Raquel Schreiber
Launching hard-tech & moonshots for good | Partner to CEOs on high-stakes missions | ex-Tesla Battery | Harvard
New York, New York
Overview
Work Experience
Founder & CEO
2023 - Current
Operational leverage for bold missions with real-world impacts. The Gearworks group is a deep-tech and operations firm that builds, manages, and partners with hardware, climate, defense-tech, and women-led ventures to build category-defining companies. Specializing in critical launch moments on the bold journey to building a new market; from Day 0 vision+tech+business plan, to Roadmap 1, to Product 1, to new launch readiness, to manufacturing scale-up. Past client examples: - Battery Power startup (series A) - Defense-tech startup (series A) - Recycling Facility (multi-decade business) - Women’s Health consumer/data startup (seed) - Robotics for Fashion Manufacturing startup (pre-seed) - Think you don’t fit the mold? Let’s chat.
Strategic Advisor
2024
Accomplishing global critical missions via action-taking, hydrogen-powered UAS. "All drones can see. Heven's drones can do."
Strategic Advisor
2020
Turning all soil back into a carbon sink with small edge-based robot weeders. Aigen is an AI-driven IoT & robotics startup addressing soil degradation with the world's first scalable, chemical free and fossil fuel free farming solution. We're pioneering a new process called Automated Holistic Regeneration (automated terraforming of planet earth) via a sustainable, scalable, robot platform that mechanically eliminates herbicide-resistant weeds. Role: Founding team through company launch. Stayed on as interim PM and advisor to Rich (CTO) & Kenny (CEO).
Head of GTM & Launch
2021 - 2022
Brewing lab-based oils & fats at scale to replace ingredients from monoculture agriculture. Mission: decarbonize the consumer goods sector, starting with palm oil. A first product & a first consumer-brand: "Palmless™ is more than the start of commercial roll-out of C16 Biosciences’ technology. It’s also about holding CPG manufacturers and brands to a higher standard: a better option is available. There are no more excuses." Roles: Head of GTM & Launch (Apr 2022-Dec 2022) Strategic Operations (contracted while at HBS/SEAS and stayed on, Jan 2021-Mar 2022)
C16 Biosciences is a biotechnology company producing clean and safe alternatives to palm oil.
Raised $33,534,415.00 from Elemental Impact.
Strategy and Technical Operations
2020 - 2020
Developing nuclear fusion for abundant renewable commercial energy. I was lucky to meet and support Commonwealth's COO, CSO, and R&D, Partnerships, and Innovation leaders to build a strong, de-risked early commercial roadmap + early technology roadmap. [In 2021, CFS announced a sector-unprecedented $1.8B+ Series B fundraise, and grew quickly from ~30 people to ...many.]
Lead, Engineering Programs, Tesla Solar & Tesla Vehicle Battery Pack
2018 - 2019
Accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy. I served as the Product & Engineering Programs Leader across Tesla Solar, in addition to my role for Tesla Vehicle Battery. • Tapped to develop and launch the cost-enabled Solar Roof (V3) aka “SolarGlass” alongside Bobby Yang (Director of Solar Engineering), this role grew to include Solar Roof programs and Tesla Retrofit Solar businesses. • Led the first solar product development inside Tesla from alpha stages through manufacturing start-of-launch — merging departments and business processes across acquisitions SolarCity, Zep, and Silevo into new Tesla Solar R&D. • Responsible for the following matrix core teams alongside stellar engineering & supply chain leadership: optical eng, mechanical eng, electrical eng, reliability eng, manufacturing eng, field applications, regulatory/compliance, safety, finance, and product.
Lead, Engineering Programs, Tesla Battery Pack
2017 - 2019
Sr. Program Manager for Tesla's Vehicle Battery Pack, responsible for driving all "High Voltage Battery Pack" & Battery Systems Design Engineering programs, the heart of Tesla’s elite design engineering department. During this time, also had the following roles: ★Manufacturing Zone leader @ Gigafactory 1 | Model 3 "Production Hell": • Responsible for manufacturing engineering management of a critical interim "zone" and project management of multiple module "zones". Identified gaps and developed manufacturing lines to solve, in weeks. Included: semi-automated line bring-up, automated manufacturing line bring-up and ramp, daily executive meetings on ramp-limiters, and drove multiple critical design-for-manufacturing implementations, in weeks. • BLUF by Elon Musk on earnings call: "The biggest challenge is that the first two zones of a four zone process, key elements of which were done by manufacturing systems suppliers, had to be taken over and significantly redesigned by Tesla. We have redirected our best engineering talent to fine-tune the automated processes and related robotic programming” ★Critical Projects Lead for Model 3 Battery: • Engineering Validation Sign-off | Owned product sellability assessment & sign-off for C- and D-build. • Validation & Test Lead | Tasked with turning around behind-schedule program to on-time product validation and release (successfully accelerated by 3 months). Owned cross-department process for accelerated ID of unknown risks + design and implementation of countermeasures, with regular presentation to VP- and C-suite.
Global NPI & TPM Lead, Battery Aftermarket & Remanufacturing
2016 - 2017
Goal: lifetime cost-savings for the most expensive part of the car - the battery! Lead for Global Battery Re-Manufacturing, responsible for building NPI across NA, EU, APAC. Think: design for serviceability, design for backward- and forward-compatibility, battery capacity-matching, battery swapping business models, first field failures and early battery diagnostics, global shipping, and overall systems-integration across Tesla Service, Tesla manufacturing, finance, warranty, and reliability engineering departments and tools. All on a negative budget. (ReMan is a cost-savings department!) External-facing launch example: 100kWh battery.
Programs Engineer (Intern), New Product Introduction - Powertrain
2015 - 2016
Introduced & managed 300+ new parts, processes, and product launches across High Voltage, Electronics, Battery, and Motors. NPI served as the company's cross-functional launch team, charged with launching new designs into manufacturing at Tesla's first (and at the time, only) factory. External-facing launch examples: Model S/X common battery, Ludicrous Mode, and more.
Tesla Motors is an electric vehicle and clean energy company that provides electric cars, solar, and renewable energy solutions.
Raised $19,374,213,101.00 from European Union, PennDOT, Australian Renewable Energy Agency and Massachusetts Clean Energy Center.
Combustion Physics Researcher
2014 - 2014
Combustion Physics Research Lab, Department of Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering (Professor Astronaut Paul D. Ronney) Shape-memory alloys (SMAs) and scuba diving ascent buoys.
Harvard Engineering + UTEC: Safe Water Field Researcher
2013 - 2013
Fog traps in billboards, executing across language barriers, and water treatment in metal mines.
BioInformatics & Computational Biology Researcher
2013 - 2013
BioInformatics & Computational Biology Lab, Department of Molecular Genetics (Professor Yitzhak Pilpel) tRNA marker identification, database management, and a bit of wet lab work.
Intern, UN-HABITAT (Water Solutions)
2010 - 2010
Technological solutions for drinking water + toilets in low-income housing in Central America.