Lewis Pugh is an endurance swimmer and an ocean advocate.

He swims in the most vulnerable ecosystems on Earth to campaign for their protection. He was the first person to undertake a long-distance swim in every ocean of the world. He pioneered the first swim across the North Pole, the first swim along the length of the English Channel, the world’s highest swim (on Mt Everest) and even a swim under the Antarctic ice sheet.

Lewis’s work now focuses on creating marine protected areas. In 2016 he helped establish the largest protected area in the world in the Ross Sea off Antarctica. He has been instrumental in protecting over 2 million km² ocean, an area the size of Western Europe.

Lewis talks about how he undertakes these swims, which many regarded as “impossible”, and the campaigns to get the areas protected. He speaks about creating a clear vision, choosing the right team, meticulous preparation, resilience, and changing when circumstances dictate. And he speaks about purpose – it’s the engine which drives us. TED describes him as a “master storyteller”.

Lewis has received a number of awards for his work. He was awarded South Africa’s highest honour, the Order of Ikhamanga (Gold Class). He was appointed UN Patron of the Oceans in 2013. Most recently, he was made a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year.

Gwenaelle Avice Huet has been Schneider Electric’s Executive Vice President of Europe Operations since September 4, 2023 and serves on its Executive Committee. She is responsible for Schneider Electric’s full business portfolio across Europe Operations, representing the company’s contribution to the development of the EU’s agenda to accelerate Europe’s green and digital transformation.

Gwenaelle joined Schneider Electric in 2021 as Senior-Vice President of Corporate Strategy, before entering the Executive Committee as Chief Strategy and Sustainability Officer.

Before joining Schneider Electric, Gwenaelle worked at ENGIE (formerly GDF SUEZ) in various roles, from Senior Vice-President of European and Regulatory affairs, to leading the Renewables energy business. In her last role, she was on the Executive Committee of ENGIE, serving as the Chief Executive Officer of ENGIE North America and in charge of the Global Business Line on Renewable Energies.

Gwenaelle started her career at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and the French Atomic Energy Commission on nuclear energy before joining the World Bank in Washington D.C. as a consultant. She also worked for the service of the French Prime Minister within the General Secretary of European affairs with responsibility for energy and competitiveness matters, and as the advisor on energy and climate change for various ministers.

Gwenaelle also serves on the Board of Air France – KLM. She holds a degree in Physics and Chemistry from the Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, a post-graduate diploma in Molecular Chemistry from France’s Ecole Polytechnique and an engineering degree from the Corps des Ponts et Chaussées. She has also been nominated as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. She is based in Europe.

 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. 

Julia is a Partner at SET Ventures. Her mission is to reduce the climate impact of the energy sector through digital innovation, together with industry-leading entrepreneurs. She is deeply experienced in finance, energy, and cleantech. Since 2016, Julia has been instrumental in strengthening SET’s European network and visibility, as well as spearheading new investments.

Previously, Julia was active in corporate finance and investment advisory in cleantech and energy, amongst others at merchant bank Kempen & Co. She advised on M&A transactions, IPOs, investments, and fundraising processes at European energy companies. She was also involved in establishing new energy projects, business cases, structured financing, and advising on growth strategies. Julia holds a Master’s degree in Environmental & Resource Economics from University College London. She is a board member and trusted advisor at Flexidao, Trunkrs and Sensorfact, and formerly at Depsys (acquired). She was also a board observer at Energyworx, GreenCom Networks (acquired) and Greenflux (acquired).

Benoit Lemaignan is the co-founder and CEO of Verkor, a venture launched to accelerate the production capacity of low-carbon batteries in southern Europe, in collaboration with EIT InnoEnergy, Schneider Electric and the Groupe IDEC. Prior to the launch, EIT InnoEnergy brought Benoit on board to build synergies with the European Battery Alliance.

An aerospace engineer by training, Benoit is a serial entrepreneur. He previously founded and financed Waga Energy in 2015 and Aniah in 2019. He was also Managing Director of OSER ENR from 2015 to 2019 – a public-private partnership supporting the development of renewable projects. Earlier in his career, Benoit was a strategic advisor at Carbone 4 where his passion for energy and climate-related initiatives took root. From his time at Airbus, Benoit retains a strong drive for innovation and team work.

Jef Caers received both an MSc (’93) in mining engineering / geophysics and a PhD (’97) in mining engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. Currently, he is Professor of Earth and Planetary at Stanford University, California, USA. Jef Caers’ research interests are decision making under uncertainty in developing the critical mineral supply as well as geothermal energy required to transition to 100% renewable energy. Jef Caers is founder of Stanford Mineral-X , a community building effort to strengthen stewardship for a prosperous future for all, powered by Earth’s minerals. Jef Caers has published in a diverse range of journals covering Mathematics, Statistics, Earth Sciences, Engineering and Computer Science. Jef Caers has received several best paper awards and authored or co-authored five books entitled “Petroleum Geostatistics” (SPE, 2005) “Modeling Uncertainty in the Earth Sciences” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), “Multiple-point Geostatistics: stochastic modeling with training images” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015), “Quantifying Uncertainty in Subsurface Systems (Wiley-Blackwell, 2018), “Data Science for the Geosciences” (Cambridge UP, 2023). He was awarded the Krumbein Medal of the IAMG for his career achievement.

Dr. Mihir Sarkar is Head of AI at ENGIE where he applies Artificial Intelligence to help lead the zero-carbon energy transition. Mihir received a PhD from MIT in Media Arts and Sciences where he founded and led an international innovation program to empower organizations and communities around the world to design and build solutions to solve their own problems. Mihir co-founded two startups in applied AI in Silicon Valley and previously worked in the finance, consumer electronics, semiconductors, automotive, education, health, media, and music industries. Mihir is a pioneering figure in AI and sustainability, and recently launched the ‘Powered by AI’ conference, a talk series for a sustainable future. He previously contributed to the development of several technologies such as online creation and remote collaboration, infotainment and telematics systems, audio compression, voice control, and online trading systems. Mihir currently lives in Paris where he speaks about and teaches AI, sits on technology startup boards, and helps new ideas emerge by bringing people together.

Simone Accornero is FlexiDAO Co-founder & Chief Product Officer. Energy Engineer formed at 4 different universities and graduated from the EIT InnoEnergy MSc Energy for Smart Cities. Expertise in electricity markets (wholesale and local), smart distribution systems and blockchain. Driven by the strong believe that the only aspects of the smart grid that can be truly smart are the consumers within it.

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. 

Carina Krastel works at EIT InnoEnergy, a European public-private partnership, as the Commercial Director of the European Green Hydrogen Acceleration Center (EGHAC) – an initiative supported by Breakthrough Energy.
The EGHAC will focus on supporting and accelerating large scale industrial green hydrogen projects to reduce CO2 emissions in value chains like steel making, fertilizer production, synthetic fuel production, shipping etc.
Carina Krastel is a sustainable energy engineer with experience in engineering, business and innovation. Since 2009, she has worked in the construction and the industrial gas industry on sustainable energy, air quality and innovation topics. Prior to joining InnoEnergy, Carina worked as the Director for New Offers for the Energy Transition for the Large Industry Business of Air Liquide, a French industrial gas company, focusing on offers for green hydrogen and carbon capture solutions.

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.

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.

Prof.Dr.ir. Gielen has extensive experience with R&D in the telecommunication and software technology sector as well as in raising venture capital, university-industry collaborative research and spin-off creation.

Prof.Dr.ir. Gielen held a number of technical and management positions in the software industry. He started as a software architect with AT&T Bell Labs in the USA and was director of software technology at Alcatel.

In 1998 he joined Tellium, a US based start-up company in optical network technology, as the VP of Software Engineering. Tellium had a successful IPO on NASDAQ in 2001. He then returned to Europe in 2001 as the CEO for Tellium EMEA.

From 2010 to 2015 he was the Director of the Incubation & Entrepreneurship at iMinds, the leading digital incubator and business accelerator in Flanders. The iStart incubation programme of iMinds was ranked number 4 in UBI’s global ranking of university accelerators in 2015.

Prof.Dr.ir. Gielen was head of the EIT Digital Professional School with the ambition to lead the innovation of professional development and executive education for companies, organisations and individuals going through a digital transformation.

Since 2017 he has been the Education Director at InnoEnergy.

Currently he is also a professor of software technology entrepreneurship at the University of Ghent.

Johan Söderbom has been active in the energy sector for 30 years mainly working with R&I for the electricity system. Between 1995 and 2014 Johan worked at the northern European Utility Vattenfall AB in various positions in R&D. From 2014 to 2019 Johan was heading a section at RISE (Research Institutes of Sweden) responsible electrical and optical measurement technology and he now holds the position of thematic leader for Smart Grids and Energy Storage at EIT InnoEnergy.