Leadership

Mark Gordon is a co-founder & Partner of Ascent Funds and the former Chief Financial Officer for Hyzon Motors Inc. Prior to this, Mark was a senior portfolio manager at Janus Henderson, where he managed the Alphagen Energy Funds. Before that, Mark was a Senior Analyst at Paulson & Co responsible for the energy sector. Prior to Paulson, Mark was a Portfolio Manager at Soros Fund Management where he ran an energy and natural resources fund for three years. Mark spent eight years at Goldman Sachs Asset Management ending as a Portfolio Manager and a Managing Director.

Mark has an MBA (honors) from the University of Chicago with concentrations in Analytic Finance and Economics. Mark has an MA from Stanford University and a BA from Brown University (honors). Mark is a CFA charter holder.

Mark was awarded a second degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and he completed the Ironman Triathlon World Championship in Kona, Hawaii.

David Wu is President and co-founder of Ascent Hydrogen Fund. An experienced capital markets executive, David specializes on helping companies fundraise, IPO and transition from private to public companies. He is Director of the Board for waste-to-power company Raven SR and Singapore’s first waste-neutral apparel company Sans Faff. He is also a senior IPO advisor to Asia’s largest sports media company One Group Holdings and Asia’s largest luxury fashion group, Lanvin Group.

David is the former Chairman of Capital Markets for Fosun International, one of the world’s largest investment conglomerates managing over US$120 billion in global assets. At Fosun, David led the strategy to list the Group’s subsidiaries, running multiple global IPOs with a combined transactional value of over US$10bn. He also ran strategic financing activities for Fosun’s private equity & venture capital, co-chaired Fosun’s ESG committee and pioneered the investor relations strategy for the global group which received the "Best IR" award from The Asset in both 2017 and 2018.

Born in Hunan, China, David grew up in London and graduated from Trinity Hall College, Cambridge University. David was a capital markets investment banker with Rothschilds in their London, Moscow and Singapore offices and held senior positions with communication giants Brunswick Group in Beijing and Edelman in Hong Kong. David is now based in Singapore.

John Vogelstein is a Senior Partner of Ascent Funds.

Mr. Vogelstein is also the Chairman of New Providence Asset Management, LLC and Senior Advisor to Warburg Pincus, LLC. Born in 1934, he attended The Taft School and Harvard College. Mr. Vogelstein began his career at Lazard Freres & Co., where he became a partner in 1964. He joined E. M. Warburg & Co., Inc. (later Warburg Pincus, LLC) in 1967. Mr. Vogelstein was the Chief Investment Officer of Warburg Pincus LLC for more than two decades. He and Lionel Pincus built the firm to be one of the largest and most successful full line private equity firms in the world.

Currently, Mr. Vogelstein is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Prep for Prep; Vice Chairman of the Board of Overseers of The Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University; Trustee of New York University; Chairman of Third Way; Chairman of Christie’s Advisory Board; Trustee of Temple Emanu-El; Trustee of The Jewish Museum, and Director of Flamel Technologies.

Dr Michael Hession is the former Chief Executive Officer of NYSE listed InterOil Corporation before it was successfully acquired by ExxonMobil for US$3bn in 2017.

Dr. Hession began his career with BP specializing in managing major development projects. From 1998 to 2013 he worked with Woodside Energy managing major LNG projects and developing new businesses. Dr. Hession was educated in the United Kingdom, France and the United States and has a doctorate in climate science from the University College Wales. He also has a MBA from the London School of Economics, Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales in Paris, and New York University in the US.

Chris Atkinson is an active investor and energy entrepreneur who started his career at Shell but spent most of his formative years at Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) in the USA, Southeast Asia and Europe.
He was the founder of Serica Energy plc and has been involved with the successful start up and financing of a further six companies (Mitra Energy, Malaysia now Jadestone Energy, Canada; MPX Limited, UK now Zennor Petroleum, UK; ZinMac - now Strategic Oil and Gas, Canada; Greenfields Petroleum, USA; CaribX Limited, UK and Helium Resources Ltd, UK).

Chris brings a wealth of exploration and successful small company business experience. PhD., BSc. SID