About the Association

 

The New Mexico Desalination Association is a 501-C6 non-profit corporation established to promote and assist the desalination industry in New Mexico and the Southwest by developing professional and stakeholder knowledge of current and emerging desalination approaches, technologies, and applications.  The goal of the New Mexico Desalination Association is to unite and educate stakeholders on desalination’s potential in New Mexico, and on creating new water supplies through desalination of non-traditional brackish water resources that will support long-term economic growth, while protecting the environment and maintaining the social and cultural traditions of New Mexico.

New Mexico Desalination Association Officers & Directors

Charles Leder

Charles Leder

President

Senior Associate – Hazen and Sawyer 

Mr. Leder recently joined Hazen and Sawyer, a national consulting engineering firm specializing in the water and wastewater utility sector as a Senior Associate having recently retired as Manager of the Plant Operations Division for the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority.  Mr. Leder plans to use his 13 years of managing utility operations for the Water Authority together with 28 years of prior work designing community water and wastewater systems throughout New Mexico and 5 years of sales engineering support for Veolia-Suez to support Hazen and Sawyer on its various utility system design projects and its work to assist public sector utilities with solving their system operational and asset management challenges.

John R. Grizz Deal, MSc, GIC

John R. Grizz Deal, MSc, GIC

Vice President

Executive Chairman & CEO, IX Power Clean Water, Inc.

John R. (Grizz) Deal has nearly thirty years of experience in technology commercialization, tech-based startups, fast-growing ventures, and product development.

Grizz is CEO of IX Water, which provides industrial wastewater treatment machines to industry and natural resource extraction firms. He was CEO and a co-founder of Hyperion Power Generation, a Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) spinout developing a Small Modular Reactor (SMR). He has also served as the chief marketing officer for Space Imaging and was the founder and CEO of geospatial software firm LizardTech. Additionally, Grizz served as Entrepreneur in Residence for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) at Technology Ventures Corporation and as Visiting Entrepreneur at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Grizz has founded nine firms based on U.S. DOE technologies and holds graduate and undergraduate science degrees in geography from Texas A&M University.

Bob Feinberg

Bob Feinberg

Treasurer & Director

Sr. VP/Principal at Colliers International; Principal Manager,

Deborah A. Deal Blackwell, APR

Deborah A. Deal Blackwell, APR

Secretary

V.P. Marketing, IX Power Clean Water; Founder & Chair, Colorado Women’s Day; CEO, IX Power Foundation

Ms. Deal-Blackwell serves as the Vice President of Marketing for IX Power Clean Water and as the CEO of the IX Power Foundation. The sibling Deals have worked together as founders and executives of several firms over the last 25 years.

Before IX Power, Deborah co-founded Hyperion Power Generation. She served as the V.P. of Marketing & Public Relations for the company and as the top executive in Hyperion’s Washington, D.C. office directed interaction with the U.S. Congress and all other federal agencies. Prior to Hyperion, she served as the CEO of the medical transportation charity Angel Flight Southeast, and before that worked around the globe as a marketing executive in the computer software, real estate, and hospitality industries. Her degrees in journalism-public relations and radio-TV were earned at the University of Central Florida. She is an accredited public relations specialist (APR) and a member of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). She is the founder and chair of the annual “Colorado International Women’s Day” celebration

Deborah was recognized as one of the Denver Business Journal’s “Top Women in Energy in Colorado,”  and with The Elena Joyce Grissom Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jefferson County Library Foundation.

Dr. Keith Julian

Dr. Keith Julian

Director

Keith earned a BA degree in Regional Economics and Natural Sciences from Harvard University in 1964.  Following college, he served for more than five years in the US Navy as a Naval Flight Officer, flying 283 combat reconnaissance missions during the Vietnam War. He completed master’s and doctoral work in Earth and Environmental Science at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1976, writing his dissertation on “The Environmental Economics of Geothermal Energy Systems.”  He subsequently taught at UCLA, the University of Missouri, and at University of California, Santa Barbara’s Graduate School of Environmental Science, specializing in resource development and environmental protection of water and energy resources.

In addition to co-authoring a best-selling textbook (Physical Geography Today), Keith has written more than 75 published scientific reports and technical papers, as well as serving as editorial consultant on nearly a dozen textbooks, instructor’s manuals, and cartographic documents.  He spent 27 years in the private sector as an environmental and earth science consultant based in California, but working throughout the U.S. and in Africa, Central America, and Asia.

He retired as Vice President of Woodward-Clyde Environmental Services in 1996 before moving to New Mexico.  He then served 12 years as Science Department Chairman and faculty member at Albuquerque Academy, retiring again in 2008, but continued teach as an Adjunct Instructor of Energy Resources at San Juan College’s School of Energy.  During his 45-year career as a scientist and educator, Keith has taught more than 100 courses in natural resource development, earth science, environmental management, environmental regulatory compliance, and project management as a part-time or full-time instructor.  He has been involved with the New Mexico Desalination Association since 2018, focusing on environmental issues surrounding use of brackish and produced waters.

Karl Braithwaite

Karl Braithwaite

Director

Senior Manager for Government Relations at Sandia National Laboratories (Ret.)

In April 2016, Karl retired after 49 years of public service. In January 2007, Karl became the Senior Manager for Government Relations at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is part of the Director’s Office. He first came to Sandia in August 2005, as a member of the Advanced Concepts Group. Prior to that, Karl served for four years as Dean of the Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, Maine. He assumed that position on September 1, 2001, after 21 years at Los Alamos National Laboratory where he was most recently Director of Government Relations and previously Executive Staff Director. At Los Alamos, he dealt with many national security issues, environment and energy topics, science and technology policy issues, and internal management issues, and participated in frequent briefings to government officials.

From 1970-1973 he worked on the personal staff of two different US Senators (Joseph Montoya of New Mexico and Ted Moss of Utah). He then worked for Senator Edmund S. Muskie from 1973-80 on the Environmental Pollution Subcommittee, serving as Staff Director from 1978-80. He assisted with the creation of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Superfund, and many other environmental laws. He was an assistant professor of political science at Duke University from 1967-70. Karl received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 1967 and his B.S. from the University of Utah in 1964. He has been an adjunct professor at many universities. He is married to Jane Braithwaite and has four children.

Karl is currently a member of the Executive Committee of the Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club and Conservation Chair. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the New Mexico Desalination Association.

Carol Leach

Carol Leach

Director

Attorney at Concho Resources, Inc. (Ret.)

Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth… these are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security and women’s empowerment. Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all. 

—Ban Ki-moon