Executive summary:
CEO, President, and Chairman of the Board of Beam Global
What is your field of expertise?
Desmond Wheatley
I’ve been involved in a number of highly diverse businesses — shipbuilding, energy infrastructure, telecommunications, security and finance. Although I’ve contributed in many different capacities, I’ve always felt my purpose was the same: identify problems, find opportunities, innovate, put teams together, put capital to work and, at the end of the day, help solve the increasing challenges this world is facing.
Currently, I lead Beam Global as CEO, President, and Chairman of the Board. Beam’s technology is leading the world to clean mobility. Our flagship patented product is the only 100% renewably energized transportable, off-grid EV charging infrastructure option on the market. The ability to access clean power that is not reliant on the grid is vital, especially with the vulnerabilities of our current grid. Not only does this technology help ensure people have resilient access to power in a rapidly scalable format, but it also drastically reduces greenhouse gas emissions. We started the production process for our products about a decade before EVs began to really gain popularity, so we’ve been ahead of the curve all along with our renewable charging infrastructure.
Describe your journey to where you are today.
I grew up in Borthwick in Scotland, a tiny village which comprises the house I grew up in, a church, a castle, the school I went to, and the headmaster’s house. It was an idyllic and bucolic environment which had been more or less unchanged for centuries. It was there that I first learned that one has to fight to stop people from destroying the environment. Though there was no recognition of global environmental impacts, we were acutely aware of the local impacts of unmanaged development. My father fought hard against such pollution and blight and brought me up to feel that it was normal to fight for such things.
Everything I learned growing up in Borthwick, out at sea, in shipyards, and deploying money, energy, communications and security infrastructure contributes to the invention, design, and fabrication of the products we make today at Beam Global.
When I went to sea as a young man, and later as a commercial diver, I learned that “impossible” cannot be part of one’s lexicon. Failure is not an option. There is no one to call when you find yourself adrift a thousand miles from land because some critical piece of equipment has failed, or the weather has gone south on you. You just have to get on with it and find a way to fix whatever has gone wrong. There is no other choice. I have carried that sentiment through all my business dealings over the last three decades.
LinkedIn: Desmond Wheatley