Constantijn van Oranje leads Techleap.nl, the accelerator for the tech ecosystem in The Netherlands. As Special Envoy, he is on a mission to turn The Netherlands into a unicorn nation. He and his team connect the Dutch tech ecosystem to help ambitious and promising Dutch tech companies grow fast internationally by improving their access to capital, market, talent and technologies.

Constantijn co-founded StartupFest Europe, which is still the biggest start-up event ever organized in The Netherlands. Previously, he was Chief of Staff to VP Neelie Kroes at the European Commission in charge of the Digital Agenda and led the Brussels office of the RAND Corporation.

He is member of the National Growth Fund Assessment Committee and Member of the NATO Innovation Fund Board of Directors. Constantijn is also the Director Digital Technology & Macro Strategy at Macro Advisory Partners in London and New York, and Edge Fellow at Deloitte Centre for the Edge. Additionally, he is ambassador of the European Innovation Council.

Aside from innovation and technology, Constantijn van Oranje is passionate about art, music, photography and nature.

Marieke Blom is Chief Economist and Global Head of Research at ING Group. She is also Chief Economist at ING in the Netherlands.

Marieke has worked at ING since 2014. She is a member of the board of the Dutch Royal Economic Society (KVS). She is also a member of the Advice Committee of the National Growth Fund. She regularly appears in the media.

Before joining ING, Marieke worked as a senior manager at start-up Amsterdam consultancy “De Argumentenfabriek”. She was a political advisor at the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA). She started her career as a trainee and economist at ABN AMRO in 1999.

Marieke holds a Master’s degree in monetary economics and wrote her thesis at the research department of the Dutch Central Bank.

Combining innovation and exploration to tackle the great challenges of our time

It is in Bertrand Piccard’s DNA to go beyond the obvious and achieve the impossible. From a legendary lineage of explorers who conquered the stratosphere and the abysses, he made history by accomplishing two aeronautical firsts, around the world non-stop in a balloon, and more recently in a solar plane without fuel. Pioneer in his way to consider ecology through the lens of profitability, he began working in the early 2000s to promote renewable energies and clean technologies. His dual identity as a psychiatrist and explorer makes him an influential voice heard by the largest institutions which today consider him as a forward-thinking leader on the themes of innovation and sustainability. Founder and Chairman of the Solar Impulse Foundation, he has succeeded in his mission to select 1000 efficient solutions to protect the environment in a profitable way. In a third round the world tour, he will bring them to decision-makers in order to help them meet their environmental targets while ensuring clean economic growth.

Bertrand Piccard is now United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Environment and Special Advisor to the European Commission.

Besides her academic career in the fields of knowledge management, collaborative innovation and entrepreneurship, Elena Bou developed her professional career in the field of management consulting in both private and public companies. In 2010 she co-founded EIT InnoEnergy, the innovation engine for sustainable energy across Europe supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology.

She contributed to create InnoEnergy’s trusted innovation ecosystem which operates in more than 26 countries. In Elena’s Innovation Director role, she led the development of major efforts in creating and accelerating new start-ups and scale-ups in the energy field, including the investment process in such ventures. As a result, the company has now supported nearly 500 start-ups, including two unicorns.

Akshat Rathi is senior climate reporter for Bloomberg News. He is the host of Zero, a weekly climate podcast for Bloomberg Green and writes a weekly newsletter on climate solutions.

He has a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Oxford, and a BTech in chemical engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai. He has worked for Quartz and The Economist. His work has been cited in widely read global publications, including New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal and Financial Times.

Akshat is also author of Climate Capitalism: Winning the Global Race to Zero Emissions, that describes a journey across five continents, Climate Capitalism tracks the unlikely heroes driving the fight against climate change. From the Chinese bureaucrat who did more to make electric cars a reality than Elon Musk, to the Danish students who helped to build the world’s longest-operating wind turbine, or the American oil executive building the technology that can reverse climate damages, we meet the people working to scale technologies that are finally able to bend the emissions curve.

Preorder here

Steffen Grosse is the chief executive officer of Siemens Financial Services’ (SFS) global Equity Finance team where he leads Siemens’ investment activities worldwide, focused on the energy, infrastructure, and healthcare markets. Managing a portfolio of investments in more than 15 different countries across five continents, his team is comprised of approximately 90 finance professionals.

Previously, Mr. Grosse was the chief financial officer of SFS’s global Energy Finance team and was responsible for managing all aspects of the business’ financial health including performance controlling, strategic planning, budget development and forecasting for the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as in the Asia and Australia regions.  Mr. Grosse has been with Siemens since 2002 and has held several executive financial and leadership roles during his tenure.

Mr. Grosse is an accomplished international finance executive with 20 years of experience in financial management with expertise in performance controlling and reporting, strategic planning, budget development and forecasting.

Mr. Grosse received a B.A. degree from Staatliche Berufsakademie Dresden (Germany) and an M.B.A. in international leadership and finance from University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany.

Kees Koolen is a well-known investor and serial entrepreneur, renowned for his successful ventures in the technology industry. He played a significant role in the growth and development of notable companies such as Booking.com and Uber, serving as an early investor and CEO/COO, respectively.

Throughout his career, Kees has displayed a remarkable ability to identify promising business opportunities in their early stages and transform them into thriving enterprises. In addition to his achievements in the technology sector, Kees is a firm believer in the urgent need for a rapid transition to clean energy. He is convinced that entrepreneurship, reliable technical solutions, and a deep understanding of customer needs are fundamental to achieving this transition. As a testament to his commitment, Kees has personally invested 180 million in Koolen Industries. Furthermore, he has acquired an 18,5-hectare business park in Hengelo that is currently transformed into The Green Box cleantech campus. Under the umbrella of Koolen Industries, 27 cleantech companies operate across various sectors related to clean energy. These include energy generation, storage, sustainable mobility, and software platforms, with in-house engineering and production. Koolen Industries aims to develop and implement comprehensive, integrated clean energy and clean mobility systems for a wide range of customers.

Diego Pavía is a serial entrepreneur, having created seven companies in his lifetime. His main endeavour is to innovate, create – and implement operationally – all with the objective of creating value.

He is an electrical engineer from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, with a major in electronics and automation. In 1988, he was as co-founder and CEO of a start-up, Knowledge Engineering, dealing with industrial controls systems using artificial intelligence and neural networks. Three years later he joined Sema Group, and started a long career with private companies. In SchlumbergerSema, Diego headed multicultural working groups all over the world in the field of energy, with revenues of $650M. Between 2002 and 2010, Diego was the CEO of Atos Origin, a leading international IT service provider, where he was responsible for Spain and South America, about 9,000 employees, and an annual turnover of €450 million.

Since 2010 and under Diego’s leadership, EIT InnoEnergy has become the largest global organisation supporting innovation and entrepreneurship in sustainable energy, having directly deployed €650M to nearly 500 innovative products and services.

X @RHarrabin

Roger Harrabin is one of the media’s most influential voices on the environment, energy and climate change. As Energy and Environment Analyst he reported for the BBC for over 30 years. Roger has been a global pioneer in environment reporting. He was founder presenter of the BBC environment programme Costing the Earth and has won many awards for his work in radio and TV. His quest for impartiality led him to broadcast two three-part series on Radio 4 tackling the risks and uncertainties in climate science and technology. His reporting on new topics has often been trend-setting – he was, for instance, the first mainstream reporter to highlight the central role that energy would play in the environment. He has interviewed many influential figures including Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Ban Ki Moon, Al Gore and Sir David Attenborough.

He is an Honorary lifetime fellow of St Catharine’s Cambridge; Associate Fellow, Green College Oxford and Wolfson College, Cambridge and holds an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Cranfield University for work on the environment.

Laurent Bataille is Executive Vice President, France Operations, and Member of the Executive Committee of Schneider Electric.

Laurent started his career at Schneider Electric in the Corporate Strategy & Acquisitions department. Since 2019, he was Executive Vice President Digital Energy Division of Schneider Electric. From 2014 to 2018, Laurent oversaw the EcoBuilding Division in Boston (USA). Prior to this role, from 2011 to 2014, Laurent was based in Canada as Senior Vice President of the Solar Business of Schneider Electric. Since joining Schneider in 2004, he has held several senior leadership roles including Vice President of the CST Industry Division from 2008 to 2011. From 2006 to 2008, he was General Manager CST Industry Americas. Before joining Schneider Electric, Laurent was a consultant for McKinsey & Company. Laurent holds an MBA from INSEAD and a Master of Science in Applied Mathematics from Ecole Polytechnique (France).

Jeroen Rijpkema is the Chief Executive Officer and Chair of the Executive Board of Triodos Bank N.V. since joining in May 2021. Jeroen is also member of the Board of the Dutch Banking Association. He is an experienced CEO and a seasoned banker with extensive experience in retail, corporate and private banking.

Prior to joining Triodos Bank, Jeroen was Program Lead and CEO ad interim of Transaction Monitoring Netherlands B.V., the combined transaction monitoring initiative of five Dutch banks, including Triodos Bank.

He worked at ABN AMRO Bank starting in 1985 in several leadership roles domestically and internationally, and in his last role was CEO Private Banking International (2010-2017).

 Jean-Christophe Laloux is Director General, Head of EU Lending and Advisory Operations, at the European Investment Bank (EIB), the long-term financing institution of the European Union. 

During his 8-year tenor at the head of the frontline of EIB, the Bank delivered more than EUR 500 billion in new financing operations. Mr. Laloux has been instrumental in transforming the business delivery model of the Bank. Between 2015 and 2020, he steered the delivery of the EUR 60 billion Investment Plan for Europe, successfully introducing and executing milestone innovations such as Venture Debt and Risk sharing instruments. He also headed the delivery of the Economic Resilience Initiative launched by the EIB in response to the 2017 refugee crisis, and more recently lead the execution of the EUR 25 billion Pan-European Guarantee Fund in response to the COVID crisis. 

Prior to his current function and since joining EIB in 1999, he held various frontline positions, and was also EIB’s Head of Human Resources (2011-2013). 

Before joining the Bank, he was a management consultant (the Boston Consulting Group and PWC). 

He holds a degree in Commercial Engineering from the Catholic University of Leuven, a post-graduate degree in Management (magna cum laude) from the University of Ghent, and a Master of Business Administration (distinction) from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University – USA. 

He speaks English, French, German and Dutch. 

Vice President for Development of Boryszew S.A. Capital Group and President of Boryszew Green Energy & Gas Sp. z o.o. Responsible for investments in new technologies in the energy sector and greening of industrial production. Member of the team of the European ELEXIA project under the direction of the Norwegian Research Center (Digitised energy system integration across sectors enhancing flexibility and resilience towards efficient, sustainable, cost-optimised, affordable, secure and stable energy supply). The ELEXIA project is carried out by a consortium of 22 participants from Norway, Portugal, Finland, Greece, Spain, UK and Poland.

 Alessandro Izzo, born September 5, 1973 in Rome. Holds a Bachelor Degree in Law (International Law) from the Università La Sapienza di Roma (1996), Masters of Law (LLM) from University of East Anglia, UK (1996). Admitted to the Italian Bar (Avvocato) in 1999 and admitted to the Rolls of Solicitors in England and Wales (Solicitor) in 2002. He specialized in international corporate and development finance in London (LLM – University College 2001) and Brussels (MSc – Solvay Business School 2005). Started his professional career in 1996 working on M&A, corporate and project finance as well privatizations with international law firms (Gianni Origoni – Linklaters, Rome and Herbert Smith LLP, London) working first in Rome and subsequently in London to then move into corporate investment banking (Credit Suisse London, Sanpaolo IMI Internazionale). Joined the EIB in September 2004 in Luxembourg first in the legal and then in the lending directorate focusing on infrastructure finance, project finance and PPPs in different markets (Italy, Turkey, Greece, Romania, Cyprus, Malta). From 2014 to 2017, he has been responsible for the Public Sector, Infrastructure and PPP Unit of the EIB Regional Office covering Italy, Malta and Western Balkans to become then Head of Division for Project Finance and Regulated Business activities of the EIB in Western Europe (France, United Kingdom, Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg). He was appointed Director of the Equity, New Products and Special Transactions Department of the Lending Operations Directorate of the EIB in September 2021 becoming responsible for the equity, growth capital and project finance activities of the Bank in the EU. 

For more than 20 years, José Noldin has been leading industrial projects with high innovation and decarbonisation challenges. After starting his career at Tecnored, a company developing a revolutionary new ironmaking technology owned by iron ore giant Vale, he then spent a decade in Belgium in leadership positions at Lhoist, a major player in the lime, dolomite and minerals industry. More recently, José Noldin was the Head of Technology Strategy of one of the largest steel production companies in Latin America, Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional, in Brazil, where he was in charge of decarbonation issues.

Bart has extensive experience in working with large multinationals, including Reed Elsevier and Cisco, where he held senior financial roles. Before joining InnoEnergy in February 2011, Bart worked as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of an international printing company with 850 employees, and €130M revenue. The experience he gathered in his previous roles gave him the broad scope necessary for his current role as InnoEnergy’s CFO. Bart holds a degree in economics.

Larissa Wermers is a EIT InnoEnergy Master’s Student in the Renewable Energy pprogramme. She is currently in her second year of the program studying at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and completed her first year at UPC Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya. Prior to this program, she completed a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan. She is originally from Philadelphia, PA, USA and has completed several internships with the most recent at a renewable energy company. Within InnoEnergy she is a current member of the Stockholm CommUnity team and works as a Student Assistant with InnoEnergy Career Services.

Brandon Vargas, an accomplished Energy Systems Engineer at NitroCapt, a cleantech startup dedicated to producing climate-neutral fertilizer. He brings a wealth of knowledge in renewable energy, large-scale energy storage, and the energy market. He possesses a strong technical foundation in energy technologies with a EIT InnoEnergy dual master’s degrees in cooperation with Instituto Superior Técnico in Portugal and Uppsala University in Sweden.

Beyond his engineering prowess, Brandon channels his passion for social media content creation, calisthenics, and nature into diverse pursuits. Brandon is the driving force behind a recently launched blog, where he offers valuable insights on grid connection in EU countries, energy storage technologies, and emerging hydrogen trends.

Hanna joined CorPower in 2016 with over 10 years’ international experience in Operations, Management, and Marketing from Hewlett-Packard, EF Education First, and previous company owner in Italy. She has been the architect defining and building CorPower’s international and high achieving teams across each phase of development. Hanna takes a key role on culture and evolving CorPower as an organisation, with continuous work on cross functional communication and ensuring wellbeing across our groups.  Graduated with a Bachelor’s in International Marketing and Management from University of Groningen

Mark has over 20 years of investment, debt and advisory experience across Europe and North America. Within ING, Mark is responsible for Sustainable Investments and provides risk bearing capital to sustainable scale-ups active in Energy Transition and Circular Economy. Prior to Sustainable Investments, Mark covered for nearly a decade the Benelux at ING Corporate Investments and in this capacity held various observer/board positions. Mark was also co-responsible for setting up a small leverage finance team in New York and worked in ING Corporate Finance advising corporates and PE funds in M&A transactions in the Benelux. Mark started his career in the M&A team of Merrill Lynch Investment Banking in London. Mark holds a Masters in Civil Engineering from Delft University of Technology (NL), as well as an MSc degree in Concrete Structure from Imperial College (UK) and Executive MBA course in Strategic Management at Rotterdam School of Management (NL).

Schneider Electric Ventures, a visionary $1 billion Corporate Venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, CA, leads the way in sustainability, Energy Management, and Industry Automation. Grégoire Viasnoff, a graduate of Ecole Centrale Paris, joined Schneider Electric in 2009 and quickly rose to prominence, driving business development across Eastern Europe, East Asia, and Africa. With remarkable achievements in Energy Management and spearheading the global deployment of the EcoStruxure IoT platform, Grégoire now serves as the Global Incubation Vice President, nurturing three new ventures annually and advising influential companies such as SmartD (https://smartd.tech/) , StockPro (https://www.stock-pro.fr/), Tradify (https://www.tradifyhq.com/), Grain (https://www.grainecosystem.com/). Witness the transformative impact of Schneider Electric Ventures under Grégoire Viasnoff’s visionary leadership.

Gökhan Eyigün graduated from Management Engineering Department of İstanbul Technical University with honors degree in 1998. He had his MBA degree from Rotterdam School of Management in 2004; moreover, he attended several executive programs at Harvard Business School.
Mr. Eyigün started his career at Arthur Andersen in 1998 where he was mainly specialized in Corporate Finance Advisory. He, then, took responsibility in the formation of Corporate Finance and M&A Advisory department at PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2004 and led the department afterwards. In 2007, Mr. Eyigün joined Sabancı Group where he contributed to Strategy and Business Development department at various executive roles until 2018. He served as the Secretary General of Sabancı Holding and the General Manager of Exsa, Tursa and AEO companies between 2018 and 2021; and he worked as the Executive Board Member of Temsa Motor Vehicles between 2020 and 2021, in addition. He was appointed as the Group President of Strategy and Business Development at Sabancı Holding in 2021. Mr. Eyigün is also the Vice Chairman of the Board at Afyon Çimento, Çimsa, Exsa and Temsa Motorlu Araçlar. He is a member of Board at Dx Technology Services and Investment BV (SabancıDx BV), SabancıDx, Carrefoursa and Temsa Skoda Ulaşım Araçları. He is responsible from Sabancı Ventures and Sabancı ARF Almost Ready to Fly at the same time.

Jacqueline van den Ende is co-founder of Amsterdam based climate fintech company Carbon Equity. Carbon Equity is a climate VC and PE fund investing fintech platform. Carbon Equity was founded with the mission to unlock retail capital at scale to power breakthrough climate technologies whilst enabling more equitable ownership.

Jacqueline brings a unique perspective as a founder turned investor turned founder, twice over. She worked as a private equity investor at HAL Investments and more recently as a general partner at Venture Capital fund Peak Capital. She spent the other half of her career to date building and leading companies, including De Kleine consultant, Rocket Internet backed online real estate marketplace Lamudi in South East Asia and Ant Financial backed Fintech scale up TrueMoney.

Jacqueline is obsessed with the question of how we can leverage capital most effectively to mitigate climate change. In addition to her role as founder and CEO of Carbon Equity she serves on the board of the Dutch last mile delivery scale-up Trunkrs. Jacqueline obtained an MSc degree in Economics from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam and a BA in Social Sciences from University College Utrecht.

Tim is currently leading ING’s activities in the Battery & Charging value chains globally. He is embedded in the Sustainability Value Chains which focuses on supporting and accelerating the build-out of the value chains that will be needed to further decarbonize the economy, which also includes cleantech manufacturing, food production, and voluntary carbon credits. Throughout his 15+ year working life, he has been focused on financing the energy transition, shifting from an initial focus on renewable energy to building out sustainable value chains over time. Tim has led several award-wining transactions, including the original Northvolt Ett financing. Tim is a CFA charterholder.

Daniel Goldman has more than 25 years of energy industry experience in strategy, corporate and project finance, and project development, as well as private equity/asset investment and early-stage venture investing.  Over the course of his career, Mr. Goldman’s experience has spanned the upstream, mid-stream and downstream oil, gas, coal and power generation sectors of the industry, and since 2000 has included an extensive focus on clean energy asset development and finance, energy efficiency technology development, as well as venture and project investments, both domestically and internationally.  In addition to co-founding CEVG, since 2006, he has held executive positions at GreatPoint Energy, including until September, 2016 as its president and chief financial officer.  GreatPoint Energy is a clean energy gasification company which Mr. Goldman helped to raise over $280 million from investors such as Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures, Citi, Dow Chemical and China Wanxiang.  GreatPoint Energy is now a subsidiary of China Wanxiang.

From 2002-06, Mr. Goldman co-founded and was the chief financial officer at New Energy Capital, one of the first firms focused exclusively on investments in clean energy assets using proven technologies with backing from the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) and VantagePoint Capital Partners.  New Energy Capital invested in a portfolio of clean energy and bio-fuels projects[1] during 2004-05 and ultimately sold a large portion of the portfolio in 2006 at an exit multiple (net of fees) of approximately 2.1x, delivering an annualized IRR of approximately 30% for the investors.  Previously, from 1996-2001, he held senior development and finance positions in Hong Kong and Boston at InterGen, a Bechtel-Shell joint venture global power development company, where he was involved in developing and financing thousands of megawatts of power generation facilities globally. Mr. Goldman started his professional career at Arthur D. Little, where he held positions of increasing responsibility as a senior member of the global energy consulting team in Cambridge, MA and Singapore from 1989-1996.  He was responsible for Arthur D. Little’s Asia Pacific Energy Consulting Practice from 1992-96.

Mr. Goldman holds a wide range of advisor and board roles: co-founder and director of Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2); member of the board of directors, or a board observer, of several clean energy technology companies, including the following Fund I portfolio companies: LineVision (director), SparkMeter (director), ConnectDER (director), ClearTrace (director), ndustrial (director), ClearFlame Engines (observer), Advanced Ionics (observer), and Nth Cycle (observer); and the following pre-Fund I SPV companies: REsurety (director) and Quidnet Energy (observer).  Mr. Goldman also serves as the Chair of the Board of Directors, and member of the Executive Committee, of the Northeast Clean Energy Council, the leading advocate for the clean energy sector in the Northeast region and a co-founder and member of the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of Browning the Green Space, a 501(c)(3) organization with the mission to bring more diversity into the clean energy and climate tech ecosystem.  He has also focused on policy advocacy work to bring investors, policy makers and technology developers together to address issues of finance, scale-up and commercialization, among other key issues.

Mr. Goldman received a B.S. from Cornell University and an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics.  He is a member of the External Advisory Board (and board chair from October 2013-15) of Cornell’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future and has previously held other advisory board positions at Cornell.  Mr. Goldman lives in Newton, MA with his wife and three children, and is a competitive road cyclist and triathlete.

Roel van Diepen is Investment Director for the Benelux region at EIT InnoEnergy. Prior to this role he spent 15 years in international investment banking and financial- and capital markets at ING Bank in Amsterdam, New York, and London. He was co-founder of a successful medical devices company, acting as CFO and Head of BD. At InnoEnergy he is combining his finance- and entrepreneurial experience to support start-ups in sustainable energy via a combination of cash investments and services provided through InnoEnergy’s pan-European innovation engine and ecosystem. Roel also takes place in supervisory boards and has early-stage investment experience as angel investor and VC LP.

Riccardo Barberis was appointed Regional President, Northern Europe in May 2021. In this role, Barberis oversees all of ManpowerGroup’s brands and offerings across the region – Manpower, Experis and Talent Solutions. Barberis will lay the path to further accelerate ManpowerGroup’s diversification, digitization and innovation plans, creating even more value for clients and candidates and strengthening our performance in the region.

Barberis joined ManpowerGroup in 1998 and has held numerous leadership positions in Europe and Latin America, most recently as country manager for ManpowerGroup Italy. With 25 years of experience including many international roles his deep industry knowledge and passion for a client-first, candidate-centric approach consistently delivers superior results.

Barberis holds an Executive MBA at Bocconi University (Milan), has accomplished management programs at INSEAD and speaks five languages. He currently serves as Europe Board Member of Junior Achievement, and has been Vice President of the Italian Industry Association, Assolavoro and President of ManpowerGroup’s Human Age Institute. Barberis lives with his wife and three children in Amsterdam.

Frank Menchaca is President, Sustainable Mobility Solutions at SAE International, the oldest and largest technical organization for engineering in ground and air transportation. Frank incubated and developed SAE’s work in sustainability and has also led the organization’s product development, marketing, information publishing, professional learning, events and international business. Frank has a deep background in information products and served as Executive Vice President at Cengage Learning. Frank holds degrees from New York University and Yale University and is a candidate in the Chief Sustainability Officer certification program at MIT. A musician and artist, Frank has released ten records of original music under his own name and in the duo Hourloupe; his visual art practice includes painting and digital media.

Oana Penu is passionate about Workforce Transformation for the energy transition and social equity. She leads the InnoEnergy Skills Institute for the past year as the emerging virtual company within EIT InnoEnergy targeting the skills shortage within the batteries, solar PV manufacturing and green hydrogen value chains.

Oana has over fifteen years of experience in several B2G roles within EIT InnoEnergy and Royal Philips.

Mrs. Dr. Yun Luo is co-founder and CEO of ROSI, a French deeptech startup company leading the campaign of circular economy for photovoltaic industry. She holds a bachelor’s degree of physics from Fudan University in Shanghai (CN), a Diploma of Engineering from Ecole Polytechnique in Paris (FR), and a PhD degree in Microstructure Physics from Max-Planck-Institute in Germany. With full respect to science, technology, and industry, today Dr. Luo is leading ROSI team at worldwide forefront towards high value critical raw materials recycling and revalorization from and for photovoltaic industry, a key element for the successful relocalization and revival of European PV manufacturing.

Franz Geyer has a degree in economical engineering, mechanical engineering and a Doctor in Engineering by the University of Dresden in Germany. He has more than 20 years of experience in the automotive industry and serves in different roles the development of Zero Emission Mobility since 2009 at BMW. He’s a Board member of BEPA, the Batteries Partnership, Board member at e-motive, Industry chair at Batteries Europe and he is also BMW representative at EUCAR and ACEA.

Lluís Molina has a degree in Economics and a Master’s Degree by the University of Essex in the UK He has more than 25 years of experience in the launch and development of new industrial projects, with an emphasis on CleanTech and Circular Economy. Today he is Responsible at the European Battery Alliance of the acceleration of strategic Raw Materials Extraction and Refining Projects (www.eba250.com).

Combines knowledge of sustainable development with experience in communication and digital marketing. For many years, she has gained experience in international corporations operating in the B2B and B2C sectors, leading content projects, influencer campaigns, community building, and gaming initiatives. At EcoBean, she is responsible for communication, with a particular focus on the circular economy through the example of spent coffee grounds utilization.

After 7 years as COO of the Groupe Soufflet, especially in charge of transversal functions for the group, he joined Invivo when Invivo has taken over the Soufflet Group in Decembre 2021. Since then he is in charge of CSR, Strategy and Marketing and Digital, along side with operational excellence.

Olivier started is career at Soufflet, and left for 13 years to Join Veolia group in various finance functions.

José Antonio de las Heras is the CEO of FertigHy, a new player in low-carbon fertiliser production, launched to accelerate decarbonisation of the food value chain. He brings more than 25 years of c-level executive and non-executive corporate and venturing experience, many of them in the fields of green hydrogen, renewables and natural gas. Combining his engineering background and commercial mindset, he previously served as CEO of Sunrgyze, a green hydrogen technology start-up owned by Repsol and Enagas as well as developed national markets working for Enagas and Renovalia. 

Gustaf Forsberg has a MSc in Engineering physics, a MSc Agriculture and a PhD in Agriculture. After previous experiences in development of industrial technologies for agriculture, Gustaf founded NitroCapt in 2016 together with Peter Baeling, with an idea how to make nitrogen fertilizers in a sustainable and economically competitive way. A collaboration with world-leading researchers around Europe started to create the technology. In 2018, while still in stealth mode, NitroCapt joined the InnoEnergy highway programme. In 2022, the company received investments in equity and grants of ~€3M, followed by a EU LIFE programme grant in €2.1M in 2023. The company currently has 20 employees and another 10 people from academia are engaged in collaboration projects. The plan is to have the first pilot plant started in Q1, 2024 and to scale from there.

A graduate of the Faculty of Law and Administration of Warsaw University and joint Warsaw School of Economics’ and the Paris SciencesPo Programme of European Studies. Holds MBA diploma from WSE and University of Quebec at Montreal. Between 2000 and 2004 Mr. Lewenstein worked in the Polish public affairs sector, the Canadian Embassy in Warsaw and the Secretariat General of the European Commission. In 2004 he began his work for Polskie Górnictwo Naftowe i Gazownictwo S.A. in the field of European integration and the energy sector regulatory framework. In 2006 and early 2007 Mr. Lewenstein worked in the European Commission, in DG Information Society and Media. After returning to Poland, he became the Director of the Office of the Polish Electricity Association. In 2008 he rejoined PGNiG S.A., where he was responsible for planning of Group’s strategy, business expansion and development of the company’s power generation projects as the Director of Strategy Department. Since January 2016 he works for InnoEnergy as Innovation Officer and Thematic Field Leader of Energy for Circular Economy.

Matias is the Portfolio Manager of InnoEnergy, responsible for managing the portfolio of equity stakes in startups. He has been with InnoEnergy since February 2015. Prior to that, he was Investment Director at CX Capital, managing a portfolio of over 200M€ of private equity positions. Before that he had an extensive career in banking, holding positions at Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers in London and New York. He holds an MBA from the University of Chicago, the CFA certification and an Engineering degree from UPC (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya).

After a short experience as a financial analyst with the Euler Hermès group, Yann Coïc joined the EDF Group’s M&A department, where he worked on a variety of divestment and acquisition projects, as well as debt restructuring. He then moved into energy optimisation and trading, joining the Group’s Optimisation Department and then its London-based trading subsidiary, EDF Trading, to develop trading and optimisation services for the Group’s various subsidiaries in Europe. Prior to joining EDF Pulse Ventures, Yann Coïc was in charge of asset management and development at EDF Hydro, the EDF entity responsible for the operation, maintenance and development of the EDF group’s hydropower fleet.

Martin Koch joined the European Commission in 2006 and is currently Team Leader in Directorate-General (DG) ECFIN, Unit L3 “InvestEU Implementation”. In his function as Team Leader, Martin is, among other tasks, in charge of coordinating the collaboration with the EU’s partners for the deployment of the InvestEU Fund, notably national promotional banks and institutions.

Before joining the European Commission, Martin worked for more than a decade with several financial institutions on financing innovative companies and infrastructure investments, as well as on the cooperation between promotional institutions in the EU.

Born in 1964, Martin Koch studied Political Science and Economics. He holds a Master degree from the University of Muenster, Germany.

Jorge Solórzano has been in the solar energy sector for over 15 years, initially in the R&D side having worked in three of the main research centers in solar energy in the world, in Australia, France and Spain. Currently he is co-founder of three starts-ups related with different solutions for the PV sector, QPV, Entec & Solaqua. He is co-author of a patent owned by Solaqua for a techonological improvement related with solar irrigation systems which aims at drastically reducing the energy costs for farmers.

Simon has over 30 years’ experience in advising and financing companies across mining, industrial, technology and financial sectors, having qualified as a Chartered Accountant (ICAEW) with Coopers & Lybrand, then moving to corporate finance roles in leading London-based bank/brokers. Since 2005, he has been exclusively engaged in advising and managing mining companies. He joined the Cinovec Project in 2019 and became COO in 2020. He holds a degree in Metallurgy & Science of Materials.

Robert is a Portfolio Manager at InnoEnergy, focussed on upstream battery value chain asset investment scoping, supporting the European Battery Alliance on battery materials, and working on a new InnoEnergy fund initiative focused on raw materials. Prior to joining InnoEnergy, Robert undertook supply chain strategy for a cathode material project developer in Europe, and previously spent more than 15 years in raw material market research and strategic consulting, having analysed the vast majority of critical and strategic materials.

Alberto is the Sourcing Director of Raw Materials for Heineken Global Procurement. He manages the sourcing strategies for various categories such as Malt & Barley, Adjuncts, Hops & Auxiliary Materials as well as Compounds & Flavours for more than 70 operating companies around the world. Besides the sourcing responsibilities, he also leads the sustainability team for raw materials, which has the responsibility of decarbonizing the scope 3 emissions in Agriculture. Before this role, he was leading the Procurement department in Heineken Mexico for 3 years where he developed the local barley team and started the journey towards Regenerative Agriculture.

Ksenia Manyushis is a Principal Banker in Natural Resources team at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Ksenia has almost 20 years of experience in investing in natural resources sector. Since joining EBRD in 2004, Ksenia has led a number of complex project financings involving debt and equity. Ksenia is responsible for leading origination and execution of investments mainly in the mining sector in the EBRD’s countries of operations. Before EBRD, Ksenia worked in Eni S.p.A. in Milan. She graduated from Moscow State University (Political Economy) and was awarded a Master’s Degree of Energy and Environmental Management and Economics from Scuola Mattei (Italy).