

Senior Electrical Engineer

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Daniel has a penchant for the development and implementation of leading edge technology. As a result, he has been a key player in several startups over the course of his career. He started in the development of long distance RF communication on an ambitious team of 10, then moved to 3D cameras and scene capture for the movie industry, and now with Motivo has helped over 50 companies realize their vision through product design, engineering and innovation. Daniel's focus in managing the Electrical and Software teams at Motivo is on individual and team growth. Members of his team learn how to plan projects, architect systems, juggle cost and schedule, and gain an appreciation for what makes a product and business successful besides technical feasibility. Daniel's other passions include 3D printing, fine leather crafting, digital privacy and security, and homebrewing beer.

Even Garcia

Shop Functional Manager / Senior Fabricator

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Even started his career in mobility product development working on everything from custom electric bikes, to show bucks, and suspension systems. Much of his growth has taken place at Motivo and he has been a critical team member since the beginning.  Even is the resident expert on welding, machining, and fabricating but his skill set spans into CAD design, wiring, 3d printing, and prototyping.

Even’s passion for the shop has now expanded into building a world-class team who can take on any challenge that comes its way. He personally recruited and mentors a wide variety of builders coming from EV startups, NASA/JPL, and Apple (to name a few). His personal interests largely derive from the work he has done here and in his time off he can be found tinkering, working on cars, and fishing the coast.

Allen Goad

President​

Allen’s passion for leading growth in complex high-performance companies has led to 25 years of experience leading high profile public and private organizations in the aerospace, defense, advanced robotics, service, and industrial markets. He is an accomplished leader with expertise in business and operations leadership, sales, engineering, mergers & acquisitions, restructuring, and business development. Allen holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Education and Chemistry from Arkansas State University, a Master Black Belt from Sigma Pro, and a Presidential and Key Executive M.B.A. from Pepperdine University. Outside of Motivo you can find Allen engaged in a lot of different hobbies from enjoying time with his family, 4x4 off-roading, riding motorcycles, to building, driving, and racing high performance cars.  

Chris Dunham

Director of Organizational Development

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Chris champions the development of Motivo’s diverse product engineering teams that include managers, PhD’s, engineers, hackers and manufacturing groups. His role spans recruiting, culture, development, performance management and HR.  He strives to identify, motivate and support the Motivo team members as they work through the project challenges. He draws on over 10 years of people-focused roles in fields ranging from nonprofit to high tech and thrives in a fast paced, highly dynamic environment that is Motivo. Chris loves to experiment with nontraditional methods of identifying and attracting talented folks, developing leaders, and supporting the team. He’s an insatiable learner and outside of work he often pursues new and experience-enhancing hobbies – most recently roasting artisan coffee. 

Damon Pipenberg

Senior Technical Advisor

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Damon currently guides the product development teams at Motivo as a senior technical advisor. He is passionate about making development of novel products possible by leveraging the latest technologies. His education is in electrical engineering but has a breadth of experience leading complex product development at Motivo from ground-up electric vehicles to AI-powered food processing machinery to propulsion systems for electric aircraft. Damon has worked in both engineering and product management roles at Motivo, bringing a diversity of experience in bringing clients' visions to life. Outside of work he enjoys the outdoors through mountain biking and skiing and personal projects including home audio, CNC machining, and an older Subaru.

Julius Klein

Senior Mechanical Engineer

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Julius received his bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering from the Universitat de Girona in July 2003. Right after graduation, he was awarded a Balsells Fellowship to pursue a fully-funded PhD program at the University of California, Irvine. His main research field was Mechanism Design, Robotics and Control Systems. He obtained his M.S. in 2005 and in March 2009 he obtained his Ph.D. with Dr. David J. Reinkensmeyer at the Biorobotics Laboratory of UC Irvine. His research interests also touched on robotics, nonlinear control, advanced SolidWorks, CAD/CAM modeling and simulation, fabrication processes, motor learning. He has worked at Motivo Engineering since 2018 as a Senior Mechanical Engineer, while also being the Functional Manager for the mechanical engineering team. Apart from designing, building and fixing stuff, he enjoys surfing, hiking, mountain biking, and skiing. Other hobbies include music (listening, playing, recording), traveling, photography, computers, cooking, food, puns and movies.

Agustin Garcia

Senior Business Development Manager

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Business Development leader with a proven record as an established design thinker known to solve complex problems in both the Space and “air-breathing” sectors of Aerospace starting at the legendary Lockheed Skunk Works and traversing to the cutting-edge-commercial-space service at Virgin Galactic.

Agustin holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from UCLA, a Master’s degree in Engineering from Purdue University and is the Mexican-American Engineering Society’s (MAES) “Bravo Brillante” National Award winner. Agustin’s focus is to build trust with Motivo’s clients ensuring that our clients challenges are met with quality, attentiveness and clarity — Our clients appreciation to our attention to detail is a point of pride at Motivo! Outside of Motivo you will find Agustin reading books, enjoying wine and listening to new music from incredible artists of many musical genres.