Mindy Lubber is the CEO and President of the sustainability nonprofit organization Ceres. She leads an all-women executive leadership team and more than 160 employees working to mobilize the most influential investors and companies to solve the world’s greatest sustainability challenges. She has been at the helm since 2003, and under her leadership, the organization and its powerful networks and global collaborations have grown significantly in size and influence. Prior to Ceres, Lubber served as a Regional Administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under former President Bill Clinton. She also founded Green Century Capital Management and served as the director of the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group (MASSPIRG). She has received numerous awards and recognitions for her leadership. In 2020, Lubber was awarded the United Nations ’Champions of the Earth’ Entrepreneurial Vision award. In the same year, Lubber made Barron’s Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential women in U.S. finance, and then again in 2021. She has also received the Climate Visionary Award from the Earth Day Network, William K. Reilly Award for Environmental Leadership from American University, and the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship from the Skoll Foundation. She has been recognized by the United Nations and the Foundation for Social Change as one of the World’s Top Leaders of Change. In 2019, 2020, and 2021, Ceres was named a top 100 women-led businesses in Massachusetts by the Globe Magazine and Commonwealth Institute.
Julia is currently leading the introduction of private financing into new nuclear in the UK – Sizewell C is the path finder project. This involves working cooperatively with Government, with cross party MPs, trade unions, with industry and with the financial community. Julia has lead the development of a new vision for nuclear as ‘servant of the future energy system’ – nuclear working together with renewables and contributing to both the growth of a hydrogen economy and to the development of Direct Air Capture, as well as generating electricity for the National Grid. Prior to joining EDF to develop the Sizewell C Project, Julia was Head of Power at Herbert Smith Freehills for the UK and Europe, and led a team advising on power projects of all technologies, and has worked on a range of infrastructure projects in transport and defence sectors, and in M&A. Julia led the team advising BEIS (then DTI) on the formation of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, and spent a year on secondment to the NDA. Julia frequently appears in the media to talk about nuclear (Radio 4, local and national TV), on podcasts, and is in demand to speak at conferences. Julia has appeared in front of parliamentary committees (most recently the Bill Committee for the Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill). Additional to her role for Sizewell C, Julia is a non executive director of Newcleo (small nuclear) and an adviser to Hycap (financing hydrogen projects).
Roger Pielke, Jr. has been on the faculty of the University of Colorado Boulder since 2001, where he teaches and writes on a diverse range of policy and governance issues related to science, technology, environment, innovation and sports. Roger is a professor in the Environmental Studies Program. Roger is currently focusing his research on a NSF-sponsored, 16-country evaluation of science advice in the COVID-19 pandemic. Roger holds degrees in mathematics, public policy and political science, all from the University of Colorado. In 2012 Roger was awarded an honorary doctorate from Linköping University in Sweden and was also awarded the Public Service Award of the Geological Society of America. In 2006, Roger received the Eduard Brückner Prize in Munich, Germany in 2006 for outstanding achievement in interdisciplinary climate research. Roger has been a Distinguished Fellow of the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan since 2016. From 2019 he has served as a science and economics adviser to Environmental Progress. Roger was a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences from 2001 to 2016. He served as a Senior Fellow of The Breakthrough Institute from 2008 to 2018. In 2007 Roger served as a James Martin Fellow at Oxford University’s Said Business School. Before joining the faculty of the University of Colorado, from 1993 to 2001 Roger was a Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. At the University of Colorado, Roger founded and directed both the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research and the Sports Governance Center. He also created and led the university’s Graduate Certificate Program in Science and Technology Policy, which has seen its graduates move on to faculty positions, Congressional staff, presidential political appointees and in positions in business and civil society. His books include Hurricanes: Their Nature and Impacts on Society (with R. Pielke Sr., 1997, John Wiley, full text free as PDF), Prediction: Science, Decision Making and the Future of Nature (with D. Sarewitz and R. Byerly, 2001, Island Press), The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics published by Cambridge University Press (2007), The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell you About Global Warming (2010, Basic Books). Presidential Science Advisors: Reflections on Science, Policy and Politics (with R. Klein, 2011, Springer), and The Edge: The War Against Cheating and Corruption in the Cutthroat World of Elite Sports (Roaring Forties Press, 2016). His most recent book is The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters and Climate Change (2nd edition, 2018, Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes).
Simon Morrish is the CEO and founder of Xlinks, CEO of Ground Control and Partner at Levitate Capital. Simon is a serial entrepreneur (he is the founder of amongst others, Xlinks, Future Motors and Skysports) who has invested in and worked with companies such as Excel IT, Solar Ventus, CQC, Survey Roofing and Litter Boss. Simon started out at Morgan Stanley as a Derivatives Analyst, he then worked at McKinsey & Company. With his wife, he co-founded and directed How-Smart Ltd which was successfully sold to a larger competitor. Simon holds a Master’s degree with Distinction in Economics, Engineering and Management from Oxford University and a Master of Business Administration degree with Honors from Harvard Business School. Simon was a recipient of the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year award for Transformational Leadership in 2018 and was the recipient of the British Business Excellence Awards LDC Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2021.
Hannah Jones is the CEO of The Earthshot Prize, a prize and a platform founded by HRH Prince William and the Royal Foundation in 2020 to search, spotlight and scale solutions that can help repair and regenerate the planet in this decade. Hannah Jones is a social and environmental advocate believing in the power of entrepreneurism, innovation and collaboration to affect systems change. She started her career in radio, at the BBC, before working as a social entrepreneur in a British Charity, founding and leading pan-European AIDS/HIV prevention and anti-racism campaigns across 100's of Radio stations. She then worked on the founding team of Microsoft’s philanthropy program in EMEA before joining Nike to help start their first Corporate Responsibility team in EMEA. For 16 years, as Nike’s first Chief Sustainability Officer, working to the CEO and the Nike Board of Directors, Hannah helped lead the transformation of Nike’s labor rights and sustainability efforts, turning both functions into engines of business model innovation and industry change. Following that, Hannah founded Nike Valiant Labs, a venture to bring a culture of lean startup, human centered design & entrepreneurialism to Nike, housing a vibrant diverse culture of entrepreneurs delivering a growing portfolio of new disruptive digital businesses and offerings with purpose at their core. Named twice to Fast Company’s top 100 Creative People list, a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and winner of the C.K Prahalad 2013 award for leadership in Sustainability, Hannah has served on the board of the Method Soap & Ecover brands, was the co-chair and co-founder of We Mean Business, a coalition of progressive businesses working to influence climate policy, and has served on the boards and councils of Mercy Corps, the UNHCR Business Advisory Council and the Purpose Climate Lab. Today, Hannah is a non-executive director on the board of Oatly, a sustainability advisor to UCB, a global BioTech company, an advisor to the Queens Gambit, an all-female SPAC, a mentor with the Unreasonable Group, and a mentor to as many talented diverse future leaders as she can fit in.
Robert Llewellyn is the joint CEO of the Fully Charged Show. Robert Llewellyn is most commonly known for playing the role of Kryten for 30 years in the BBC hit series Red Dwarf. He hosted the Channel 4 series Scrapheap Challenge for 10 years, along with 8 series of How Do They Do It for Channel 5. More recently he has taken his career to YouTube with The Fully Charged Show, the series has over 870,000 subscribers and now receives an average of 4 million views a month. On the Fully Charged Show Llewellyn and his co-hosts investigate the rapid development of electric vehicle technology and anything from solar panels to alternative energy sources. He is the author of seven fiction and eight non-fiction books, Llewellyn, who is of Anglo-Welsh ancestry, learnt to drive at age 11 (having been taught by his older brother in a go-kart); formerly a "petrol-head", he is now a widely acknowledged electric car and renewable energy/clean tech advocate and frequently presents talks on the subject. Further reading: https://fullycharged.show/ https://www.youtube.com/c/fullychargedshow
Ion Yadigaroglu has been Managing Partner at Capricorn Investment Group since 2004, and is an early investor in iconic technology companies including Tesla, SpaceX, Planet, QuantumScape and Saildrone. Capricorn was born from the desire to demonstrate the huge investment potential that resides in breakthrough commercial solutions to the world’s most pressing problems, and as such is one of the original impact investors. Prior to Capricorn, Ion was Director of Business Development (M&A) with Koch Industries, executing a range of acquisitions and investments, and a Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Bivio, a software startup in Colorado, and an Analyst at Olsen & Associates, a quantitative forex trader. Ion was a research fellow at Columbia University and holds a master’s in physics from ETH Zürich in Switzerland and a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from Stanford University. Ion serves on the boards of Twelve and Capricorn, and was a founding member in 2007 of GIIN, the Global Impact Investor Network, and is a Director of non-profits Ceres and MethaneSat.
Patrick Graichen is a State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. He has held this post since 15 December 2021 and is responsible for energy and climate policy. From 2012, Graichen was instrumental in setting up the think tank Agora Energiewende, taking on the roles of Executive Director and Managing Director from 2014 until his move to the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. He began his career in public service at the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, first as an officer in the Division for International Climate Protection, then as Personal Assistant to a State Secretary, and subsequently as Head of Division for Climate and Energy Policy. During this time, he played a leading role in negotiating the economic instruments of the Kyoto Protocol, the Federal Government's 2007 Integrated Energy and Climate Programme, the EU's 2008 Climate and Energy Package, and legislative procedures in the field of energy law. Patrick Graichen studied Political Science and Economics in Heidelberg and Cambridge, UK, before going on to earn his doctorate at the Interdisciplinary Institute for Environmental Economics at the University of Heidelberg.
Francesco La Camera has been the Director-General of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) since April 2019. Under Francesco’s leadership the Agency has forged a series of new strategic partnerships with UN organisations including UNDP, UNFCCC and Green Climate Fund among others. A key priority of his tenure is to implement a more action-oriented approach to the Agency’s work. Previously, Francesco served as Director-General of Sustainable Development, Environmental Damage, EU and International Affairs at the Italian Ministry of Environment, Land & Sea since 2014. Francesco held number of roles at the Italian Ministry of Environment, Land and Sea. As the national coordinator for climate, environment, resource efficiency and circular economy, he led the Italian delegation to UNFCCC’s COP 21 to 24 and the EU Presidency at COP 20. He was responsible for the preparation and organisation of Italy’s G7 Environment Presidency in 2017. He served as co-chair of the Africa Centre for Climate and Sustainable Development established in Rome in partnership with FAO and UNDP and co-chaired the Financial Platform for Climate and Sustainable Development in partnership with the Italian Development Bank Cassa Depositi e Prestiti. He has also coordinated a number of national strategies including on sustainable development, green finance and fossil fuel subsides among other things. Francesco was a lecturer of Sustainable Development at the University of Cosenza and of Environment & Land Economics at the University of Roma 3. He is a graduate of the University of Messina in Political Sciences (Economic Policy major). Further reading: IRENA World Energy Transitions Outlook https://irena.org/publications/2022/Mar/World-Energy-Transitions-Outlook-2022
Farhana Yamin is an international climate change lawyer, public speaker, author and social justice activist. Farhana is a Visiting Professor at the University of the Arts in London, Associate Research Fellow at Chatham House, Senior Adviser to SystemIQ and Co Coordinator of Camden Think and Do. Farhana has spent over three decades working in the climate space – she represented small island and developing countries at climate conferences (she has been deputy chair of the Expert Group of Advisors to the Climate Vulnerable Forum), worked at Children's Investment Fund Foundation, served as a special adviser to the EU Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard, founded Track 0 and taught at a number of universities. Farhana was one of the Coordinators of Extinction Rebellion’s Strategy team. Farhana read PPE at Somerville College, Oxford and is a qualified solicitor. She feature on the 2020 BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour Power list.