About CEF

Shai Agassi

Founder and CEO, Better Place

Shai Agassi is the founder and CEO of Better Place, a new infrastructure creator and operator for the management of country-wide electric vehicle fleets. Better Place works with governments, carmakers, and financial institutes creating a large scale framework for rapid transformation of transport system away from fossil-based energy into non-polluting oil free solutions. Agassi is the former President, Products and Technology Group of SAP AG . He was a member of the Executive Board of SAP AG, from April 2002 through March 2007. In his last position he held responsibilities for the global development of the entire SAP product line and SAP's portfolio of industry-specific solutions. He drove the company's successful platform strategy, led innovation that helped SAP grow and continue market leadership, as well as set the stage for the future of business software. Agassi is a serial entrepreneur who started several companies over the years. Agassi is passionate for using technology and capital markets to solve massive social issues. He is an active member of the Young Global Leaders organization (YGL) within the World.

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Roberta Bowman

Former Senior Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer, Duke Energy

Roberta Bowman is Senior Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer for Duke Energy. She is responsible for the company's integrated strategy to operate in a way that is good for people, the planet and profits. She also serves in the Office of the Chairman to represent the company to key stakeholders and works with a number of national, international and industry groups to advance issues important to Duke Energy. She was named to her current position in March 2008. Bowman has over 30 years of experience in the energy industry. In 2007, Bowman was inducted into the North Carolina Public Relations Hall of Fame. Sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication, the PR Hall of Fame "recognizes individuals who have made exceptionally distinguished and career-long contributions to the field and who are strongly associated with the state of North Carolina."

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Dr. James Canton

Renowned global futurist, social scientist, keynote presenter, author, and visionary business advisor

Dr. James Canton is a renowned global futurist, social scientist, keynote presenter, author, and visionary business advisor. For over 30 years, he has been insightfully predicting the key trends that have shaped our world. He is a leading authority on future trends in innovation. He is the author of The Extreme Future: The Top Trends That Will Reshape the World in the 21st Century, Dutton 2006, and Technofutures: How Leading-Edge Innovations Will Transform Business in the 21st Century, Next Millennium Press, 2004. Dr. Canton is CEO and Chairman of the Institute for Global Futures, a leading think tank he founded in 1990 that advises business and government on future trends. He advises the Global Fortune 1000 on trends in innovation, financial services, health care, population, life sciences, energy, security, workforce, climate change and globalization. From a broad range of industries, clients include: IBM, BP, Intel, Philips, General Electric, Hewlett Packard, Boeing, FedEx, and Proctor & Gamble. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Research in Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management and serves on Motorola's Visionary Advisory Board. He has advised three White House Administrations, the National Science Foundation and MIT's Media Lab, Europe.

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Aimée Christensen

CEO, Christensen Global Strategies, LLC

Aimée Christensen is CEO of Christensen Global Strategies, advising clients including the Clinton Global Initiative, Duke Energy, Ogilvy, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Swiss Re, The Elders, U.N. Development Program, U.S. Department of Energy, Virgin Unite, and Wolfensohn + Co. Aimée serves as Strategic Adviser (USA) to Cambridge University’s Programme for Sustainability Leadership and the Prince of Wales’s Business&Sustainability Programme, and is the Program Chair of the World Climate Summit, which brings together business leaders to collaborate on building the global clean economy. She has two decades’ experience in policy, law, advocacy, and philanthropy including with Google.org, the World Bank, Baker&McKenzie, and the U.S. Department of Energy where she drafted the first bilateral and regional climate change accords. Aimée serves on the Board of the American Council on Renewable Energy and addressed energy issues at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. She is the 2011 Hillary Institute for International Leadership Laureate for exceptional leadership on Climate Change Solutions and a 2010 Aspen Institute Catto Fellow. She attended Smith College (BA) and Stanford Law School (JD).

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Greg Dalton

Founder, Climate One at The Commonwealth Club

Greg Dalton is Vice President of The Commonwealth Club of California and Founder of its Climate One initiative. Climate One convenes leaders from business, government and civil society who are leading the transformation to a new low-carbon global economy. Climate One also builds consensus around sustainable energy through intimate and private roundtables with diverse leaders from a broad range of advocacy groups, government agencies, corporations and investment firms. Before becoming a social entrepreneur Greg was a journalist for 12 years. As International Editor at the Industry Standard magazine, he managed news bureaus in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Buenos Aires and helped establish local-language editions in Brazil, China and several other countries. He also worked as an editor on the international desk at the Associated Press headquarters in New York and as a business correspondent for the South China Morning Post in Beijing and Vancouver, Canada.

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Jib Ellison

Founder and CEO, Blu Skye

Jib Ellison is a trusted advisor to corporate leaders at Blu Skye, where he leads a small team of strategy experts who work with Fortune 50 companies to transform markets - and to create new ones. His process is premised upon using sustainability to reveal new market opportunities, engage senior management and employees, and leverage his considerable network of experts to do well by doing good. In this way, Jib and his team at Blu Skye expand conventional definitions of value, opportunity and change. His work includes designing and overseeing organization-wide transformation processes, building high performance leadership teams, improving cross-functional teamwork, strengthening corporate culture to deliver results, and providing unique insight through one-on-one coaching for CEOs. Recent clients include: Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Waste Management, SC Johnson, Staples, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Environmental Defense, Hilton, and Conservation International. A class V river guide, he has lead whitewater expeditions on five continents.

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Daniel Esty

Hillhouse Professor of Environmental Law and Policy, Yale University

Daniel C. Esty is the Hillhouse Professor of Environmental Law and Policy at Yale University. He holds faculty appointments in both Yale's Environment and Law Schools. He also serves as the Director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and the Center for Business & Environment at Yale. Professor Esty is the author or editor of nine books and numerous articles on environmental policy issues and the relationships between environment and corporate strategy, competitiveness, trade, globalization, governance, and development. His prizewinning recent book, Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage, argues that pollution control and natural resource management have become critical elements of marketplace success and explains how leading-edge companies have folded environmental thinking into their core business strategies. Professor Esty has advised companies across the world on energy, environment, and sustainability issues and serves as the Chairman of Esty Environmental Partners, a corporate environmental strategy group based in New Haven, CT. He sits on the Board of Directors of Resources for the Future and the Connecticut Fund for the Environment.

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Vinod Khosla

Founder, Khosla Ventures

Vinod Khosla was a co-founder of Daisy Systems and founding Chief Executive Officer of Sun Microsystems where he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors. Sun was funded by Kleiner Perkins and in 1986, Vinod switched sides and joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB). In 2004, driven by the need for flexibility and a desire to be more experimental, to fund sometimes imprudent "science experiments", and to take on both "for profit" and for "social impact" ventures, he formed Khosla Ventures. Khosla Ventures focuses on both traditional venture capital technology investments and clean technology ventures. Social ventures include affordable housing, microfinance among others.

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Ray Lane

Managing Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Ray Lane is a Managing Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, focused on helping entrepreneurs with technological and market insight, organizational development, team building, selling and managing growth. Since joining KPCB, Ray has sponsored several investments for the firm in enterprise and consumer technology, as well as clean and alternative energy. These companies include Ausra (solar concentrator), GreatPoint Energy (coal to gas conversion), Fisker Automotive (plug-in hybrid car), Th!nk NA (electric car), Luca Technologies (biologically enhanced gas recovery from fossilized hydrocarbons), Xsigo Systems (virtual I/O switch for datacenters), SpikeSource (open source platform for integration and testing), PodShow (social media network), Virsa (compliance for large enterprises) and Elance (marketplace for services). He also serves on the board of Quest Software. Before joining KPCB, Ray was President and Chief Operating Officer of Oracle Corporation, the second-largest software company in the world and the leading enterprise software and services company. During his eight-year tenure, Oracle exhibited phenomenal revenue growth from approximately $1 billion in 1992 to over $10 billion. Ray led Oracle's business expansion beyond its core database technology into enterprise applications and professional services.

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Thomas Lovejoy

Biodiversity Chair, Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment

Thomas Lovejoy is an innovative and accomplished conservation biologist who coined the term “biological diversity”. He currently holds the Biodiversity Chair at the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment based in Washington, DC. He served as President of the Heinz Center from 2002-2008. Before assuming this position, Lovejoy was the World Bank’s Chief Biodiversity Advisor and Lead Specialist for Environment for Latin America and the Caribbean as well as Senior Advisor to the President of the United Nations Foundation. In 2010 he was elected Professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University (initially he will devote 50% of his time to the Heinz Center). Spanning the political spectrum, Lovejoy has served on science and environmental councils under the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations. At the core of this many influential positions are Lovejoy’s seminal ideas, which have formed and strengthened the field of conservation biology. In the 1980s, he brought international attention to the world’s tropical rainforests, and in particular, the Brazilian Amazon, where he has worked since 1965. Lovejoy also developed the now ubiquitous “debt-for-nature” swap programs and led the Minimum Critical Size of Ecosystems project. He also founded the series Nature, the popular long-term series on public television. In 2001, Lovejoy was awarded the prestigious Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. In 2009 he was the winner of BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Ecology and Conservation Biology Category. In 2009 he was appointed Conservation Fellow by the National Geographic. Lovejoy holds B.S. and Ph.D (biology) degrees from Yale University.

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Mindy Lubber

President, Ceres

Mindy S. Lubber is the President of Ceres, the leading U.S. coalition of investors and environmental leaders working to improve corporate environmental, social and governance practices. She also directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), an alliance that coordinates U.S. investor responses to the financial risks and opportunities posed by climate change. Ms. Lubber is the recipient of the Skoll Social Entrepreneur Award and under her leadership Ceres was awarded the Fast Company Social Capitalist Award for both 2006 and 2007. She was recently voted one of "The 100 Most Influential People in Corporate Governance" by Directorship magazine, who noted Ceres' increasing influence in its field. Ms. Lubber has held leadership positions in government as the Regional Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; in the financial services sector as Founder, President and CEO of Green Century Capital Management, an investment firm managing environmentally screened mutual funds; in the private sector as the President of an environmental law and policy consulting group; and in the not-for-profit sector for more than a decade leading environmental and public interest law organizations.

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William K. Reilly

Founding Partner, Aqua International Partners, LP

William K. Reilly is a Founding Partner of Aqua International Partners, LP, a private equity fund dedicated to investing in companies engaged in water and renewable energy, and a Senior Advisor to TPG Capital, LP, an international investment partnership. Mr. Reilly served as the first Payne Visiting Professor at Stanford University (1993-1994), Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (1989-1993), president of the World Wildlife Fund (1985-1989), president of The Conservation Foundation (1973-1989), and director of the Rockefeller Task Force on Land Use and Urban Growth from (1972-1973). He was head of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Earth Summit at Rio in 1992. Mr. Reilly is Chairman Emeritus of the Board of the World Wildlife Fund, Co-Chair of the National Commission on Energy Policy, Chair of the Advisory Board for the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University, Chair of the Board for the Global Water Challenge and a Director of the Packard Foundation, the American Academy in Rome and the National Geographic Society. He also serves on the Board of Directors of DuPont, ConocoPhillips and Royal Caribbean International.

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David Sandalow

Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy and International Affairs

David Sandalow is Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy and International Affairs. He formerly was Energy & Environment Scholar and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of Freedom from Oil (McGraw-Hill 2007). Mr. Sandalow is Chair of the Energy & Climate Working Group of the Clinton Global Initiative and a senior advisor to Good Energies, Inc. He is a director of First Voice International and member of the Council on Foreign Relations' Climate Change Task Force. Mr. Sandalow has served as Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans, Environment & Science; Senior Director for Environmental Affairs, National Security Council; Associate Director for the Global Environment, White House Council on Environmental Quality; and Executive Vice President, World Wildlife Fund-US. His opinion pieces and articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Times, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, Boston Globe, Science and many other periodicals. He has been a Stimson Fellow at Yale University; commencement speaker at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resource & the Environment; member of the Sustainable Development Roundtable at the OECD; member of the American Bar Association (ABA) Standing Committee on Environmental Law; and co-chair of the ABA's Annual Conference on Environmental Law.

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Ernest von Simson

Senior Partner and Co-Founder of Ostriker von Simson

Ernest von Simson is Senior Partner and cofounder of Ostriker von Simson, a consultancy that formulates IT strategies for the assessment, acquisition, monitoring, and management of emerging technologies and technology-related ventures. von Simson and his partners also chair the CIO Strategy Exchange, which brings together CIOs from the largest multinational enterprises. He was cofounder of the Research Board, where he directed the professional staff in examining evolving business models, advanced technology, business applications and IT best practices. von Simson's articles have appeared in Harvard Business Review, Computerworld, and Fortune. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Arcsight, Good Technology and Levanta. von Simson holds an M.B.A. from New York University and a B.A. from Brown University.

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Ron Sommer

Former Chairman, Board of Management, Deutsche Telekom

Dr. Sommer is the former chairman of the board of management of Deutsche Telekom. He held the position from 1995-2002. Prior to joining Deutsche Telekom, Dr. Sommer spent 15 years (1980-1995) with Japan's Sony Corp managing its German, U.S. and European operations. Dr. Sommer currently serves as Supervisory Board member of Munich Re (Germany), Chairman, Advisory Board member and Director of AFK Systema (Russia), International Advisory Board member of the Blackstone Group (USA), and a director of Motorola Inc. (USA) and Tata Consultancy Services. Dr Sommer earned a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Vienna.

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Robert Swan

OBE, FRGS. First-ever person to walk to both Poles unassisted

Robert Swan, OBE is a polar explorer, environmental leader and the first person ever to have walked to the North and South poles. He is an exceptionally gifted communicator and is regarded as one of the world’s top motivational speakers.

In 1992, on completion of the walks to both poles, Robert Swan was charged by world leaders at the first ‘World Summit for Sustainable Development’, held in Rio de Janeiro, to undertake a ten year global and local environmental mission involving industry, business and young people.

Upon the successful completion of the missions, Swan reported back to world leaders at the second World Summit in 2002, held in Johannesburg. Here he committed to a further ten-year mission to inspire youth to become sustainable leaders and promote the use of renewable energy for a sustainable future.

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Terry Tamminen

CEO of Seventh Generation Advisors and Operating Advisor to Pegasus Capital Advisors.

Terry Tamminen has developed expertise in business, farming, education, non-profit, the environment, the arts, and government with career experiences in Europe, Africa and all parts of the United States. He managed a multi-million dollar real estate company, owned/operated a successful recreational services business, and assisted Nigeria with the creation of its first solid waste recycling program. With Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Terry founded non-profit Waterkeeper programs throughout California in the 1990s and co-founded the Frank G. Wells Environmental Law Clinic at the UCLA School of Law. In 2003, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Terry as the Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency and later as Cabinet Secretary, the Chief Policy Advisor to the Governor. Terry currently provides consulting services to a variety of clients, including several Governors and Canadian Premiers on climate and energy policy, and helps Pegasus Capital Advisors build companies that focus on resource efficiency and sustainable products. His latest book, Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction (Island Press), examines our dependence on oil and a strategy to evolve to more sustainable energy sources and his blog can be found regularly on CNBC.com.

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Mark Tercek

President and CEO, The Nature Conservancy

Mark is President and CEO of The Nature Conservancy. Previously, he was a managing director at Goldman Sachs, where he headed the firm’s Center for Environmental Markets and its Environmental Strategy Group. He also headed Goldman Sachs’ leadership development efforts for the firm’s managing directors. Mark joined Goldman Sachs in 1984 and was named partner in 1996. Mark previously headed the Consumer/Healthcare, Equity Capital Markets, Corporate Finance and Real Estate Departments. In earlier assignments, he headed the worldwide transportation group, co-headed Corporate Finance Department in Tokyo, and was one of the senior bankers who led the firm's early investment banking initiatives in Asia. Mark is the president of the Board of Trustees of Western Reserve Academy and a trustee of Business for Social Responsibility and Literacy Partners. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an adjunct professor of Finance at New York University's Stern School of Business.

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Adam Werbach

Chief Sustainability Officer, Saatchi & Saatchi

Adam is president and CEO of Saatchi&Saatchi S. He is highly regarded as one of the world's premier experts in sustainability. At age 23, he was elected as the youngest president ever of the Sierra Club, the oldest and largest environmental organization in the United States. In 1998, he founded sustainability agency, Act Now, to engage the corporate and media world in social, environmental, cultural and economical change. After ten successful years, Act Now merged with global ideas company Saatchi&Saatchi to form Saatchi & Saatchi S, the world's largest sustainability agency. Adam has always been an advocate for change, as exemplified by his 2004 speech, "Is Environmentalism Dead?" which sent shockwaves through the environmental movement. In it, he declared that he would no longer call himself an environmentalist, as the movement was unprepared to solve the underlying social and economic issues of climate change. Soon after, Wal-Mart engaged Act Now to lead the involvement of the 1.9 million Wal-Mart associates in the Personal Sustainability Project (PSP). Adam also serves on the six-member International Board of Greenpeace.

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Christine Todd Whitman

President, The Whitman Strategy Group

Governor Whitman served in the cabinet of President George W. Bush as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from January 2001 until June 2003. She was the 50th Governor of the State of New Jersey, serving as its first woman governor from 1994 until 2001. As Governor, she earned praise from both Republicans and Democrats for her commitment to preserve a record amount of New Jersey land as permanent green space. She was also recognized by the Natural Resources Defense Council for instituting the most comprehensive beach monitoring system in the nation. As EPA Administrator, she promoted common-sense environmental improvements such as watershed-based water protection policies. She championed regulations requiring non-road diesel engines to reduce sulfur emissions by more than 95 percent. She also established the first federal program to promote redevelopment and reuse of “brownfields,” that is, previously contaminated industrial sites.

Today, Governor Whitman is President of the Whitman Strategy Group, a consulting firm specializing in energy and environmental issues at the forefront of helping leading companies find innovative solutions to environmental challenges. She is also co-chair of the Republican Leadership Council (RLC), which she founded in 2007 with Senator John Danforth and Lt. Gov. Michael Steele. The RLC’s mission is to support fiscally conservative, socially tolerant candidates and to reclaim the word Republican. She is the author of the New York Times best seller, It’s My Party Too.

Governor Whitman serves on the boards of several nonprofits, and serves on the Board of Directors of S.C. Johnson and Son, Inc., Texas Instruments Inc., and United Technologies Corporation.

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Andrew Winston

Founder, Winston Eco-Strategies

Andrew Winston is founder of Winston Eco-Strategies and helps leading companies use environmental thinking to drive growth, consulting with Fortune 500 companies such as Bank of America, Cisco, HP, and IKEA. He is co-author of the bestseller Green to Gold, which highlights what works - and what doesn't - when companies go "green." Andrew is a globally recognized expert on green business, and has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Forbes, The New York Times, ABC News, and CNBC. Andrew bases his work on significant on-the-ground, in-company business experience, including executive positions and P&L responsibility at global companies, start-ups, and dot-coms. Andrew was previously the Director of the Corporate Environmental Strategy Project at Yale's renowned School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

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