François Henri Goullet de Rugy is a French politician serving as Minister of Ecology since 2018. Since 2007 he has represented the Loire-Atlantique department, originally as a member of the Democratic and Republican Left, a parliamentary group that includes his former political party Europe Ecology – The Greens. In 2015 he joined the Ecologist Party and later La République En Marche parliamentary group.

On 27 June 2017, François de Rugy was elected President of the National Assembly, after being chosen as candidate by the La République En Marche parliamentary group with 353 votes (out of 577 members). And on 4 September 2018, he was appointed Minister of Ecological and Solidary Transition in the second Philippe government, replacing Nicolas Hulot.

Professor Eric Stark Maskin is an American economist and 2007 Nobel laureate recognised with Leonid Hurwicz and Roger Myerson “for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory”. He is the Adams University Professor at Harvard University. Until 2011, he was the Albert O. Hirschman Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, and a visiting lecturer with the rank of professor at Princeton University.

Eric Maskin has worked in diverse areas of economic theory, such as game theory, the economics of incentives, and contract theory. He is particularly well known for his papers on mechanism design/implementation theory and dynamic games. His current research projects include comparing different electoral rules, examining the causes of inequality, and studying coalition formation. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Econometric Society, and the European Economic Association, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He was president of the Econometric Society in 2003. His views are that software patents inhibit innovation rather than stimulate progress and that innovation in those industries has been sequential and complementary, so competition can increase firms’ future profits. In such a dynamic industry, “patent protection may reduce overall innovation and social welfare”.

In September 2017, Eric Maskin received the title of HEC Paris Honoris Causa Professor.

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.

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.

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).

Emmanuel Lagarrigue is the Chief Innovation Officer of Schneider Electric and a member of its Global Executive Committee. He works closely with the Chairman & CEO, the Board of Directors and his peers to define the company’s development priorities. Emmanuel is also in charge of the Corporate Social Responsibility and the Government Affairs divisions. He also supervises several transformation projects impacting the company. In addition, he oversees Schneider Electric operations in South America. Prior to his current assignment, Emmanuel Lagarrigue has held multiple operational and general management positions within Schneider Electric in Europe, South America, Asia and the United States. Emmanuel graduated from IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain and from ENSEEIHT in Toulouse, France.

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.