Michael Peter Skelly

Michael Peter Skelly (born October 19, 1961) is a Houston renewable energy and infrastructure developer and entrepreneur.

He is the former Democratic candidate for Texas's 7th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Michael Skelly was born in England in 1961 to Irish parents.

At the age of two, Skelly sailed to the United States from Ireland with his family aboard the SS America.

His parents settled in Roanoke, Virginia where Skelly attended public schools.

He went on to earn his undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame.

After college, he joined the Peace Corps and served in Costa Rica, where he helped local fisherman develop a microcredit market to increase their economic viability after the Latin American economic crisis of the 1980s.

Following the Peace Corps, Skelly enrolled in Harvard Business School, where he earned his M.B.A.

Skelly has been married to Anne Whitlock since 1991.

The couple has three grown children: two boys and a girl.

Anne earned a degree in Business Finance from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a degree in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Anne is the Founding Director of Connect Community, an organization that works with the largely immigrant Gulfton and Sharpstown neighborhoods of Houston.

The organization connects the community to resources it can collaborate with to strengthen itself socioeconomically.

In 1992, Skelly and his partners began the development of an aerial tram adjacent to the Braulio Carrillo National Park of Costa Rica to promote ecotourism.

Skelly navigated logistical, financial and bureaucratic challenges in order to complete the project.

The tram equipment was purchased from a U.S. ski resort.

Skelly secured a helicopter from the Nicaraguan government to install the tram towers in the dense rainforest through connections he made at Harvard.

The project was completed in 1994.

The open-air tram is a mile long and rises to the rainforest canopy to deliver guests an up-close view of the incredibly biodiverse ecosystem.

The tram is still operational today.

After developing the Aerial Tram, Skelly went to work for New World Power to develop renewable energy projects in 1995.

Soon after he was brought on board, the company began liquidating assets.

By 1996 New World Power had gone out of business and Skelly was forced to move on.

Skelly joined Energia Global in 1996, developing small energy projects in Central America.

Skelly led Energia Global's efforts for a proposed wind farm, Tierras Morenas.

Tierras Morenas would be the largest wind farm in Costa Rica, and at the time was one of the largest in Latin America.

In order to purchase the wind farm site, Energia Global required a financial partner to invest capital.

Skelly forged a partnership with Texan investor and co-owner of International Wind, Michael Zilkha.

From 1999 to 2008, he served as the chief development officer for Horizon Wind Energy, which by 2007 had become the second-largest wind farm developer and third-largest wind farm owner in the United States.

By 1999, the project was completed and contributing electricity to the Costa Rican grid.

In February 2011, Skelly donated a kidney to his sister, Margaret.

After becoming a donor, Skelly became an advocate for living donor programs, becoming a member on the Advisory board of Living Bank, a Houston-based organization that works to advance living organ donation to confront the shortage of organs needed for life-saving transplants.

In 2013 Skelly and Whitlock purchased the hundred year old Houston Firehouse No. 2, which had fallen into disrepair since its decommissioning in the 1980s.

With their children out on their own, the couple renovated the firehouse, turning the downstairs into a community and events space and the upstairs into their residence.

Skelly and Whitlock were named as one of Houston's 29 most powerful couples by the Houston Chronicle in 2021.

On May 2, 2014 Skelly co-hosted a Cabaret gala fundraiser for Nora's Home - an outpatient facility designed for transplant recipients to recover.

In October 2017, Living Bank hosted their annual Celebrate Life Fundraiser featuring Skelly as special honoree.

Skelly cofounded and served as president of Clean Line Energy Partners, an independent developer of high voltage direct current, long-haul transmission lines until 2018.

Skelly's work at Clean Line is detailed in the book, "Superpower: One Man's Quest to Transform American Energy" by Wall Street Journal Energy reporter and Pulitzer Prize finalist Russell Gold.

Skelly is CEO of Grid United, an independent transmission development company.