Management Team

Richard Palmer serves as the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Global Clean Energy Holdings, Inc. (GCEH) and all of its subsidiaries. He also serves on the Board of Directors at GCEH. Prior to joining the company, Mr. Palmer was a co-founder and Executive Vice President of Mobius Risk Group, LLC, an energy risk advisory services consulting company where Global Clean Energy Holdings, LLC was formed in 2006 as a subsidiary, and he served as President. The company was then spun off in late 2007 as its own entity, which he led as its Chief Executive Officer. Prior to his work at Mobius, he served as the Senior Director of Enron Energy Services. Prior thereto, he was the Vice President of Bentley Engineering and a Senior Vice President of Southland Industries. Mr. Palmer has been directly involved in the renewable and energy efficient technologies business for over 35 years. He has two Executive Business certificates from the University of Southern California.

Noah Verleun was appointed President of Global Clean Energy Holdings in April 2022. Prior to that he served as Executive Vice President of Development & Regulatory Affairs and various other roles across the organization since 2010. Prior to joining Global Clean Energy Holdings, Mr. Verleun worked for JP Morgan PWM, Rockefeller University in its office of investments and OC&C Strategy Consultants in London. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics and a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of Southern California.

Nikhil Vasa was appointed as Chief Financial Officer of Global Clean Energy in May 2023. Vasa previously served as the Company's Executive Vice President of Finance. Prior to joining Global Clean Energy, he served as Chief Executive Officer of AIoT Services, Inc., Chief Financial Officer of Zenlayer, Inc., and Senior Vice President of Finance and Treasurer for Maverick Natural Resources and Breitburn Energy. Vasa received his Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Economics from UCLA and earned his MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. 

Ralph Goehring serves as the Senior Vice President, Chief Accounting Officer, and Treasurer. Prior to joining Global Clean Energy Holdings, Mr. Goehring was the Chief Executive Officer of SandDollar Financial LLC, a company that provided accounting and financial reporting services to energy firms and Berry Petroleum Company, a California independent oil company, where he first served as Manager of Tax, and thereafter as Chief Financial Officer. Prior to joining Berry Petroleum Company, Ralph was a Senior Tax Accountant at Arthur Andersen & Co. Mr. Goehring received a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a CPA.

Antonio D’Amico joined Global Clean Energy Holdings as a Senior Vice President, Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel on February 28, 2022. Prior to joining Global Clean Energy Holdings, he was Senior Vice President, Deputy General Counsel and Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer at AECOM, and served as Senior Vice President, Legal and Special Projects at AECOM before that. Mr. D’Amico served as Executive Vice President, and Corporate Secretary at Maverick Natural Resources, LLC, and Vice President, Investor Relations and Government Affairs at Breitburn Energy Partners. He was Senior Assistant General Counsel at Occidental Petroleum Corporation from 1996 to 2014, and began his legal career at Skadden Arps. He obtained a J.D. from DePaul University College of Law and a B.S.J. in Journalism from Northwestern University.

Mike Karst has created and implemented strategies for new initiatives while working with leading global agricultural companies holding positions in crop protection, forestry products, and global strategic planning. His focus is creating and capturing value from alternative crops, information technology and new production systems that are changing the agriculture marketplace. This focus brought Mr. Karst to start working with Sustainable Oils in 2007 when camelina was introduced in Montana. His breadth of experience helps Sustainable Oils build new value chains by bringing together cutting-edge technologies, large-scale production agriculture, and downstream processing competencies and capacities. Sustainable Oils is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Global Clean Energy Holdings. Karst was raised on a grain farm in Indiana and graduated from Purdue University with a degree in agronomy.