Susan Alban nominated to join Li-Cycle board of directors

Lithium-ion battery recycler Li-Cycle, Toronto, has announced that Susan Alban, chief people officer and operating partner venture capital firm Renegade Partners, Menlo Park, California, has been nominated for election to the company’s board of directors at its annual meeting scheduled for April 27.

“We believe that Susan will be a great addition to Li-Cycle’s board,” Li-Cycle co-founder and Executive Chair Tim Johnston says. “She brings deep expertise in human resources management at rapidly growing companies and we are excited to welcome her to the company’s board. We believe that her experience and insights will help Li-Cycle as we continue to scale our Spoke & Hub network to serve our customers around the world.”

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Alban says, “I’m excited at the opportunity to join Li-Cycle’s board and I’m looking forward to working closely with the company’s management team and board members. Through its innovative Spoke & Hub network, Li-Cycle supports the acceleration of the global clean energy transition and I’m excited to help drive that change.”

Alban currently serves as the chief people officer and an operating partner at Renegade Partners, where she supports the firm’s portfolio companies across all areas of human resources. Li-Cycle says she brings deep expertise in operations and product, especially around launches. Previously, Alban was the vice president of people at Zume, a general manager at Uber, as well as a group product manager at Ebay, working in partnership with PayPal to drive improvements across Ebay’s e-commerce funnel.

Alban started her career at McKinsey & Company, where she was a management consultant for healthcare and consumer products businesses, with a focus on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and growth. After McKinsey, she joined CHB’s portfolio companies. She has a degree in economics from Duke University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

According to Li-Cycle, Alban was nominated by Peridot Acquisition Sponsor LLC as one of its two nominees for election to the board and is expected to be designated as an independent director. In addition to bringing skills and expertise in human resources and executive compensation matters, her addition to the board is expected to enhance the balance of both independence and gender diversity on the board.

“On behalf of the board and management team, we would like to take this opportunity to thank our outgoing directors, Rick Findlay and Alan Levande, for their service to Li-Cycle,” Li-Cycle co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Ajay Kochhar says. “Rick has helped guide the company since its early days in 2017. Alan’s involvement started with his work at Peridot which was instrumental in Li-Cycle becoming a public company in August 2021. We’re grateful for their contributions and dedication to the company.”

Li-Cycle says it believes that a board size of nine members continues to be the optimal number for the company for fiscal year 2023. The company is in the process of recruiting an additional independent director with audit committee financial expertise from a pool of candidates, all of whom are female. The company says that appointment, which is expected later this year, is expected to enhance the board’s experience in relation to finance matters, increase the level of independence on the board and allow the company to achieve its 30 percent target for gender diversity on the board.