The entire Oneka team is extremely pleased to welcome Shawn Meyer-Steele as Chief Commercial Officer. As a veteran of the desalination industry and well-respected person among his peers, Shawn brings to Oneka outstanding skills and deep knowledge of the value-added water and renewable energy sectors. Having benefited from Shawn’s experience as an advisor for over 3 years, we are thrilled that he will now be working more closely with the team in the pursuit of our mission.

Leading Oneka’s business development and commercial growth strategy by accelerating the adoption of Oneka’s unique solution, Shawn is building sales, marketing and customer satisfaction teams to support the company’s short and long-term growth. He will head commercial efforts in the transition from a product development company to a commercial equipment and service provider while ensuring customer success and sustainable revenue growth.

Shawn’s Impressive Track Record 

With more than 25 years of experience and hundreds of successful projects successfully completed in over 65 countries, Shawn has held various executive roles in international businesses. Most recently he led H2OProfessionals, a global advisory firm working with investors, governments, equipment and service providers and early stage companies in the water and renewable energy sectors in matters from business development, market analysis, agreement structure and negotiation, acquisition due diligence, financial modeling, proposal drafting and tender evaluation and technical evaluation of assets.  Shawn is a board member and investor in a number of the companies he has been involved with.

Prior to H2OProfessionals he was Sr. Vice President, Director of Business Development for Seven Seas Water Corporation where he led business development efforts under the “water as a service business model” that resulted in acquisitions, new long-term water sale agreements in new markets and saw the company grow from a small local operator to a regional leader.  While Shawn was heading BD at SSWC, growth increased 10 fold and EBITDA increased 20 fold.  SSWC launched a successful IPO in 2015

Shawn was Sr. Vice President of Marketing, Sales and Service for Energy Recovery Inc. He joined the company as part of a new management team where he designed an ambitious sales strategy and marketing campaign that resulted in a 10 fold revenue increase, while EBITDA increased 33X bringing ERI from a “gadget company” to the world leader in ERD’s.  Shawn negotiated global supply agreements with the largest water treatment companies in the world and brought ERI into multiple new global markets while saving more than 970 MW of energy and reducing CO2 emissions by more than 5.2 million tons per year.  ERI had a successful IPO in 2008.

At Ionics Incorporated (purchased by GE), the world’s largest membrane-based water treatment company (at the time), he held various roles from Manager of International Operations, General Sales Manager,  Product Manager, Process Design Engineer, and R&D Engineer.

Shawn served on the Board of Directors of the International Desalination Association from 2011 to 2022 and the Caribbean Desalination Association from 2009 to 2022 (where he was President from 2018 to 2022). He founded and co-chaired the Humanitarian Committee and YLP at CaribDA.  He has been on the editorial board of Water, Desal & Reuse, served as technical chair and on panels many times, as well as written and presented numerous papers in industry conferences as well as published in leading industry publications.  He is also on the advisory board for Texas A&M Urban Sustainability Task Force.

Shawn has Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Northeastern University in Boston.

Welcome Shawn! The Oneka team is honored to have you onboard to achieve our mission to make the oceans a sustainable and affordable source of drinking water.