Our Team

Founder & CEO Eric Fitch is our visionary leader who first imagined and then built a better solution for treating the organic waste produced by beverage and food manufacturing processes. His passion for technology (fine-tuned during his education at MIT), his love for the environment, and his years spent helping to launch a number of successful start-ups (biotech, clean tech, photonics, consumer electronics) inspired Fitch to establish PurposeEnergy and start “Saving the Earth. One beer at a time™” (Purpose Energy’s original tagline).

As the company’s leader, Eric is focused on strategic development, operations, and sales and is personally involved in every engagement and installation. When he is not traveling the country, visiting customers, touring production plants, conducting a Blitz Engineering Study or wastewater audit, and overseeing the installation of bioreactors, he can be found at home in Windham, NH with his brilliant and beautiful wife and family.

With a decade of experience converting food byproducts to energy, Todd had led the company’s acquisition of new projects from its first system to our current nationwide footprint. Prior to that, he spent 2 years in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park leading the park’s restoration for a US based NGO. He was selected as a Clean Energy Fellow by the New England Clean Energy Council. Prior to his work in the renewable energy industry, Todd helped to build a string of early-stage companies in the communications industry including; Common Voices, Summa Four (merged with Cisco Systems) and Boston Technology.

A graduate of Cornell University, Todd is at the helm of PurposeEnergy’s worldwide sales organization (did we mention he has built several worldwide sales organizations in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe?) His is focused on identifying prospective feedstock partners across the food and beverage industry, and managing the PurposeEnergy sales team.

Our Chief Scientist, Dr. David O’Keefe, has had a long career in the interface of the fields of soil science, solid waste and wastewater treatment, and agronomy. His lengthy list of accomplishments includes the successful application of anaerobic digestion and aerobic composting systems in the treatment of solid and liquid waste. In addition, he has developed and patented technology for biological nutrient removal from agricultural and industrial wastewater. His work involves process design, startup, commercialization, and the trouble shooting of treatment systems.

Dr. O’Keefe’s experience as a scientist and microbiologist encompasses commercial work as well as basic and applied research. To date, he has published over thirty articles and book chapters. Dr. O’Keefe is also the inventor of the Biphase Orbicular Bioreactor and holds patents in the field of anaerobic digestion and biological, wastewater treatment. He is an avid sportsman and once played guitar in Bo Diddley’s band.

With an ever-increasing regional, national, and global presence PurposeEnergy has become more vertically integrated by adding Chip Dillon to oversee planning, coordination and execution of construction ventures and projects. He has worked in the fields of heavy, vertical, industrial and municipal construction throughout four states over thirty years. More than a decade of his experience comes as Design-Build and Operations Manager.

A solid background of engineering (B.S. Civil Engineer, Cornell University) has always played an instrumental role in Chip’s ability to navigate the field of complex construction, controls, logistics and schedules. Always quick with a sketch or analogy, he thrives on getting the team on the same consensus and page to move ahead together – and have fun doing it.

Work hard, play hard: Weekends are for boating, hunting, snowmobiling and enjoying family.

It wasn’t long after returning from a six-month stint in Denmark, working with renewable energy systems, that Hasper found himself in South Burlington, Vermont, helping PurposeEnergy with their revolutionary anaerobic digestion technology. Fast forward ten years and Hasper has become an instrumental part of the team at PurposeEnergy. After building an impressive skill set as PurposeEnergy’s Chief Operator and Operations Manager in Vermont – including the GMWEA 2017 Industrial Wastewater Operator of the Year Award – Hasper has most recently transitioned to business development and feedstock origination. His hands-on experience and unique technical understanding of industrial systems allows Hasper to bring value in assisting new partners, process design, startup, commercialization, and the trouble shooting of treatment systems.

A graduate of St. Lawrence University in Upstate New York, Hasper enjoys the great outdoors, playing ice hockey year-round, and spending time with family and friends.

Erik Lallum has over 20 years’ experience building and leading clean energy focused organizations in project development, engineering, construction, and operations. Throughout his career, Erik has developed strategies and delivered results for companies experiencing unprecedented growth. Two notable achievements include: 

1. Creating and implementing a $600M+ fast-track capital project program that launched the national expansion of a high-tech hydroponic produce supply company; and transforming a small energy developer to one of the largest in the US by successfully delivering over $11B (5000MW+) of wind and solar energy projects.   

1. Scaling an asset-based business is extremely challenging and Erik leverages his positive attitude, excellent listening skills, and humor to energize and motivate highly capable teams to deliver results.     

Erik holds a BS in Civil Engineering from Montana State University, a professional engineering registration certificate in Washington and an MBA with a certificate in Technology and Innovation Management from Pacific Lutheran University.   

When he is not flying to projects or meeting with customers, Erik enjoys the outdoors with his family, fishing, mountain biking, and a relaxing round of golf now and then. 

In the energy world, Sean O’Neill has covered a lot of territory.  He designed and ran energy efficiency programs for large residential and commercial buildings in New York City, closed some of the most innovative financings for energy system retrofits in both public and private property, led development of cogeneration plants and solar projects, and developed large greenhouses in an effort to reduce emissions from agriculture.  Along the way he has advised city and state governments, universities, and leading environmental non-profits.  On a pro bono basis, he helps bring solar power to public and private schools by turning conventional lenders into investors.

When he is not developing energy projects, O’Neill plays a leading role in creating policies that promote a cleaner planet.  He founded the Investor Confidence Project, now part of the US Green Buildings Council, and co-founded the Green Lease Forum with the Natural Resources Defense Council.  He lives on a small farm in Massachusetts with his horse whisperer wife, sundry animals and too many chores.

The integration of downstream process technologies with Purpose Energy’s Tribrid-Bioreactor™ is the latest engineering passion of our CTO, Jim Banks.  Earlier in his professional career, Jim had leveraged his engineering and process facility construction experience into the founding of Integrated Process Technologies, Inc. an INC 500 / INC 5000 company for 2006, 2007, & 2008. This process engineering and high-purity process piping contracting company specialized in delivering fully-integrated process systems on a turnkey basis. In this capacity, Fitch and Jim were introduced and Purpose Energy became another satisfied Customer.  After selling his company, Jim held the VP of Applications and Engineering position for a ceramic nanofiltration startup whereby they teamed with Purpose Energy in piloting advanced tertiary treatment technologies for their projects. Just prior to joining PurposeEnergy, Jim worked in a consulting capacity with a leading supplier of bioprocess equipment to further “productize” their product portfolio through improved process / automation which included scalable enterprise-level solutions.

Outside of work Jim enjoys golf and being a novice farmer. When asked about his hobbies, Jim replied, “It’s tough work, but you get to solve lots of small problems each day.”