Tod Hynes

Tod Hynes is a Senior Lecturer at MIT where he teaches a graduate course called Climate & Energy Ventures, and co-founded and advises the MIT Climate & Energy Prize. He is also a Senior Advisor for Climate & Energy at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and is the Chair of the Board of the Woodwell Climate Research Center, a world leading provider of independent climate science.

Hynes is the CEO and Co-founder of Maigent, a company creating private AIs for organizations and people to help start and run companies. He also founded Clymate Studios to help others help the climate. He has started and invested in more than 20 companies in the climate and energy space since 2002. He started a wind development company before tax equity investors entered the U.S. market, and he started XL Fleet, one of the first fleet vehicle electrification companies, which scaled across the U.S. and Canada and went public in 2020. From 2004-2008 he was the Director of Alternative Energy at Citizens Energy where he launched the company’s wind development business and assessed various clean energy and carbon offset development opportunities.

Hynes co-chaired the Energy Committee of the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Conventions (CERC), the organization that greened the 2004 U.S. presidential Democratic and Republican National Conventions. He was treasurer and steering committee member of the Boston Climate Action Network from 2003-2008. In 2001, Hynes started one of the first social networking companies, but he decided to focus on climate.

He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Management Science from MIT.