Erika Guerrero
Erika Guerrero is the founder and CEO of Electric Goddess, a battery R&D and validation consultancy with an advanced in-house test lab in El Segundo, California. She studied sociology and astrophysics, cut her teeth on the Dragon 1 Cargo program, and has built a career at the intersection of people and technology.
A serial entrepreneur with experience across the battery lifecycle, she leads Electric Goddess with mindful design as a first principle.
Story
The table
Batteries found Erika in Las Vegas. A spontaneous trip to CES brought her to a table shared with battery engineers from two of the world's largest cell makers. They had a conversation that stuck with Erika: batteries are a thankless, merciless endeavor, invisible to the very people who depend on them, and central to the future of energy.
She found that fascinating. She still does.
The empty factory
Her first battery job handed her an empty factory and a group of smart, segmented teams. Her role was to pull them together and bring battery systems to life, from R&D through engineering, supply chain, testing, manufacturing, production, and delivery.
Somewhere in the middle of it, a teammate told her this would be the last job she ever had. He meant she was destined to be a founder.
He was right.
The laser welder
Erika met Luke Workman at a laser welder. She had identified electrolyte leakage as the root cause of manufacturing scrap while building cylindrical cell batteries. He was the scientist hired to figure out why. Through extensive experimentation, the mechanism behind the leakage was understood, and they brought the solutions to leadership together.
Building Electric Goddess
Erika founded Electric Goddess in 2019. Bootstrapped, no outside funding, and grown entirely on referrals. Luke and Erika combined forces to get the job done, taking on challenges no one else could solve as efficiently, and catching issues only decades of battery experience can teach you to see.
Several client companies have gone public. The client list includes some of the world's largest companies. All of it started humbly and was built diligently, one solution at a time.
Beyond the consultancy, Erika and Luke give back through their foundation, Good Orbit, and invest strategically in the technologies they believe in through Electric Goddess Ventures. They married in 2022, three years into running the company together.
They dream of humanity expanding deeper into space while being good stewards of the Earth we launch from.
Skills
- Battery design and build ramp
- Product development
- Technical team management
- Client relationships and deliverables
- Business ownership
- Smiling & waving