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.

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.

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.

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.

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.