Leadership
Data center development has become an energy problem. Interconnection, supply, storage, and market design now determine what gets built, where, at what cost, and at what risk. Lighthouse was founded by two specialists who have spent their careers inside exactly those questions: one building the analytics that utilities, developers, and investors use to value power, the other on the capital markets side of how digital infrastructure is financed and traded.
Gary W. Dorris, PhD
Co-Founder and CEO
Founder and executive chairman of Ascend Analytics, the industry-leading, 170-person energy analytics software and consulting firm he led as CEO for two decades. He developed pioneering approaches to modeling power markets in support of real-time operations, portfolio management, and resource planning, and provided the analytic vision that bridged physical production-cost models with the financial models of risk management: work that has produced more than a dozen software applications used by over 200 energy companies.
His independent market assessments have supported over $50 billion in project financing, and his work finding new pathways to lower-cost, cleaner energy supply has resulted in the financing of over 100 gigawatts and $150 billion of clean power generation. He led Hawaii Electric’s first 100% renewable electric resource plan (2016), and his expertise has been sought as expert testimony on risk management, asset valuation, and resource planning, including as lead expert witness for Merrill Lynch in the Enron proceedings. He holds a PhD in applied economics and finance from Cornell University, and a BS in mechanical engineering and a BA in economics, magna cum laude, also from Cornell.
Paul Saferstein, CFA
Co-Founder and CFO
More than 25 years as a digital infrastructure, telecommunications, and utilities specialist at financial institutions including AllianceBernstein, Morgan Stanley, and ACQ, and currently Senior Advisor for Data Centers at Ascend Analytics. Most recently, he served as contract Chief Strategy Officer for a digital infrastructure provider, where he spearheaded its AI hyperscale data center strategy.
Previously, he was a portfolio manager and senior analyst at First New York focused on global capital markets, specializing in the digital infrastructure, telecom, and utility industries: the investor’s vantage on how data center assets are actually valued, financed, and sold. He graduated from Cornell University with a BA, holds an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business, studied at the Stanford University Center for Japanese Studies, and is fluent in Japanese.