The people behind
the mission.
Isaiah Ness
Chief Executive Officer & Founder
Isaiah entered the renewable energy sector in 2020, pioneering eco-conscious products and carving new pathways in an industry hungry for innovation. Before founding Sun Bear Industries, he co-founded two residential and commercial solar companies and consulted for one of California’s fastest-growing solar enterprises, learning not just how the industry worked, but how it could work better.
He has led hundreds of solar and renewable energy projects nationwide, with extensive experience supporting Tribal Nations in funding, infrastructure development, and energy ownership strategies. His work reflects deep familiarity with THPO, NEPA, the HEARTH Act, and Tribal land use coordination.
Under his leadership, Sun Bear has built lasting partnerships with Tribal Nations and underserved communities, earning the Clean Energy Community Impact Award. His expertise spans federal grant navigation, utility-scale renewable development, utility planning, advanced financial modeling, sustainable economic development, and construction management across renewable projects.
Isaiah currently serves on the boards of RENEW Wisconsin and Cedar Growth CDFI (formerly First Nations Community Financial).
George Soucek
Co-Founder & Senior Consultant
George works at the intersection of energy development, financial structuring, and enterprise technology. His technical depth spans energy feasibility and engineering, NEC-compliant system design, and financial pro formas built around federal tax credits and transferability. That range allows him to take a project from site assessment through financial close.
He brings fluency in the mechanisms that make clean energy deals viable for sovereign and underserved communities: tax credit monetization, grant stacking, CDFI lending, and public-private partnership frameworks. Alongside the energy work, George architects the operational systems, automation infrastructure, and digital platforms that give organizations the backbone to scale.
What defines his contribution to Sun Bear is the ability to move between a boardroom conversation and a deployed solution: feasibility studies, deal structuring, web development, AI automation, operational audits, and digital infrastructure, all designed and delivered end to end.
Shae Mitchell
Co-Founder & Senior Consultant
Shae brings over four years of experience in the renewable energy sector, supporting projects that integrate clean energy with long-term community and economic outcomes. His work at Sun Bear centers on energy planning, feasibility, and economic and enterprise development for Tribal Nations and underserved communities.
In addition to project strategy and execution, Shae leads Sun Bear’s media and communications efforts, ensuring the firm’s mission, values, and impact are clearly conveyed to partners and stakeholders. His focus is on building resilient, locally controlled energy systems through community-driven infrastructure and collaboration with organizations aligned with sustainable development and community ownership.
We started Sun Bear because we believed energy could be done differently.
It was 2022, in the middle of the pandemic, when the world was forced to rethink everything. For us, it became the perfect moment to build something that actually mattered.
We'd seen how the industry worked, and we knew it could work better. Not just cleaner energy, but a fundamentally different approach to how projects get built, who benefits, and who gets left behind.
Our focus on Tribal Nations and underserved communities isn't a niche, it's the point. These communities understand something the rest of the world is just starting to figure out: that real sustainability means thinking in generations, not quarters.