Leading Vulcan's ZERO CARBON LITHIUM™️ Project Our Team.
Leadership Team.
Seasoned, highly experienced Leadership Team to ensure successful execution.
Managing Director and CEO Cris Moreno
Mr Moreno has over 20 years’ global experience in successfully delivering major, unique, and challenging projects, including in the lithium chemicals, cathode, and LNG sectors.
In the LNG sector, he has held leadership roles with Santos, Woodside, and Shell, including working on the Browse, Gorgon, and Prelude LNG projects. Prior to joining Vulcan, Mr Moreno worked in the lithium chemicals and battery cathode sector in Europe, as Senior Director Programs for Northvolt–Cathode Active Material (CAM) Business Unit, and Vice President – Engineering and Development for Aurora Lithium, Northvolt’s lithium hydroxide refinery in Europe.
Group Chief Financial Officer Felicity Gooding
Ms Gooding is a Senior Finance executive and leader with over 20 years’ experience in strategic and financial analysis, debt funding, corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, management and financial accounting and governance within Australia, Singapore, London, and Washington D.C.
Her experience has been gained across multiple industries relevant to Vulcan including energy, mining, and infrastructure. Most recently Ms Gooding was CFO and Global Head of Commercial at Fortescue Future Industries, where she led the finance team, including the specialist project financing team responsible for securing finance to enable financial investment decisions for green energy projects.
Chief Development Officer Thorsten Weimann
In his role as CDO, Mr Weimann is responsible for project development. This includes particularly the project sections that take place below the earth’s surface: The exploration of the subsurface and the drilling. In addition, his team is also responsible for obtaining all permits for the projects. Mr Weimann can look back on more than 25 years of professional experience in the fields of geothermal energy and drilling technology. He is the technical managing director of the German Geothermal Association.
Vice President Subsurface Dr Kerstin Müller
Dr Müller has 20 years of international experience in the oil and gas sector. She was previously General Manager Exploration Europe and General Manager Exploration Mexico, as well as Deputy Senior Vice President Global Exploration at DEA Deutsche Erdöl AG. Dr Müller brings in experience within the management of geothermal projects as well as Business Development expertise within the geothermal sector.
Chief Technology Officer Dr Stefan Brand
Dr Brand brings over 25 years of extensive industry experience in specialty chemicals, with expertise in process innovation, optimisation, sustainability, and commercial leadership. He joins Vulcan from Clariant, a world-leading specialty and sustainable chemical solutions company. With his background, Dr Brand is ideally positioned to lead Vulcan’s lithium technical team, providing crucial technical support to the execution and operation teams at Vulcan’s Phase One ZERO CARBON LITHIUM™️ Project.
Vice President Project Execution Carsten Bachg
Mr Bachg brings more than 25 years of global project management experience in capital projects in the petrochemical and chemical industry for Engineering contractors like Jacobs and Worley. Mr Bachg managed the Supply Chain of one of the largest European IT companies and helped to develop Jacob’s organisation from scratch to approximately 350 people.
Vice President Production Dr Christian Tragut
Dr Tragut brings more than 30 years’ global chlor-alkali project execution and production experience. Prior to joining Vulcan, Dr Tragut worked as Vice President for BASF.
Vice President Communications Annabel Roedhammer
Ms Roedhammer brings over 18 years of experience as a global senior marketing, strategy, and commercial leader working in green energy, agriculture, and engineering industries across Australia and Europe. Powering and feeding the world in a sustainable way has always been her core focus and this is exactly what she will continue to do at Vulcan Energy. Most recently Ms Roedhammer worked at Fortescue Future Industries as Head of Corporate Affairs and was previously European Hub Marketing Lead for Nufarm GmbH, based in Germany.
Chief Financial Officer (Germany) Markus Ritzauer
As Chief Financial Officer Germany, Mr Ritzauer is the key person in Germany responsible for financials matters, legal and compliance, human resources, IT, and central services. In addition to overseeing financial risk management, he is also responsible for financial planning and budget management. Previously, he was Head of Finance at Currenta, a chemical park service provider in Germany with sales of approximately €1.7 billion. Mr Ritzauer has also worked as CFO for the Bayer Group in South Korea.
Co-Founder and Chief Representative Dr Horst Kreuter
Dr Kreuter is a highly experienced businessman and engineering geologist, with an extensive and distinguished record of project development and consulting in the geothermal sector. He worked successfully in geothermal project development and permitting in Germany and worldwide and is a Co-Founder of Vulcan ZERO CARBON LITHIUM™️ Project, as well as Ex-CEO of Geothermal Group Germany GmbH and GeoThermal Engineering GmbH (GeoT). Dr Kreuter has a widespread political, investor and industry network in Germany and Europe. He is based in Karlsruhe, local to the project area in the Upper Rhine Valley.
Head of Sustainability Samantha Langley
For over 20 years, Ms Langley has worked in the mining industry, with a career spanning site-based environmental and sustainability management, operational compliance and reporting, climate change action planning and decarbonisation project delivery across complex mining and mineral processing value chains.
With Ms Langley’s leadership, passion and experience delivering world-leading projects that advance sustainability, Vulcan will reach new heights as we progress towards delivering our integrated renewable energy and ZERO CARBON LITHIUM™ Project.
Vice President Supply Chain Christian Freitag
Mr Freitag brings 20 years of global experience from the chemicals, oil & gas and battery materials industry. All his jobs revolved around preparing and delivering large industrial investment projects in various functions.
He joined Vulcan from BASF where he was the Vice President for Battery Materials Investment Projects, being responsible for the engineering and execution of a portfolio of several projects around the world for Cathode Active Material (CAM) and Battery Materials Recycling plants.
Vice President Government Affairs and Innovation Dr Norbert Pralle
Dr Pralle, with a background in geology, geophysics, and geotechnical engineering, holds degrees from Rice University, Houston, and the University of Karlsruhe. With over 20 years of experience with construction companies including ZÜBLIN and STRABAG, his expertise initially focused on tunneling engineering and design before expanding to encompass roles in R&D, innovation, corporate responsibility, and patent management at the group level. Dr Pralle is also actively involved in advisory boards and associations within the industry.
Head of Investor Relations Kurt Walker
Mr Walker brings 18 years of experience as a senior leader in the resource and sustainability sector, with extensive knowledge in critical minerals, sustainability, operations, corporate development, capital markets, and equity research globally.
Starting his career in various engineering roles as a geologist, he then transitioned to spend several years in Equity Research, covering ASX-listed resource companies. Most recently, Mr Walker was General Manager of Corporate Development and Sustainability for ASX-listed critical minerals miner Mincor Resources NL.
Company Secretary and In-House Legal Counsel Daniel Tydde
Mr Tydde is an experienced corporate lawyer with ~20 years’ experience across a wide range of corporate, commercial, and finance areas including corporate regulatory compliance; corporate governance; equity and debt capital raisings; asset and share sales and purchases; initial public offerings; corporate restructuring and re-organisations; and litigation. Most recently, he held a senior position at Steinepreis Paganin and, prior to that, worked at Clayton Utz and Phillips Fox (now DLA Piper). Mr Tydde holds a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Notre Dame Australia.
Strategic Advisor Vincent Ledoux-Pedailles
Mr. Ledoux-Pedailles, a Strategic Advisor at Vulcan Energy Resources, brings over a decade of commercial experience in the chemical and mining industries to his role. He was previously Executive Director – Corporate Strategy at Infinity Lithium Corporation. Infinity Lithium is developing lithium production in Europe and Mr. Ledoux-Pedailles led the company to become the first project to secure EU funding. He was also appointed as a lithium expert by the European Commission. Mr. Ledoux-Pedailles previously worked at IHS Markit where he created and led the lithium and battery materials research team covering the entire industry’s supply chain from raw materials to E-mobility.
Chief Information Officer Dirk Unnewehr
Mr Unnewehr has over 35 years of experience in various executive roles within corporate Information Technology. For the past decade, he has served as an independent Interim Manager, leading numerous IT programs and projects. Mr Unnewehr has been a board member and part of several M&A leadership teams, overseeing IT carve-in and carve-out operations. His accomplishments include ERP implementations and IT transformations towards digitalisation across diverse industries such as paper, multimedia, aviation, construction, and automotive. Recently, he has managed projects in the household appliance sector and for wholesale and retail companies. Born in Germany, Mr Unnewehr now resides in Switzerland and has worked extensively across Europe, the USA, Asia, and South America.
Vulcan’s visionary and Experienced Team.
Vulcan has proven itself to be a competent, experienced, and reliable partner when it comes to realising projects in the fields of geothermal energy and district heating. The OneVulcan Team is also dedicated to conducting research and development and strives to innovate and improve existing processes and adapt and combine commercially proven technologies to decarbonise lithium chemicals for batteries. The commitment of the whole OneVulcan Team to research also helps to make work processes more efficient in terms of materials and resources, in the field of geothermal energy for green energy solutions.
Where passion meets purpose, and together, we will shape a greener, more sustainable future. Join our team!