Shaping autonomy

Josh Araujo is the Chief Executive Officer of Forterra. He previously served Forterra as Chief Operating Officer and in that role garnered key insights across all company operations and now brings his dynamic experience in corporate development, finance, and operations to the CEO position.

Josh joined Forterra in 2021 lead the company’s successful Series A fundraising, and through that process became a trusted leader advisor across all core disciplines of the company and helped spearhead development of Forterra's Autonomy as a Service business model.

Josh has more than 20 years of experience across military, investment banking and financial leadership roles. He was previously CFO of OGT Engineering and Construction, and prior to that served as Senior Vice President in Jefferies Industrials Investment Banking Group, where he worked on a broad range of M&A, debt, and equity capital market transactions in the aerospace, defense, and government sectors. Josh started his finance career as an M&A associate at Lazard, focusing on a variety of public and private transactions in the industrial and consumer sectors. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Texas Tech University and an M.B.A. from Texas A&M University.

Joseph Putney is the Chief Technology Officer of Forterra. He is a highly respected roboticist within the industry, known for his combination of business savvy and technical know-how. Mr. Putney’s role has expanded in recent years to overseeing the company’s core engineering efforts across all of its commercial business units, which includes transit buses, class 8 trucks, yard trucks, shuttles, and agriculture vehicles.

Joe helped build Forterra from the ground up. He deployed one of the early robo-shuttles, providing transit services for the wounded soldiers, cadre, and medical staff between the Warrior Transition Battalion Barracks and the Womack Army Medical Center hospital campuses.   He then built new departments and processes to further develop and support the deployment of robo-shuttles on four continents, operating in a variety of environments, including downtown and residential areas, academic/corporate campuses, underground parking facilities, boardwalks, and tourist sites.  Joe oversaw the development of the first autonomous, heavy-duty transit bus in North America, the New Flyer XcelsiorAV and its partnership with the two largest bus OEMS in North America, New Flyer and Gillig.  After Forterra's successes in the transit industry, Mr. Putney drove the expansion into the yard truck industry.  Today, autonomous yard trucks are piloting in two continents, moving and reversing trailers into loading docks at distribution centers.  With its recent Softbank-led raise of $228M, Forterra is looking to continue its expansion in the commercial sector and further scale and expand its operations around the globe.  

Joe has worn many hats during his tenure at Forterra, including researcher/engineer in motion planning, prediction, and platform control; system architect; business developer; and product manager.  He helped build the AutoDrive® ADS applique that is vehicle and use-case agnostic, which is able to operate in mixed traffic, public roads, but also off-road, such as yards and all-terrain applications.  During his 18 years in the Autonomous Vehicle industry, he has integrated autonomous technology on more than 15 different vehicles and has deployed autonomous vehicles across the United States and internationally. His motion planning algorithms ran on some of the first true driverless vehicles that were clearing mines in Afghanistan in 2009.  

Joe earned a Master of Science and Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Tech, where he competed in the second DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005. Joe holds two patents, with several pending, for robotic engineering that include robotic swarm localization using ranging radios as well as a method and system for utilizing inertia to optimize fuel consumption.

Scott Sanders is Chief Growth Officer of Forterra, and leads the company's Growth Team. Scott joined Forterra in May of 2022 as Head of Business Development and has worked with the executive team to reshape and lead the company’s sales strategy and customer service infrastructure development since that time. He is responsible for customer growth, success and account management and has been instrumental in refining Forterra's market penetration strategies which embrace a fully integrated product development approach across defense and commercial sectors.

Prior to Forterra, Scott was the Head of Business Development for national security technology firm Vannevar Labs. He was previously Senior Director for Anduril Industries’ Counter Unmanned Systems division, where he built the company’s acquisition strategy for its $1 billion SOCOM Systems Integration Partner program. Prior to Anduril, he served as Special Operations Team Leader in U.S. Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC) and developed innovative technology deployments for Remote Advise and Assist/Virtual Accompany Kit (RAA-VAK) that enables Special Operations Forces operators to remotely enable partner forces.

Scott earned his BA in Economics and Business at the Virginia Military Institute.

Colin Chisholm is the Chief Operating Officer of Forterra. He joined Forterra in September of 2024 to lead the company’s operations, drive innovation and continuous improvement across manufacturing, and establish efficient processes that will ensure the company’s production capability scales with sustained growth.  Colin is responsible for the company’s core manufacturing functions—production, quality, supply chain, systems, and safety—as well as business functions that ensure efficient operational support across Forterra.

Prior to joining Forterra, Colin was the Head of Operations for Tito’s Handmade Vodka where he led the adoption of new technologies that more than tripled production capacity; as well as Director of Solutions Engineering for Siemens Industry Inc.

Before he began his civilian career, Colin served as an infantry officer in the United States Marine Corps where he held positions of increasing responsibility including Platoon, Commander, Company Commander, and Battalion Operations Officer. His military career included multiple combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Colin holds a Doctorate in Organizational Leadership from the University of La Verne, Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Tulane University, and Bachelor of Arts (BA) from Duquense University.

Taylor Smith Baisey is Head of People at Forterra. She is responsible for driving Human Resources best practices and key initiatives, and for providing strategic direction and expertise for the full scope of the HR function. She also serves as a strategic partner and force multiplier to the executive team while supporting the execution of the Company’s HR strategy.

Taylor was previously Chief of Staff at Forterra, managing the cohesion and synchronization of Executive priorities, acting as a culture ambassador for the Company, and serving as an invaluable conduit of information to and from employees, c-suite, and the board.

She joined the organization in 2019 and quickly emerged as a multifaceted leader with responsibilities including leading the company’s administrative team, serving as a primary point of contact with business partners and investors, leading the company’s marketing and communications, and ultimately supporting management through the Company’s record-breaking $228m Series A capital raise.

Taylor has received numerous accolades for her work, including being named to Business Insider’s 35 under 35 in Self-Driving Technology. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University at Albany where she double majored in political science and psychology and holds dual master’s degrees in business administration and education from Frostburg University. She is also certified as a Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP) through the Society for Human Resource Management.

Alberto Lacaze is Chairman of the Board and President of Forterra. He holds over 100 patents in the field of robotics and has penned hundreds of published articles. He is an internationally recognized leader in robotic engineering and frequently sought-after expert speaker at technology and industry forums around the world.

Alberto founded Forterra, originally called Robotic Research, in 2002 and oversaw all technical aspects of commercial and defense robotic systems. Under his vision and leadership, Forterra grew to become one of the largest providers of ground robotics autonomy capability to the Department of Defense (DOD) as well as to commercial vehicle original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) worldwide. His accomplishments include successfully developing the DOD’s first fully autonomous convoy vehicles deployed for logistics applications, the deployment of commercial shuttles and transit buses on a worldwide scale, as well as the creation of a new family of combined-mode air and ground robotic vehicles whose integrated system is capable of flight as well as ground mobility.

Today as Board Chair and President of Forterra, Alberto continues to mentor the engineering, development and leadership teams, and pursues greenfield innovations that will bring greater safety and security to defense customers, commercial OEMs, and public transit systems in years to come.

Alberto holds Bachelor of Science degrees from the Florida Institute of Technology (“Florida Tech”) in Electrical Engineering and in Computer Engineering. He holds a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from Drexel University. He was previously a staff engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and is a renowned expert on the power of robotics and supporting technologies, including graph theory, controls, optimization, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML).