Cleantech Group

Dan Baldi

Matthieu Bonamy

Matthieu has almost 20 years of experience in energy and information technologies sectors, including 12 years in Venture Capital and Infrastructure Investments. Prior to joining Idinvest Matthieu has occupied diverse managerial responsibilities in investments, M&A transactions and has served as an operations and investment senior executive in a “unicorn” startup of the renewable energy sector.

Myrna Bittner

Myrna Bittner is the CEO and Co-Founder of RWI Synthetics, an AI-based modelling company that creates Single Synthetic Environments – live, geospatially accurate cities or regions, complete with their people, activity, policies, infrastructure, energy and mobility to calculate the impacts of all kinds of investments and scenarios under any conceivable scenarios. The technology of RWI originates from a previous venture of Myrna’s in the ‘90s, NeuralVR, a neural net and 3D visualization research company focused on organizing, aggregating, and visualizing unstructured documents. In 2020, Myrna and her team were a part of the Incubatenergy® Labs Challenge, creating a POC of a dual-disaster for EPRI and Phoenix-based utility, Salt River Projects. Building on this, in 2021, EPRI and RWI partnered on a project showcased at AFWERX, reimagining energy for the USAF with Synthetic Bases. RWI is also a current finalist in the City Architecture of Tomorrow Challenge with the Toyota Mobility Foundation in Kuala Lumpur and has been Certified as a 2021 SET100, top 100 global companies in energy transition and mobility.

Carrie Chan

Carrie is a seasoned business executive with a passion for the environment, particularly the impact of our food supply on the planet. Her expertise is in general management and project delivery. She managed major real estate developments from ground zero to full operation.  At Avant Meats, Carrie provides the vision, guides the strategy and supervises the implementation.

Avant Meats is a biotechnology company with patent-pending solutions that enable businesses to produce animal meat and protein without raising or catching and slaughtering the animal.  The Company’s pilot products are fish meat and marine proteins.  Thanks to our technology, we customise the nutritional profile of our cultivated fish meat while keeping them free from heavy metals, microplastics, radioactive contaminants, parasites, and antibiotics.

Karthik Chandrasekar

Karthik started Sangam to find a new model to provide early stage support for climate change pioneers. He spends a lot of his time with the portfolio & within the clean technology eco-system in India & globally.

Anthony DeOrsey

Anthony manages Cleantech Group’s research team, delivering critical insights on new cleantech innovation and opportunities for engagement to Cleantech Group’s clients in the industrial, investment, and policy communities. He is based in the U.S.

Anthony joined Cleantech Group in late 2019 after over 8 years of work in US-China cross-border expansion consulting and start-up venture funding roles, including 5 years living in Shanghai.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from University of Rhode Island, a Masters in Sustainability from the Harvard Extension School, and he an MBA from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.

Josh Gilbert

Josh Gilbert is Chief Executive Officer and founder at Sust Global.

Sust Global is the leading provider of climate data and APIs, providing the climate data foundations for global financial institutions, data providers, investors and corporates.

Sust Global’s product delivers satellite-validated insights and integrations, by transforming climate science with satellite and geospatial datasources and cutting-edge deep-learning techniques.

Josh is a global expert and leader in climate tech and sustainable finance, having worked across climate tech, cleantech and geospatial analytics.

Josh is a thought leader and regular speaker on climate tech sustainable finance, quoted in publications such as TechCrunch, Reuters, FT/Sifted and UKTN. Josh holds a BA & MSc in Economics & International Development, and wishes he had more time to play music and Dungeons & Dragons.

Arjun Gupta

Tal Kreisler

Yann Lagalaye

Yann joined Demeter in January 2020 as Partner. He is in charge of the fundraising and management of the new venture scale-up fund so called Green European Tech (“GET”), focused on building a sustainable future and investing in smart building, smart transportation, smart industry, resources management, smart energy, sustainable communities, and climate risk resilience solutions leveraging Smart City tech enablers (IoT, WPLAN, 5G, …) and sustainability criteria (SDGs, profitability, resilience, ..)

Before joining Demeter, Yann created and managed the Energy Transition Capital fund of BNP Paribas that invested in 10 start-ups and 3 funds in North America and Europe.

He has previously held the position of Managing Director within the Private Equity team E&C Capital at BNP Paribas.

Yann also worked with the structured finance team of BNP Paribas where he has held the position of Deputy Head for EMEA. He started his carrier as reservoir engineer at Total specialized in naturally fractured reservoirs after a research period at Stanford University for Elf.

Yann holds an engineering diploma of School of Mines and an MBA of ESCP.

Jennifer Lenhart

Jennifer Lenhart (WWF Sweden) is Global Cities Lead for WWF, which has engaged circa 600 cities in 50 countries. She holds a PhD in urban climate governance from Wageningen University (the Netherlands) and has 15 years’ experience addressing urban environmental challenges via holistic approaches. Her fascination with urban planning and design, including how people interact in and with cities, inspired her blog, the Urban Observer, recognized by Guardian Cities as one of the best city blogs. She previously worked at UN-Habitat in Nairobi, Kenya; the City of Malmö, Sweden; and an urban sustainability consultancy in Seattle, USA. She currently parks her bicycle in Santiago de Chile, home for the last 2 years.

Qi Lu

Qi Lu is Strategy & Research Partner at Tsing Capital, where she heads the Research Department and works closely with Managing Partners to set firm development and branding strategy for Tsing Capital. Her work includes:

• Leading the company’s effort in extensive and in-depth industry research to identify emerging opportunities for investment (10+ sectors per year).
• Composing and publishing Tsing Capital’s annual investment whitepaper to summarize findings and insights of its focused areas.
• Establishing and maintaining partnerships with industry experts from research institutes, universities, and think tanks.
• Hosting forums and workshops to facilitate discussions among start-ups, corporations, investors and policy makers.
• Speaking or arranging Tsing Capital’s executives’ speaking at world-level conferences or influential workshops.

Qi has over seven years’ experience working in energy, environmental protection and sustainable development sectors. Her focus areas include renewable energy, electric vehicle, energy efficiency, power storage, smart cities, etc.

Prior to joining Tsing Capital, she worked for Carbon Trust and Azure International, two leading environmental and low carbon consulting firms, where she worked with Chinese national and local governments to give recommendations on sustainability-related policy making. She also advised many western Cleantech companies on their China-entry strategies. Qi also worked at Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s Beijing and New York offices as a research assistant intern on power storage and U.S.’s voluntary carbon markets.

Qi holds an M.S. Operations Research from Columbia University and a B.Eng. Industrial Engineering from Tsinghua University.

Lisa McNeilly

Lisa McNeilly is the Director of Sustainability for the City of Baltimore, where she works toward a more sustainable, equitable, and resilient Baltimore City. Previously, she was the Director of Sustainability and Energy at the University of California, Berkeley, served as regional program director for the Nature Conservancy, managed sustainability and compliance for facilities at the Grand Canyon, and directed international programs at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. She holds a Master`s degree in Public Policy from Princeton and an undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Davidson College.

Pedro Martins

Andrew Mears

Dr Andrew Mears is an engineer and entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience in the areas of renewable energy and innovation management covering Asia & Pacific, Africa and Australia. His first startup was in satellite communications in 1990 and since then he’s worked in academia, SMEs, non-governmental sector, and multilateral agencies. This includes lead roles in technology innovation and commercialisation, project development, strategy consulting, and investment program management. He was a Chief Technical Advisor for Renewable Energy and Climate Change for the United Nations in Southern Africa and SE Asia and has delivered more than 40 major assignments in 18 countries directly mobilizing investment in excess of $200 million. In 2011, he was awarded Newcastle University’s Alumni Award for International Leadership. In 2014 he launched SwitchDin to develop energy management solutions for distributed energy resources (DER). Since then SwitchDin has carved a niche position as the integration solution for DER in grid and microgrid applications.

Julien Mialaret

Julien is an Operating Partner at Eurazeo, a global investor in technology with offices in Paris, London, Berlin, NY, Shanghai, Seoul and Singapore. Eurazeo is currently the largest venture capital firm in continental Europe and active in Asia with approximately €3.6 bn in venture and growth capital and  €22bn overall with additional activities in private debt and private equity 

Julien deploys Smart City Fund II in China and Asean region which is focused on the digital convergence of smart city sectors: new energy, mobility, industry 4.0, property, deeptech. Smart City II launched in January 2021 with a 1^st closing at €80m and is already supported by 10 corporate and institutional investors in Europe  and Asia. The fund is expected to reach  €200m by the end of 2021.

To date, Julien has invested in digital technologies with global reach in China, Asean, Europe and the US: WeRide.ai (Driverless taxis, China), DST Car (EV Logistics, China), Grab (Rides, payments, deliveries, Singapore), Immotor (e-scooter battery exchanges, China), Neurala Inc. (Deep neural network software, US), TrustInSoft (Automated code analysis and flaw remediation, FR), Enlighted Inc. (IoT networks for buildings, US, acquired by Siemens), First Fuel Software (Energy data analytics, US, acquired by Uplight/Tendril), Organica Water Inc. (Decentralized waste water treatment, US/HK) and Actility (Low power IoT networks, FR).

Prior to joining Idinvest in 2011, Julien was based in China where he developed and acquired power projects for EDF Group. Julien holds degrees from La Sorbonne University, Beijing University, ESCP Europe Business School and the French School of Oriental Studies. He is a fluent Mandarin, English, French and Spanish speaker and has working capacity in Japanese.

www.eurazeo.com

Racquel Moses

Catalyzing change that brings about transformation has been the primary pursuit of Racquel Moses’ career.

Racquel has enabled leadership and organizations around the world to go beyond their current vision and stay on the cusp of what’s next. She has become a critical advisor for driving the shift to digital, for process automation and implementing key turnaround projects that heighten customer engagement and strengthen organizational performance.

Known for her ability to build coalitions, Racquel’s success in the public and private sectors has allowed her to drive important advancements on world-changing topics that require regional consensus such as climate change, sustainability and building resilience.

Ben Murphy

Ben is an Investment Manager at IP Group focussed on cleantech. His portfolio boards include Mixergy innovating in domestic demand side response; C-Capture, bringing word leading CO2 separation chemistry to market and Ngenics, which uses evolutionary algorithms to optimise circuit designs.

Ben has spent over ten years working in low carbon technology. Including working for Google screening low carbon investments in Europe; doing scientific research at the European Commission; in the Carbon Trust helping governments and corporations to allocate innovation funding and for the Brazilian National Development Bank advising on the redesign of multi-£bn energy efficiency loan schemes.

Ben has a first class degree in physics and mathematics as well as a masters in Environmental Technology from Imperial College London. As well as working in England he has also worked in Italy, Spain and Germany.

Melanie Nakagawa

Melanie is the Director of Climate Strategy based in Washington, DC.

Before Princeville Global, Melanie served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Transformation at the U.S. State Department. She helped countries implement clean energy commitments and led engagements in high growth markets such as India and Morocco. Melanie has worked with emerging and established companies around the world to advance solutions to climate change.

Prior to her most recent role, Melanie served as a strategic advisor to Secretary of State John Kerry. In that role, in addition to her policy work, she spearheaded engagements with the private sector that focused on climate investment and addressing climate change. Melanie served as the Senior Energy and Environment Counsel for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a global environmental organization. She is currently a non-resident Fellow with the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, a Stimson Center’s Loomis Innovation Council Member, and on the Advisory Board of REVERB.

Melanie lives in the Washington, DC area with her husband and two sons. Melanie is an avid runner and hopes to complete her 7th marathon soon. She has a J.D. and M.A. in International Affairs from American University’s Washington College of Law and School of International Service, and an A.B. from Brown University where she was a member of the cross country and indoor/outdoor track teams.

Sai Ranganathan

Saikrishnan (Sai) is the CEO and co-founder of SensorFlow, a Singapore- based startup which offers hoteliers a smart solution to reduce their energy consumption, optimise their operational efficiency and achieve their sustainability goals.

Driven by the vision to mitigate global challenges, Sai has consistently worked towards engineering solutions that are practical, adaptable, and aligned with the immediate climate problems faced worldwide.

One of the youngest thought leaders in the region, Sai was part of the Entrepreneur First cohort, where he built the technical expertise to transform SensorFlow as a viable business model, scalable across different markets. Sai also has a background in energy management and smart home automation and has worked extensively on energy monitoring solutions for schools, data centres, homes, malls and factories.

Being an industry expert in areas such as IoT, AI and digital transformation for buildings, Sai has been invited to speak at a number of international conferences, seminars, events and panels where he has shared his views and expertise on key topics.

Susan Rohac

Susan Rohac is Vice President, Cleantech Practice, at BDC. With over 25 years of extensive experience in financial services, banking and higher risk patient capital lending and investing, Susan provides support and guidance to a team of devoted professionals serving the cleantech sector in Canada. Formally established in January 2018, BDC’s Cleantech Practice is committed to deploying $600 million between 2018 and 2023 in both debt and equity to high-potential cleantech companies with proven technology, demonstrated market traction, and the potential and capability to scale to more than $100 million in annual revenue.

Before her current role, Susan was Vice President, Growth and Transition Capital, at BDC, where she led a specialized team of financial professionals, providing private equity and mezzanine debt for companies looking to grow, make acquisitions or facilitate an ownership transition. She also held the position of Senior Vice President, Financing and Consulting, at BDC, where she oversaw term lending and consulting activities across 33 business centres. In that role, she also implemented strategies to improve client satisfaction and increase the reach and visibility of BDC in Ontario. Susan holds honours degrees in both Science and Finance, as well as an executive MBA.

A dedicated leader, Susan strives to ensure that her team offers genuine value in terms of insight, counsel and ongoing business guidance in order to support the growth of Canada’s clean technology industry.

Parinda Sae-Tang

Naomi Sonneveld

Naomi Sonneveld is the Deputy Resilience Officer for the City of Rotterdam. In May of 2016 the City of Rotterdam launched its first Resilience Strategy. Rotterdam does this in the context of an international network of a 100 Resilient Cities. Goal is to prepare the city for the disruptive transitions of this time. Developments such as climate change, digitization, the new economy and globalization, which brings opportunities but also risks. Cities which adapt to these circumstance, can use them to grow further. Rotterdam is doing this!

Jess Stetson

Jess has more than a decade of experience using technology to solve complex problems. She has worked with sensitive data to define policies and forge solutions that address public agency needs while also maintaining privacy and security for varied stakeholders, and has deep software integration experience. At Ride Report, she helps cities make data-driven decisions about compliance, auditing, and policy so people move around sustainably, efficiently, and equitably. Prior to joining Ride Report, Jess worked at StreetLight Data, Jama Software, Vencore, TerraGo Technologies, and The Weather Channel.

Chin Foong (CF) Tong

Dr. CF Tong is the CEO and co-founder of Xnergy, a technology company headquarter in Singapore focusing on innovative charging technology for mobile robots. Xnergy is have strong industrial experience founding members and is active in Asia and Europe for pilots with several Fortune 500 companies. CF holds a PhD from University of Warwick in Power Semiconductor application and together with the expertise from the founding team, Xnergy successfully created the smallest high power universal contactless charger in the market.

Cassi Welling

Chief Operating Officer of Munich-based air quality monitoring, mapping & management company. We deploy networks of IoT sensors across cities, combining these live values with official datasets, satellite data and other urban metrics to develop pollution heatmaps, forecasts, and other tools and services across traffic and navigation, healthcare, insurances, real estate and urban planning.

Melvyn Yeo

Melvyn is the Founder of Singapore-based, TRIREC, which is the leading investment firm that was incorporated in 2015 with the aim of making a meaningful impact on addressing climate change through a disciplined investment approach by supporting companies and projects that share our belief in a sustainable future. TRIREC’s investment mandate is focused on the decarbonization theme and invests in early stage start-ups globally.

He was the Deputy Head of Wealth Management for Asia at Schroders where he was responsible for the management and strategic development of the business for the region since 2019 till his retirement in early 2021. Melvyn chaired the Asia Investment Committee where he led the efforts in the formulation of investment philosophies and risk frameworks for the wealth management business. He was also the Co-Chair of the Private Assets Investment Committee for Schroders Wealth Management globally, with responsibilities of evaluating private investment opportunities. Melvyn sat on the boards of Schroder & Co (Asia) Limited and Schroder & Co (Hong Kong) Limited.

Melvyn was the Co-Founder and Chair of Investment Committee at Thirdrock Group, which was the leading Asian independent asset manager, between 2011 and 2019, before the firm was acquired by Schroders. He started his career with Goldman Sachs where he spent 3 years in Singapore managing multi-asset global discretionary portfolios, followed by 8 years in Hong Kong as a leading member of the equity derivatives team with experience across structuring, trading and marketing of derivatives and structured products.

Melvyn currently sit on the board of Sunseap Group and also serves in the Audit and Risk Committee and the Remuneration Committee of the firm. He previously sat on the boards of a few renewables and environmental companies, and Fintech startups in the South East Asia region as he has also been active as an early-stage investor for more than a decade.

He volunteered as a District Councillor since 2014 for 6 years under the Environment Functional Committee with the South West Community Development Council in Singapore. The committee initiates and executes on community projects that brings awareness and engagement of environmental issues to the grassroots.

Between 2018 to 2020, Melvyn served as a Technical Advisor to the National Research Foundation of the Prime Minister’s Office in Singapore.

In 2018, Melvyn was selected and has been a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corp, which was founded by Vice President Al Gore, to spread awareness, shape public opinion, influence policy, and inspire our communities to act on climate change.

Melvyn has a Bachelor of Business Administration from Ross School of Business, Michigan and is a member of the International Alumni Advisory Committee for the University of Michigan since 2019. He is married with two boys.

Richard Youngman

Since January 2016, Richard Youngman has been CEO of San-Francisco based Cleantech Group (CTG). This followed 7 years of driving the growth of CTG’s activities outside North America, especially in Europe and Israel, and Asia, based in CTG’s office in London.

Richard has more than ten years’ experience researching cleantech innovation, venture capital markets, and start-ups across Europe and globally. He is a regular keynote speaker at major cleantech events and is the driving force behind the annual Global Cleantech 100, a list of the world’s most promising private cleantech companies.

Ethan Zhu

Ethan Zhu, graduated from Zhejiang University, majored in Information Engineering, then achieved the EMBA at Fudan University.

Ethan has more than 20 patents in technical field of invention. With over 15 years of R&D and product manager work experience. He was previously employed by Huawei, Ceno, Marconi (London) and TVU (Silicon Valley), has overseas project execution and market development capabilities. He gained his rich experience on startup management within a smart home IoT company as co-founder (2010-2013).

Ethan established PowerShare in 2015. Under his leadership, PowerShare has grown into an AI Big Data innovative company in Internet of Energy with 60 employees and more than 70% of R&D personnel. PowerShare now have continuously won recognition and praise from high-end customers at home and abroad, including: bp, Porsche, Daimler, BMW, Nissan, Renault, FAW, Geely, BAIC and State Grid. PowerShare now growth with global strategic investors include bp and Renault-Nissan Mitsubishi Alliance.