Mary Therese Winifred Robinson, is an Irish Independent politician who served as the seventh President of Ireland, becoming the first woman to hold this office. She also served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002 and a Senator for the University of Dublin from 1969 to 1989. She first rose to prominence as an academic, barrister and campaigner. In the 1990 presidential election she became the first Independent candidate nominated by the Labor Party, the Workers’ Party and Independent Senators.

She is widely regarded as a transformative figure for Ireland, and for the Irish presidency, revitalizing and liberalizing a previously conservative, low-profile political office. She resigned the presidency two months ahead of the end of her term of office to take up her post in the United Nations. During her UN tenure she visited Tibet (1998), the first High Commissioner to do so; she criticised Ireland’s immigrant policy; and the use of capital punishment in the United States. She extended her intended single four-year term by a year to preside over the World Conference against Racism 2001 in Durban, South Africa; the conference proved controversial.

After leaving the UN in 2002, Robinson formed Realizing Rights: the Ethical Globalization Initiative, which came to a planned end at the end of 2010. Its core activities were 1) fostering equitable trade and decent work, 2) promoting the right to health and more humane migration policies, and 3) working to strengthen women’s leadership and encourage corporate social responsibility. The organisation also supported capacity building and good governance in developing countries. Mary Robinson returned to live in Ireland at the end of 2010, and has set up The Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, which aims to be ‘a center for thought leadership, education and advocacy on the struggle to secure global justice for those many victims of climate change who are usually forgotten – the poor, the disempowered and the marginalised across the world.’

Mary Robinson is Chairman of the Institute for Human Rights and Business and Chancellor of the University of Dublin. Since 2004, she has also been Professor of Practice in International Affairs at Columbia University, where she teaches international human rights. Mary also visits other colleges and universities where she lectures on human rights. She also sits on the board of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, an organisation which supports good governance and great leadership in Africa and is a member of the Foundation’s Ibrahim Prize Committee. As well, she is an Extraordinary Professor in the Centre for Human Rights and the Centre for Sexualities, AIDS and Gender at the University of Pretoria. Since 2005 she is honorary president of the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation EIUC. In addition, she is Chairman of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and a founding member and chairman of the Council of Women World Leaders.

In 2004, she received Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Award for her work in promoting human rights.

Christel Heydemann has been Independent Director at Orange SA since 26 July, 2017. She has been Executive Vice President of France Operations at Schneider Electric S.E. since 3 August 2017. Ms. Heydemann is Chairwoman and Chief Executive Officer of Schneider Electric France since April 2017. She served as Senior Vice President of Global Strategic Alliances at Schneider Electric since joining in 2014, where she was tasked with accelerating the launch of IoT solutions by developing a partnership ecosystem. She served as Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy, Alliances & Development at Orange S.A. since 2016. She served as an Executive Vice President of Human Resources and Transformation at Alcatel-Lucent since 22 August, 2011 and served as its Strategic Alliance Vice President for HP since June 2009. She was responsible for leading, developing and enhancing Alcatel-Lucent’s strategic relationship with HP. She focused on the go-to-market activities, the development of end-to-end solutions combining Alcatel-Lucent and HP portfolios and the alignment of Alcatel-Lucent products and services with HP products and services. In 2004, she joined the sales division at Alcatel- Lucent where she was key account manager for SFR and Orange SA. She served as Sales Director France at Alcatel-Lucent France since 2008. She held various managerial positions such as Key Account Manager for SFR and Orange SA among others. Christel joined Alcatel-Lucent, in 1999, in the Project finance team of the Chief Financial Officer. She began her career as Analyst at the Boston Consulting Group since 1997. She is a Director of Association AX and France Industrie. She was a Director of Fondation des Ponts et Chaussées. Ms. Heydemann is a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees.

Bill Weihl is an experienced high-tech technologist and executive focused on renewable energy technologies and climate change and currently sits on the Board of Directors that governs the Sierra Club Foundation. Previously, Bill Weihl was Director of Sustainability at Facebook, during which time he built a team that directs worked on sustainability and energy efficiency across the company, driving projects to track and reduce the company’s environmental footprint in all aspects of its operations. The team also drove cross-industry collaborations, including playing critical roles in RE100 and the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance. Prior to Facebook, Bill was the Green Energy Czar at Google, where his team pioneered Google’s work to buy clean energy for its data centers, and helped found the Climate Savers Computing Initiative with Intel and WWF. This inspiring work gained him the honour of being named Time Magazine’s ‘Hero of the Environment’ in 2009,  as well, in 2016 he was honored with the Global Green Award for environmental leadership, and in 2018 he was honored by Greenbiz with the VERGE Vanguard Award.

Ambroise Fayolle has been Vice President of European Investment Bank since 24 February 2015. Before then he has had many roles: as Director General of Agency France Trésor, as the Head of the Multilateral Affairs and Development Department at the Treasury and Economic Policy Division, as Equity Analyst at Nomura Securities Co. Ltd., Research Division, as the Executive Director of International Bank For Reconstruction & Development. In addition, he was the Director of Caisse d’Amortissement De La Dette Sociale, he represented France on the boards of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, he served as Member of Supervisory Board of Agence Francaise de Development and he worked as a senior official for the G8 and co-chairman of the Paris Club.

Dr. Cyrus Wadia is the Vice President of Sustainable Business & Innovation at NIKE, Inc., where he is responsible for enabling the company’s sustainability strategy with the goal of driving change across Nike and the wider industry. The team he leads focuses on several areas including testing and prototyping of new business models, accelerating partnerships for scaling sustainable innovations, and supporting Nike’s broad innovation agenda through science and analytics.

Cyrus is also the former Assistant Director for Clean Energy and Materials R&D with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy where he advised the White House and Executive Branch leadership in the design of national policy in energy, climate, advanced materials, manufacturing, and critical minerals. In this role, which he held from 2010-2015, Cyrus was responsible for the creation and expansion of more than $1 billion (US dollars) in new budgetary initiatives, including the Materials Genome Initiative, and he led the development of the nation’s first policy framework and strategy on critical minerals.

Prior to joining the White House, Cyrus held a dual appointment with Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the Haas School of Business where he was the Co-Director of Cleantech to Market and a research scientist. He also spent more than seven years in Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur, working with 15 start-ups in Silicon Valley. In 2009, Cyrus was named one of MIT Technology Review’s Top Innovators under 35. The Review cited his economic analysis of materials with good electrical properties that can effectively absorb sunlight, identifying two previously overlooked materials.

Since 2009, Cyrus has been a frequent speaker on sustainability, materials and innovation, with more than 65 keynote and invited speaking addresses. His work has been cited in more than 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific articles and he has patented methods for sustainable energy breakthroughs. US Patent 8425865 was granted for a method of synthesizing pyrite nanocrystals (also known as fool’s gold) as a non-toxic and naturally occurring candidate for photovoltaic material.

Cyrus earned his Ph.D in Energy & Resources from U.C. Berkeley, and holds both an M.S. and S.B. in Chemical Engineering from MIT.

Martha Broad, MIT Energy Iniative’s (MITEI) executive director, oversees MITEI’s finance, operations, communications and events teams that support MITEI’s research, education and outreach activities. In addition, as a member of MITEI’s leadership team, she plays a key role in managing the ongoing development of MITEI’s Low-Carbon Energy Centers. She has been an invited speaker at Chatham House’s Energy Transitions Conference, ARPA-E’s Energy Innovation Summit, the MIT Energy Conference, and other events. She serves on MIT’s Climate Action Advisory Committee for implanting the Institute’s Plan for Action on Climate Change. She also served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Decarbonizing Energy.

In addition, she spearheads MITEI’s collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy to design, manage, and host the annual Clean Energy Education and Empowerment (C3E) Women in Clean Energy Symposium and serves as a C3E Ambassador.

Previously, as part of the senior management team of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC), Broad led programmes and studies that focused on the commercialisation of clean energy technologies. By collaborating with universities and public and private partners, she helped facilitate the state’s successful installation of hundreds of megawatts of wind and solar systems.

Lord Deben (John Selwyn Gummer), is Chairman of the UK’s independent Committee on Climate Change. He also chairs the sustainability consultancy Sancroft International, recycler Valpak, GLOBE International – the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment, the Association of Professional Financial Advisers and Veolia Water UK. He is a non-executive director of Veolia Voda, The Catholic Herald and the Castle Trust – a mortgage and investment firm. He is also a trustee of the ocean conservation charity, Blue Marine Foundation.

Lord Deben has served in the UK government as:

• Secretary of State for Environment
• Secretary of State for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
• Minister of State (Department of Environment) (Local Government)
• Minister of State (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food)
• Paymaster General (HM Treasury)
• Minister of State (Department of Employment)
• Party Chair, Conservative Party
• Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Employment)
• Lord Commissioner (HM Treasury) (Whip)

Mechthild Wörsdörfer joined the International Energy Agency (IEA) on 1 October 2018 as Director of Sustainability, Technology and Outlooks. Wörsdörfer plans and co-ordinates the IEA’s work on energy sustainability, encompassing energy technology policy and climate change policy. She oversees several of the IEA’s major analytical reports including long-term scenarios and technology roadmaps. Wörsdörfer has been an active participant in the Governing Board of the IEA representing the European Union, as well as the EU contact at the Clean Energy Ministerial and Mission Innovation.

Over the years, she served as Director for renewables, research and innovation and energy efficiency, as well as Director of Energy Policy at the European Commission. Wörsdörfer headed the adoption of the Energy Roadmap 2050, the Energy and Climate Policy 2030 Framework and the Clean Energy Package. She has served in the cabinet of Commissioner Erkki Liikanen on competitiveness issues, digital economy and international relations.

Wörsdörfer, a German national, holds a Master’s degree in Economic Policy and Management from the Brussels University, a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Economics (Finance) from the University of Montpellier and a Bachelor’s Degree in Applied Economics, French and Spanish from the Ruprecht Karls University Heidelberg.

Professor Dr. Jean-Michel Glachant is the Director of the Florence School of Regulation and the Holder of the Loyola de Palacio Chair, since 2008.

Dr. Glachant gained his Ph.D. in economics at La Sorbonne in France. He worked in the industry and private sector before becoming professor at La Sorbonne.

He has been advisor of DG TREN, DG COMP and DG RESEARCH at the European Commission and of the French Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE). He has been a coordinator and scientific advisor of several European research projects. He is a research partner in the CEEPR at MIT (USA), the EPRG at Cambridge University. Dr. Glachant has been the first editor-in-chief of EEEP: “Economics of Energy and Environmental Policy” (an IAEE journal) and is Vice-President of both the French and the International Association for Energy Economics.

His main research interests are the building of a common European energy policy (security of supply, renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy technology policy, and climate change policy), the achievement of the European energy internal market (design, regulation and competition policy), the industrial organisation and market strategy of energy companies in a wave of innovation (decarbonisation, decentralisation, and digitalisation).

John Defterios is an American journalist best known for his work at CNN. He is currently CNN’s Emerging Markets Editor and host of Marketplace Middle East on CNN International. He joined CNN in 1992, serving as a correspondent for Lou Dobbs Moneyline in New York City. He hosted World Business Today from 1994 to 1996 in London. He also served as anchor of Ahead of the Curve and Business Unusual and was principal anchor for CNNfn in New York. Since October 2007, Defterios has been hosting Marketplace Middle East on CNN International. In November 2011, he began presenting Global Exchange, focusing on emerging markets, from Abu Dhabi. He is also currently CNN’s Emerging Markets Editor.

He became president of FBC Media, a media production company, in 2000. FBC also handled global communication campaigns on behalf of governments, non-governmental organizations and other companies. FBC produced World Business on CNBC, a program which Defterios hosted from 2000 to 2007.

In August 2011, BBC and CNBC cancelled all FBC-produced shows on their programming after it was revealed that the company doubled as a public relations firm for the government of Malaysia, and carried puff pieces in the shows it produced. Earlier in July, CNN aired an interview conducted by Defterios with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak which was criticized for being too soft. CNN denied airing any editorial content produced by FBC and insisted that Defterios had left FBC in March 2011.

Defterios is a World Economic Forum media leader, a member of the Global Agenda Council on the Middle East, and has served as chairman of Business Week Leadership Forums and the World Islamic Economic Forum.