Cleaning Up: Leadership in an Age of Climate Change

Dev Sanyal is Chief Executive Officer of VARO Energy Group AG, based in Zug, Switzerland. He was appointed to this role effective 1 January 2022. In July 2022, the company announced the ONE VARO Transformation Strategy accelerated by “Engine 1” focussed on Conventional Energies and “Engine 2” focussed on Sustainable Energies, with a commitment to investing two-thirds of capital in Engine 2 businesses and a trebling of earnings for the Group in the next 5 years. VARO will also be Net Zero in Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions by 2040.Prior to this, Dev had a 32-year career with BP plc including over a decade as a member of the group executive committee and headed gas and low carbon energy globally. Prior to this, he was chief executive, alternative energy and also accountable for BP’s Europe and Asia regions. During his tenure, he built world scale businesses  in  sustainable energy – solar, offshore wind, onshore wind, hydrogen and gas and power - and led the pivot in the company’s energy transition strategy.  Dev joined BP in 1989 and held a variety of international roles in London, Athens, Istanbul, Vienna and Dubai. Prior to joining the Group Executive Committee, he held the roles of group treasurer and chairman of BP Investment Management and Arco Aluminium, chief executive, Air BP International and chief executive, BP Eastern Mediterranean.  Dev is an independent non-executive director on the board of M&G plc; a member of the energy advisory board of the Government of India; the advisory board of the Centre for European Reform; and the board of overseers of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, where he obtained a master’s degree in economics and politics. He is a Fellow of the Energy Institute.  Dev was an independent non-executive director on the board of Man Group plc (2013-2022); a member of the Accenture Global Energy Board (2012-2018); Vice Chairman, Centre for China in the World Economy, Tsinghua University (2014-2019); The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award Foundation Business Leaders Group (2012-2015); and Trustee of the Career Academy Foundation (2007-2013).

Bill McKibben is founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 for action on climate and justice. His 1989 book The End of Nature is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change, and has appeared in 24 languages. He’s gone on to write 20 books, and his work appears regularly in periodicals from the New Yorker to Rolling Stone. He serves as the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he has won the Gandhi Peace Prize as well as honorary degrees from 20 colleges and universities. He was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, sometimes called the alternative Nobel, in the Swedish Parliament. Foreign Policy named him to its inaugural list of the world’s 100 most important global thinkers. McKibben helped found 350.org, the first global grassroots climate campaign, which has organized protests on every continent, including Antarctica, for climate action. He played a leading role in launching the opposition to big oil pipeline projects like Keystone XL, and the fossil fuel divestment campaign, which has become the biggest anti-corporate campaign in history, with endowments worth more than $40 trillion stepping back from oil, gas and coal. He stepped down as board chair of 350 in 2015, and left the board and stepped down from his volunteer role as senior adviser in 2020, accepting emeritus status. He lives in the mountains above Lake Champlain with his wife, the writer Sue Halpern, where he spends as much time as possible outdoors. In 2014, biologists credited his career by naming a new species of woodland gnat—Megophthalmidia mckibbeni–in his honor.

Dr. Julio Friedmann is Chief Scientist and Chief Carbon Wrangler at Carbon Direct.  He recently served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy at the Department of Energy where he was responsible for DOE’s R&D program in advanced fossil energy systems, carbon capture, and storage (CCS), CO2 utilisation, and clean coal deployment.  More recently, he was a Senior Research Scholar and now a Non--Resident Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA, where he led the Carbon Management Research Initiative. He has held positions at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, including Chief Energy Technologist, where he worked for 15 years.Dr. Friedmann is one of the most widely known and authoritative experts in the U.S. on carbon removal (CO2 drawdown from the air and oceans), CO2 conversion and use (carbon-to-value), hydrogen, industrial decarbonisation, and carbon capture and sequestration. In addition to close partnerships with many private companies, NGOs, Julio has worked with the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and government agencies foreign and domestic. His expertise also includes oil and gas production, international clean energy engagements, and earth science.Dr. Friedmann received his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), followed by a Ph.D. in Geology at the University of Southern California. He worked for five years as a senior research scientist at ExxonMobil, then as a research scientist at the University of Maryland.

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).

Prof. Roger Pielke Jr., an expert in policy and governance related to science, technology, environment, innovation, and sports, discusses various topics including the tension between scenarios and forecasts in climate change, the Kaya Identity for understanding carbon emissions, hurricane impacts and policy responses, detecting climate change impacts on extreme events, concerns about the misuse of scenarios in climate science, and the ethics of climate change communication.

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.Further reading:https://earthshotprize.org/

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