Levi Tillemann, Ph. D, is a globally recognized thought-leader on clean energy, autonomous vehicles, and electric cars, and the author of the seminal book on electric vehicles, The Great Race: The Global Quest For The Car Of The Future (Simon and Schuster, 2015).

Dr. Tillemann has held senior leadership roles across government, the private sector, NGOs, and international institutions. He currently serves as Senior Advisor to CERAWeek 2026. At Ample, Inc., he served as Vice President for Policy and International Outreach, advancing global regulatory and market frameworks for modular battery swapping. In that capacity, he led strategic pilot and deployment partnerships with major OEMs, utilities, and government partners in Spain, Japan, and California.

Previously, he led the World Economic Forum’s Circular Cars Initiative and was a former advisor at the U.S. Department of Energy in the Obama Administration.

Dr. Tillemann holds a BA in history from Yale University and PhD in Japan and China studies from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he published his dissertation on Rebuilding Leviathan: Electric Vehicles, Industrial Strategy and the Future of the New Economy.

As a former Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan and China, he speaks Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese.

He currently lives with his wife Hannah Kim and baby Ariella (who loves their two dogs Korus and Tesla), in Washington, D.C.