Speaking for leaders navigating battery decisions when the stakes are high and the answers are incomplete.

Jill Pestana is a battery scientist and systems thinker invited into rooms where technology, markets, safety, and long-term consequences intersect. Her speaking engagements are designed to help organizations think clearly about batteries as technical systems, economic infrastructure, and long-term societal investments.

These engagements are intentionally grounded, rigorous, and context-specific.

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Speaking Topics & Strategic Areas

Each topic below represents a strategic problem space organizations invite Jill to help them think through clearly. Content is always tailored to the audience, sector, and moment.

Battery Reality vs. Battery Hype

Misalignment between expectations, timelines, capital, and technical reality continues to distort decision-making across the battery ecosystem.

This talk helps audiences understand what gets lost between laboratory breakthroughs and real-world deployment—and why hype cycles often create long-term damage even when intentions are good.

Typical audiences: Executives, investors, policymakers, industry conferences

Scaling from Lab to Infrastructure

Promising battery technologies frequently stall not because of chemistry, but because of gaps between innovation, manufacturing, deployment, and operations.

This talk explores why scale is not a linear extension of the lab, and how translation failures between technical teams, leadership, and markets quietly undermine success.

Typical audiences: Manufacturing leaders, clean-energy companies, government programs, regional development groups

Battery Safety, Risk, and Systems Thinking

Safety is often discussed as a checklist rather than as a systems outcome.

This talk reframes battery safety through the lens of systems thinking—examining where risk actually accumulates as batteries scale, and why oversimplified narratives can be as dangerous as fear-mongering.

Typical audiences: OEMs, utilities, infrastructure operators, insurers, regulators

Workforce, Talent, and the Battery Transition

Workforce challenges in the battery industry are not talent shortages alone—they are systems design problems.

This talk examines the disconnect between workforce narratives and operational reality, and explores how education, industry, and institutions must align to support long-term deployment at scale.

Typical audiences: Universities, workforce boards, industry associations, government-funded initiatives

Leadership and Technical Authority (Selective)

Technical leaders are increasingly expected to perform certainty in environments defined by uncertainty.

This talk explores how leaders can exercise technical authority without over-simplification, over-explaining, or false confidence—especially when decisions carry real responsibility and incomplete information.

Typical audiences: Executive leadership programs, women-in-STEM events, leadership retreats

The Long View of Energy Transitions (Selective)

Energy transitions are often framed through short time horizons that ignore institutional inertia, historical precedent, and systems complexity.

This talk places current battery and energy decisions in long-term context, helping audiences understand why patience, systems thinking, and institutional readiness matter more than speed alone.

Typical audiences: Policy forums, think tanks, foundations, international conferences

The Long View of Energy Transitions (Selective)

Energy transitions are often framed through short time horizons that ignore institutional inertia, historical precedent, and systems complexity.

This talk places current battery and energy decisions in long-term context, helping audiences understand why patience, systems thinking, and institutional readiness matter more than speed alone.

Typical audiences: Policy forums, think tanks, foundations, international conferences

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Additional Strategic Topics

These conversations are often requested by leadership teams and founders navigating internal misalignment, commercialization risk, or narrative pressure.

Why Your Battery Strategy Feels Busy but Not Coherent

Many organizations appear active while lacking alignment.

This talk surfaces how teams can run in parallel without shared priorities, how strategy decks fail to translate into execution, and how confusion is often mistaken for momentum.

When Technical Truth Gets Lost Inside Organizations

As technical information moves upward, nuance is often flattened and risk quietly introduced.

This talk examines how miscommunication—not malice—leads to poor decisions, and why leaders often act on partial understanding without realizing it.

Why Good Technology Doesn’t Sell Itself

Performance alone does not drive adoption.

This talk explores how buyers evaluate risk rather than specifications, why founders often sell futures instead of present value, and how misalignment between product maturity and go-to-market strategy slows adoption.

The Hidden Costs of Over-Promising in Emerging Tech

Short-term narrative wins can create long-term organizational damage.

This talk examines how inflated expectations erode trust with investors, customers, and internal teams—and why walking narratives back later is far more difficult than slowing down early.

Decision-Making Under Uncertainty in Battery Markets

In uncertain markets, leaders often default to certainty theater or decision paralysis.

This talk explores the difference between data and judgment, when waiting becomes riskier than acting, and how organizations can make clearer decisions without pretending the future is knowable.

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Who This Is For / Not For

Speaking engagements are selective and designed for high-trust, high-stakes audiences.

Fees vary by format, audience, and scope. Travel is covered separately.

For speaking inquiries, please reach out with context about the audience and setting to david.zwick@pestanasolutions.com.