Mr. Michels founded Alpheus Water Research LLC in 2016 as a consultancy and investment vehicle targeting innovation in the global water sector. In 2016, Alpheus made a seed investment in ECOVAP, and since then Rowe as served on ECOVAP's board of directors (2017-2019) and as part of the company's executive managment team (2016-present). Rowe has 25 years investment experience and three years as a management consultant. Prior to Alpheus, Mr. Michels served as the Director of Research, a portfolio manager, and the global water/utilities analyst at Tradewinds LLC (2009-2016), a $38B equity fund. Prior to Tradwinds, Rowe was the Director of Emerging Markets Research at Bear, Stearns Co., Inc., overseeing four offices and a team of 70. During this time, he was the #1-ranked electric/water utilities analyst (Institutional Investor), and received multiple awards for “Top Stock Picker” by the Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Michels has authored multiple whitepapers on the Water Sector, Clean Energy, and ESG Investing. Rowe earned a bachelor’s degree in Business from Brigham Young University, an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Business, and is a Chartered Financial Analyst. He is fluent in Spanish and conversant in Portuguese, having lived overseas and having accumulated over 8 million frequent flyer miles. Rowe also founded the Sean Michels School for Special Needs Children in Kenya, which he continues to oversee.