Kathy Hannun is the Cofounder and President of Dandelion Energy, the largest residential geothermal company in the United States. Dandelion transitions homeowners from fossil-fueled to geothermal heating and cooling using their custom geothermal drilling suite and Dandelion Air heat pump. Before founding Dandelion, Hannun was a Rapid Evaluator at X, Alphabet’s innovation lab, where she focused on finding “Moonshots,” i.e business opportunities to harness technology for large-scale positive impact. She initiated Dandelion as an X project and then launched it into an independent startup company in May 2017. Dandelion has since raised millions in funding from top venture capitalists, set a new standard for geothermal quality and cost- effectiveness, and empowered homeowners to avoid over 100 million pounds of carbon emissions and counting. In February 2021, Dandelion announced a $30M Series B funding round led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures. The company has partnered with Con Edison utility to promote heat pumps as an alternative to natural gas heating and successfully advocated for increased policy support for heat pumps throughout the Northeast. In addition, Dandelion has increased public awareness of the benefits of ground source heat pumps through stories in publications media such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fast Company, WIRED, Bloomberg, and TechCrunch and many others. Hannun has been recognized as a TED Fellow, a DOE C2E Award recipient, one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, and as one of MIT Technology Review’s “35 under 35.” She graduated from Stanford with a B.S. in Civil Engineering and an M.S. in Computer Science. https://dandelionenergy.com/ https://nexuspmg.com/

Andrew Behar is CEO of As You Sow,the nation’s leading non-profit practitioner of shareholder advocacy and engagement. Since 1992, As You Sow has used shareholder power to align investments with values and compel companies to reduce material risk on issues including climate change; toxins in the food system; ocean plastics; diversity, equity, and inclusion; racial justice; and wage equity. Previously Andrew was a documentary filmmaker and entrepreneur founding start-ups developing an innovative physiological monitoring medical device and grid-scale fuel cells. He is on the XPrize Brain Trust for Abundant Energy and the advisory boards of Real Impact Tracker and 1-Earth Institute. His book, The Shareholders Action Guide: Unleash Your Hidden Powers to Hold Corporations Accountable, was published in November 2016 by Berrett-Koehler. https://www.asyousow.org/ https://nexuspmg.com/

Dan is CEO of SparkMeter, the leading provider of smart metering systems that enable utilities to implement pre-paid billing and real-time monitoring and control on micro-grids and central grids alike.  He has served as a consultant to the United Nations Office for Project Services in Haiti, and for the World Bank.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the Chair of the United Nations SE4All Practitioner Network Microgrid Working Group, and he was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 for energy list in 2012.  Dan received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in the Department of Engineering & Public Policy in October 2014, where his research focused on energy access in developing countries.   Dan was formerly employed by KEMA, Inc. (now DNV GL) as an energy analyst, where he worked on utility energy efficiency programs and renewable energy policy analysis and engineering in the US electricity sector.  Dan received his bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in 2007, where he triple-majored in Physics, Economics and Environmental Studies. https://www.sparkmeter.io/ https://nexuspmg.com/

Kelly is the CTO and co-founder at Charm Industrial, where she leads the engineering team developing their pyrolysis and gasification systems. Prior to Charm, she led the early upper stage design at Astra, a small rocket company, and the mechanical design at Planet for their constellation of Dove satellites. She studied mechanical engineering at Brown University. https://charmindustrial.com/ https://nexuspmg.com/

From the newsroom to the boardroom, Lisa Ann has used her keen analytical skills to share technology stories with the world for over a decade. She is Founder and CEO of the award-winning Technica Communications, Founder and Chairwoman of the non-profit Women In Cleantech & Sustainability, an international speaker and moderator and documentary filmmaker. She was named a PR Executive of the Year by the American Business Awards (2020), Female Entrepreneur of the Year for Advertising and Marketing by the Women in Business and the Professions World Awards (2020), and a Woman of Influence by the Silicon Valley Business Journal (2017). Before founding Technica Communications, Lisa Ann was a Senior Account Executive and managed new business operations for the San Francisco PR firm Antenna Group.  She got her start as a broadcast journalist covering environmental science in 2001. She was awarded the Best Environmental Journalism award by the Society of Professional Journalists in 2005. Her work has been broadcast on National Public Radio, PBS Television, WPXI-NBC, American Public Media, The Environment Report, Great Lakes Radio Consortium, Free Speech TV, WYEP 91.3FM-Pittsburgh, WRCT 88.3FM-Pittsburgh, and WCPN/WVIZ PBS ideastream in Cleveland. https://www.womenincleantechsustainability.org/ https://nexuspmg.com/

Ibrahim AlHusseini is an award winning serial entrepreneur turned tech investor.  He made his fortune in fiberoptics and rolled it into Cleantech in the early 2000s after witnessing the acceleration of plastic-pollution in our seas and oceans.  He is the founder of FullCycle, a growth equity fund accelerating the deployment of climate critical technology worldwide.  He is an early investor in Tesla, Uber, Beyond Meats, and Zoom as well as neobank Aspiration, CleanChoice Energy, and Devoted Health.  He is a frequent contributor on CNBC, Bloomberg and Yahoo Finance, and a passionate advocate for immigrants and sound environmental policies. https://www.fullcycle.com/ https://nexuspmg.com/

When Azzedine Downes became President and CEO of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) in 2012, one thing was clear to him: “Talking to people who already agreed with us just isn’t enough to get real results.” As IFAW’s Executive Vice President since 1997, Azzedine had worked closely with experts from across the sciences and decision makers from around the world. But when he became President, IFAW started bringing together what Azzedine likes to call “the unusual suspects.” Seamstresses in Malawi. Auction houses in China. Military intelligence officers in Minnesota. Working together, IFAW’s eclectic network is now helping animals and people thrive together in more than 40 countries. Azzedine has led IFAW through a groundbreaking period of geographic expansion and strategic consolidation. He’s helped open offices on four continents, including IFAW’s first office in the Middle East. He’s deployed IFAW’s world-class Tiger Team to South Asia, where new programs are proving critical support for the species. And he established IFAW’s Wildlife Crime program. Azzedine has also influenced international policies to create positive change on the ground. In Azzedine’s first year as President, IFAW signed a historic lease agreement with a Maasai community near Amboseli National Park in Kenya, securing 16,000 acres of precious habitat for elephants. Months later, Azzedine helped establish a first-of-its-kind cooperative framework between IFAW and INTERPOL’s Environmental Crime Program. For years, Azzedine has served as the Head of the Delegation to the CITES Conference of the Parties. And recently, he directed IFAW’s successful campaign for membership to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Before joining IFAW, Azzedine served as the Chief of Party for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Jerusalem and Morocco, as well as the Acting Regional Director for the United States Peace Corps in Eurasia and the Middle East. In 2015, Fast Company named Azzedine one of the “The Most 100 Creative People in Business,” and he has been listed among The NonProfit Times’s “Power and Influence Top 50.” He is a member of the Global Tiger Forum Advisory Council, and he currently sits on the U.S. Trade and Environmental Policy Advisory Committee. A graduate of Providence College and Harvard University, Azzedine is fluent in Arabic, English, and French. https://www.ifaw.org/ https://nexuspmg.com/

Steve Schmida is the Founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Resonance, an award-winning global development and corporate sustainability consulting firm with more than 100 consultants and offices in Vermont, Washington, D.C., Seattle, and Manila. Resonance clients include Fortune 500 companies, international donor agencies, and leading nonprofits and foundations. His writings have appeared in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Medium.com, The Huffington Post, and The Moscow Times. Connect with him on LinkedIn. https://www.resonanceglobal.com/ https://nexuspmg.com/

Marc Conte is an Associate Professor in the Economics Department at Fordham University and a faculty research fellow at New York University, and a recent Visiting Associate Professor at the Yale School of the Environment. As an environmental economist, his research pursuits often explore how market prices fail to accurately reflect the impacts of market actions on the environment (and the resultant implications for society) and how market interventions can be used to achieve more desirable environmental and social outcomes. Prior to his arrival at Fordham, he was a post-doctoral research fellow at Stanford University, where he was a key contributor to the Natural Capital Project. Marc earned his Ph.D. at the Bren School at UCSB, as a trainee in the NSF-funded IGERT Economics and Environmental Sciences program. Marc developed an interest in the environment at a young age, thanks to time spent outdoors with his family, notably exploring the ponds and beaches of Cape Cod. He developed an academic interest in economics and ecology while an undergraduate at Dartmouth College. He continues to be an active hiker and is an enthusiastic amateur birder, whose 2020 highlights include a Lapland Longspur, Snow Buntings, and a Snowy Owl (the first in Central Park since 1890!). https://nexuspmg.com/

Juan Verde is an internationally renowned strategist for both the public and private sectors, with a particular focus on sustainable economic development. His specialty is designing innovative strategies to attract investment, accelerate economic development, and support strategic alliances. In the public sector, Mr. Verde served as Deputy assistant secretary for Europe and Eurasia at the United States Department of Commerce under President Barack Obama. In this capacity, Mr.Verde led the Department’s efforts to solve trade policy and market-access issues faced by U.S. firms seeking to grow their business operations in Europe and Eurasia. Additionally, he was responsible for developing and recommending policies and programs to support U.S. economic and commercial relations with52 countries in the region. Mr. Verde previously served in theDepartment of Commerce during the Clinton Administration as an international trade analyst, coordinator, and consultant, working first in the Office of Latin America and later in the MinorityBusiness Development Agency. In the private sector, Mr.Verdehas served as a consultant for a variety of prestigious companies, such as Google, Cisco, SAS, American Express, and Banco Santander Investments US. He has also collaborated with institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank, Harvard UniversityKennedy School, and the world bank. He founded and led the Canary Islands and Gibraltar chapters of the American Chamber of Commerce, and is a current member of the Board of Directors oftheAmericanSustainableBusiness Council, the leading business organization in the U.S. serving the public policy interests of sustainable, responsible companies, their customers, and other stakeholders. https://www.aleadership.org/ https://nexuspmg.com/