Meet the Team
The Ecological Benefits Framework was created by The Lexicon, a California-based NGO, and developed with an unprecedented collection of nearly 200 domain experts from across the globe. It is being adopted by a diverse set of actors. Investors and philanthropists have begun using it to classify their portfolio impacts; project developers have a new way to express the impacts they create; and web3 pioneers are developing a range of new digital assets.
Meet the Team
The Ecological Benefits Framework was created by The Lexicon, a California-based NGO, and developed with an unprecedented collection of nearly 200 domain experts from across the globe. It is being adopted by a diverse set of actors. Investors and philanthropists have begun using it to classify their portfolio impacts; project developers have a new way to express the impacts they create; and web3 pioneers are developing a range of new digital assets.
The Lexicon Team
Laura Howard-Gayeton
Executive Director
Laura is the co-founder and Executive Director of “The Lexicon”. A social entrepreneur deeply rooted in the environmental movement, she founded Laloo’s, the first goat’s milk ice cream in the United States, a company based on principles informed by food science, water stewardship, animal welfare and the good food movement. Named a top 10 tastemakers by Newsweek, she continues to advise food companies after a successful exit from ice cream. Prior to Laloo’s, Laura worked in television. She founded Slo.Graffiti, a consumer products branding company subsidiary of Palomar Pictures and owns one technical patent for Tunnelvision, a proprietary storytelling system for subway systems. Laura is a graduate of Miami University where she rode for the Equestrian team, and still rides when she isn’t gardening, composting, or pickling something from the farm she shares with her partner Douglas Gayeton. She serves on several nonprofit boards including Womenserve NGO dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls in Rajasthan, India, and Petaluma Bounty, a community farm. She is an active 4H club Mom who is most proud of her 12 year-old daughter who is the Sonoma county Jr. poultry exhibitor champion and the apple of her eye.
Douglas Gayeton
Chief Investigator
Douglas is an award-winning information architect, filmmaker, photographer and writer.
He directed the KNOW YOUR FOOD series for PBS and GROWING ORGANIC for USDA, MOLOTOV ALVA for HBO, and has authored two books, SLOW: Life in a Tuscan Town, and LOCAL: The New Face of Food & Farming in America.
He is also one of Crop Trust’s Food Forever champions and a visiting professor in the Masters Program at Slow Food’s University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy.
Philip Ackerman-Leist
Editorial Director
Philip Ackerman-Leist is Editorial Director at The Lexicon. A food systems and sustainability expert, researcher, academic, and farmer specializing in American Milking Devon cattle. His three books include A Precautionary Tale: How One Small Town Banned Pesticides, Preserved its Food Heritage, and Inspired a Movement; Rebuilding the Foodshed; and Up Tunket Road: The Education of a Modern Homesteader.
Previously, Philip spent two decades as Professor of Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems at Green Mountain College, where he built the nation’s first online graduate program in food systems, an undergraduate program in Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems, and a 23 acre organic farm. He lives on his family’s off-grid homestead in Pawlet, Vermont.
Pier Giorgio Provenzano
Head of Digital
Pier Giorgio Provenzano is The Lexicon’s Head of Digital and lead Animator and Video Editor. Based near Bristol, England, his projects include a short film series for PBS, music videos for Napster, a feature-length documentary for HBO, several animated shorts for Warner Brothers and Toyota, short films for Sustainable Food Trust, and GrowEatGather, which showcases British farmers and their role in producing good sustainable food.
Alberto Miti
Associate Director
Alberto is co-producer and researcher at the Reawakened Food Initiative by The Lexicon, a global storytelling campaign aimed to raise awareness around biodiversity in our food system.
Based in Italy, Alberto consults for startups, companies and Universities and his main focus is innovation in food and business models for sustainability.
Alberto holds a bachelor degree in Philosophy and a master in Social Entrepreneurship. The philosopher in him lives by the Maieutic method, pushing him to be a catalyst for change.
This focus strongly also drives his work with the Design Factory of the University of Bologna. Here Alberto coaches multidisciplinary teams of designers and researchers in open innovation projects, towards prototyping working solutions to social challenges.
Or Katzmann
Project Manager
Or Katzman was the director and co-founder of SDGIsrael, writes the Blockchain Bridge blog, and consults businesses on impact and web3. With over a decade of experience in leadership training, facilitation, and impact work, he has worked with a variety of organizations on mapping, measuring, and communicating their impact through the SDGs. He has experience and certification from the EU in circular economics and green business planning, he has consulted the UNDP on SDG Impact Standards and taken part in the UNGC’s SDG Accelerator program.
Sophie Echeverry
Project Coordinator
Born and raised in Colombia with a background in International Business, Marketing and experience in the Sustainable Tourism and Food sector. She has lived in 5 different countries, speaks 4 languages, and her recent adventure led her to pursue a Masters in the Slow Food university of Italy, UNISG. She now works as a Project Coordinator for the Lexicon.
Amine Rehioui
Full Stack Developer
Amine is a game programmer making games for over 13 years, on a wide range of platforms including consoles and mobile. With particular interest in the intersection between Art and Technology, Amine likes making content creation tools used by both creative and technical disciplines. His main hobby is long distance running.
Members
Adarsh Ghosh
Nuclear Submarine Officer
US Navy
Adarsh is a commissioned Naval Officer in the United States Navy. His service is in the submarine force. He recently was awarded as a Fleet Scholar, a prestigious scholarship through the Navy, to study as an MBA at Questrom.
His Experiences include military strategy, nuclear power as a Department of Energy qualified nuclear engineer, and quality assurance. His most recent experience during his MBA includes venture capital due diligence with G51, Impact investing case competitions, and International consulting with a Chinese Firm focused in financing and investing.
Alejandro Adon
Founder & Secretary
My journey started when I was just 15 years old and still in high school, bursting with ambition and dreams. I stumbled upon the exciting world of VoIP technology and began searching for ways to earn money without a diploma. Within a year, I managed to acquire nearly 50 call centers as clients and employed multiple independent sellers. It’s hard to believe that a 16-year-old schoolboy in 2005-2006 could earn such an income, armed only with a phone and occasional access to the school computer lab. Naturally, my teachers were often frustrated by how much time I spent servicing my customers in the lab.
Sadly, the VoIP business in my country eventually began to decline due to strict regulations, and I had to move on to other things. In 2008, I crossed paths with one of my oldest friends in college and we both decided to venture into website development. I started freelancing and honing my skills in all things related to the internet until 2014 when I became an eBay Power Seller.
Over the years, I have explored several different areas of work, but my passion for the internet has never wavered. Today, I am proud to say that I run a tech company with two of my closest friends, and our first project, Kokonut Network, has been a resounding success. Our sights are set on revolutionizing the agriculture sector in the Dominican Republic, leveraging our ideal soil and climate to cultivate an array of fruits and vegetables.
Alex Howard
Independent Researcher, Writer and Developer, Mentor
Independent researcher and software developer working in the broad field of sustainable development. Co-chair of the Standards WG of the Hyperledger Climate Action and Accounting Special Interest Group (CA2-SIG).
Alvaro Vallejo
Biodiversity Programme Director
Forest engineer with a master’s degree in forest and biodiversity management and conservation. Expert in forest carbon, forest plantation management and software development, author of several software related to forest management and carbon in forest ecosystems.
He is currently Cercarbono’s Programme Director. He was the director of the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) regional office for South America. He has been a consultant on forest carbon issues for the World Bank and private companies, a researcher at the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Centre, CATIE, and director of the area of forest plantation management in reforestation projects in Colombia. He has also been an instructor at numerous training events on forest CDM, REDD and forest management and invited speaker at seminars and courses on carbon and forest management in more than twenty countries.
Annie Nichols
US Carbon Removal Sourcing Manager
Annie Nichols serves as the US Carbon Removal Sourcing Manager for Carbonfuture, a climate tech start-up offering a digital platform that tracks carbon from the air to the ground, translates this carbon removal into verifiable credits, and enables the scalable trade of these credits for real climate action. Annie holds a Master of Science in Sustainability Management from Columbia University and has worked in a multitude of positions helping organizations improve their environmental sustainability. Annie specializes in biochar-based carbon removal and works with 45+ biochar producers across North and South America to scale carbon sequestration to gigatonne level.
Asma Bashirivand
Biomimicry and Sustainability Consultant
I’m a biomimicry and sustainability consultant, with over 14 years of biomimicry design and 5 years of international research experience. I completed my bachelor’s in Sustainable Design and a master’s in Biomimetic Environmental Design. My interest and expertise lay in redesigning built environments through inspiration from nature based on ecosystem services and regeneration techniques.
Ben West
Grants Program Lead
Ben leads the implementation of the cause based grants rounds for Gitcoin including the climate solutions round. He is also doing blockchain enabled climate solutions research for the Ethereum Foundation.
Ben has decades of experience coordinating campaigns on climate and other issues. He has been an outspoken voice in the media and has helped shape the debate of climate change and other issues in Canada and beyond. He is a writer, juggler and dog person with a taste for street art and creative disruption.
Blake Goud
CEO of RFI Foundation CIC
Blake Goud has been the CEO of the RFI Foundation since the organization’s incorporation in 2015. The RFI Foundation works to promote responsible finance in Islamic markets and Islamic finance, and to support its members’ adoption of responsible finance practices and their integration into the global responsible finance industry.
As CEO, Blake has led work on a series of reports analyzing financed emissions risks in Islamic markets, the investment performance of combining environmental, social & governance (ESG) and Shari’ah screens, and developed in partnership with a global bank a Global Virtual Innovation Hub supporting FinTechs in the Middle East and North Africa with their adoption of responsible finance.
Blake has more than 15 years experience researching Islamic finance and working in a compliance and investment officer role in the finance industry. He was the Chief Research Officer for ME Global Advisors where he focused on MENA financial sector development and the growth of the Islamic economy. He was responsible for leading ME Global Advisors’ research efforts as well as advising on the content of the events organized by ME Global Advisors.
He was the Community Leader for the Thomson Reuters Islamic Finance Gateway from 2012 to 2015. At Thomson Reuters, he conducted research and was the lead author for a number of widely referenced reports on the Islamic finance and Islamic economy sectors, he was involved in organizing large-scale events and one-on-one sessions including IILM roundtables in London and Washington, DC and the Global Islamic Economy Summit in Dubai, UAE.
His published research includes papers on incorporating environmental, social & governance (ESG) within Islamic finance, Islamic microfinance, renewable energy microfinance and Islamic public finance. He received his B.A. in Economics from Reed College in 2003.
Brian Dorr
Managing Principal
Brian has more than 20 years experience as a trader in global capital markets trading across equities, fixed income, FX, commodities, and derivatives. He has a background in global macroeconomics, risk management and advanced trading technology. He was the founder of Life-Exchange, the first electronic trading platform for the life insurance industry as well as Coro Global, an advanced DLT based payment system for fiat currencies and physical gold.
Brian formed Dorr Asset Management in 2010 to incorporate emerging environmental markets such a voluntary carbon markets and renewable energy credits into a broader framework for global macro trading and investing.
Carlos Trujillo
Chairman
Business Administrator with an MBA from IE in Madrid, Spain. He has been in ventures in the areas of e-commerce, technology, and environment, where he has developed commercial and market development functions.
He is one of the founders of Cercarbono and is driven by a powerful desire to bring solidity, transparency, and recognition to the carbon market.
Charlie Dubbe
Director of Partnerships
Charlie is a community builder, regenerative land steward, seed saver, and complexity explorer. After 10 years as COO at various small and mid-size regenerative farms in N. California, he co-founded ReCommon to help create the systems-level change that is required for regenerative agriculture to flourish. In his current role as Director of Partnerships at ReCommon, he spends his time exploring the intersections of agroecology, regenerative cultures, ReFi, and resilient place-based economies. He currently resides in the traditional lands of the Awaswas people – Santa Cruz, CA.
See ReCommon.land to learn more about the work to support the emergence of resilient place-based communities and regenerative economies.
Chris Georgen
Founder & Managing Director
Having founded Topl in 2017, Chris now helps to lead the only blockchain ecosystem dedicated to radical impact as Managing Director. Collaborating closely with the rest of Topl’s executive team, Chris takes an active role in the blockchain’s protocol design and leads the team’s novel tokenomics and governance work.
Chris has been active in the web3 space since 2012, having previously co-founded a mobile payments fintech which went live on the Ethereum blockchain less than a year after that network’s launch in 2015. He obtained degrees in Mathematics, Chemical Physics, and Philosophy from Rice University. During this time at university, Chris performed research resulting in 3 co-authored papers focused on emergent phenomena in complex systems and developed many of the models that would come to define Topl’s unique design.
An active speaker in the space, Chris has given invited talks on blockchain, economics, sustainability, and international development in more than 20 countries and been involved in numerous working groups on the intersection of web3 and social impact.
Christiaan Pauw
Managing Director
Since 1998, Christiaan Pauw has been involved in research and implementation of projects aimed at improving the quality of life of low-income households in Southern Africa. His career over more than two decades includes quantitative and qualitative research, as well as participation in project planning, management, implementation and monitoring. Notable is his original work in greenhouse gas- and air quality offsets. In 2006 and 2007 he was instrumental in the development of a methodology to verify greenhouse gas emission reductions from the implementation of an alternative top-down ignition technique for domestic coal fires against the WBCSD/WRI GHG Project Protocol and later against the Gold Standard. He played a pivotal role in the development of the monitoring and evaluation system for Nova’s Gold Standard VERs and poineered monitoring and evaluation systems for numerous air quality offset programmes in South Africa. He has a particular interst in the development of cryptographic tokens representing real communnal benefits.
Cyndy Montgomery
Director of Partnerships and Policy
Cyndy is the Director of Partnerships and Policy at Tolam Earth, a marketplace for high quality digital environmental assets. With a background in agriculture and IT, and a passion for using technology to improve lives, Cyndy is working within and beyond the Hedera community to bring assets into the marketplace and effectively communicate their value.
During her 20+ years in the agriculture industry, Cyndy worked with plant breeders and IT professionals across the globe to bring together data sets and distill information to impactful make decisions. With her rich background in merging science and technology, Cyndy is working, along with the entire Tolam team, to build credibility, simplicity, and choice into the carbon market.
Daniel Hwang
Co-Founder and Special Advisor
Daniel has extensive experience across the entire vertical of the blockchain stack including: infrastructure service providers, L1 ecosystem development, DEX building, piloting permissioned blockchains in enterprise, DAO set up, NFTs, and metaverses. Daniel began running Bitcoin miners in 2013 and supporting remittances in the Philippines with crypto. He recently led the Protocols Team at stakefish (the largest non-custodial Ethereum validator; largest Cosmos validator) while also leading the Special Projects team at its sister company F2Pool while it was the largest Bitcoin mining pool in the world. He has contributed substantive work in the climate and blockchain ecosystem leading to the co-founding of the Blockchain Infrastructure Carbon Offset Working Group (BICOWG now BxCi) which eventually led to the founding of the BlockchainXClimate nonprofit that was recently announced at the World Economic Forum in 2023. He also co-founded the validator working group Validator Commons, established Korea’s first DAO, HanDAO supporting the Korean creator ecosystem, was awarded grants to build hyperlocalized DEXs in asia from 0x Protocol, led an IEEE workstream on health data on blockchain, led pilots for some of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world for their supply chain sample management development with permissioned blockchains. He has also led a top 10 L1 ecosystem development team (details can be provided verbally). His formal education includes degrees in Biology, Religion, and Computer Science from Swarthmore College, the University of Maryland College Park, and Johns Hopkins University. His focus in graduate school was on cryptography and distributed systems where he produced his thesis (advised by prof. Matt Green) on the evolution of hybrid consensus mechanisms from centralized to decentralized.
Darina Onoprienko
Founder
I’m an Entrepreneur and Product manager with a focus on Machine Learning, AI, and IoT products. I combine strong business expertise, entrepreneurial drive, and technical skills to set the shortest path to product-market fit. I enjoy working in multidisciplinary international teams on innovative, life-changing products.
Since 2020 I’m fully committed to making coffee supply chains carbon-neutral, traceable, fair, and efficient. During those past years, I became a Q Grader and acquired vast and profound knowledge about coffee from production to distribution.
At the moment I’m running Agrivero.ai (a solution for the automation of green coffee quality control) and Coffee Impact Collective (a workgroup that aims to support coffee producers to transition to regenerative agriculture and enable them to sell eco credits along with their produce on the decentralized market place).
Dave Ford
Founder
Dave is the founder of [OPLN] Ocean Plastics Leadership Network. The OPLN, made up of 130+ organizations, is an activist-to-industry network dedicated to solving the ocean plastics crisis.
In 2015, he began immersing corporate leaders into environmental world crises via climate change expeditions in Antarctica and human-wildlife conflict zones in Zimbabwe and Southern India. His introduction to the plastics crisis took place on an impromptu one-day waste tour in Delhi, India. He toured the Ghazipur landfill, a mountain of waste on the outskirts of town. The giant mound was smoking from fires deep underneath, and hundreds of people were wading through the trash, reclaiming plastic.
Eighteen months later, the Ocean Plastics Leadership Summit set sail and immersed 165 corporate and NGO leaders into the heart of the Atlantic Garbage Patch (500 miles off the coast of Bermuda). CEOs and activists had difficult conversations and gathered plastic in the middle of the ocean. The activist-to-industry, Ocean Plastics Leadership Network (OPLN) was born on this mission.
Dave’s work catalyzes environmental stakeholder engagement and education. He has spoken about his work via United Nations World Ocean Day, the National Geographic Circular Economy Forum, and across various sustainability and environmental events and platforms. He has contributed thought leadership articles to Scientific American and Greenbiz.
He founded the Global Plastics Treaty Dialogues activist-to-industry series with WWF and Greenpeace, an ongoing global virtual summit series engineered to build capacity and understanding around a Global Plastics Treaty. Participants include over four hundred organizations from 40 countries across the vast plastic stakeholder spectrum.
He is a proud University of Maryland grad, where he earned a BS at the Robert H. Smith Business school in Marketing.
Dave believes that widespread environmental education is the key to catalyzing rapid change towards a healthier planet. Dave has Baltimore roots, living with his wife and six-year-old daughter in the Hudson Valley, New York.
David Dorr
Managing Principal
David has more than 25 years experience as a trader in global capital markets trading across equities, fixed income, FX, commodities, and derivatives. He has a background in global macroeconomics, risk management and advanced trading technology. He was the founder of Life-Exchange, the first electronic trading platform for the life insurance industry as well as Coro Global, an advanced DLT based payment system for fiat currencies and physical gold.
David formed Dorr Asset Management in 2010 to incorporate emerging environmental markets such as voluntary carbon offsets, renewable energy certificates, and biodiversity credits into a broader framework for global macro trading and investing.
David Randle
Managing Director
Dr. David W. Randle is one of the Co-founders of the Blue Community Consortium. He serves as Managing Director of the Blue Community Consortium, and president and executive director of the WHALE Center. Dave also serves on the Board of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council and the Florida Society for Ethical Ecotourism. He is also an ambassador for Aptera, the world’s first solar electic car.
As the first ordained environmental minister in the world, Dave has successfully coordinated a national campaign to preserve water, wildlife, and wilderness areas on behalf of the Pitkin County Commissioners, served as political and environmental adviser to John Denver and initial program development coordinator for John Denver’s Windstar Foundation, was selected as one of the five lead off witnesses for hearings by the U. S. Presidential Commission for a Peace Academy & Conflict Resolution, and helped lead a team of 150 persons at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. During the Salt Lake Olympics, Dave worked with UNEP & URI to develop the Earth and Faith Leadership Development Program that was piloted in the Olympic Village in Salt Lake City and which received an Olympic Award and an award at the United Nations.
Dejan de Zoysa
CEO
Founding partner and Chief Executive Officer at EarthRestoration (ER) https://www.restore.earth.
Since 2017 Dejan has restored degraded landscape ecosystems in Sri Lanka as well as directed field research in mangrove ecosystems in Myanmar. HIs focus has been collaborating with Universities and educators on the subject of quantified Primary Ecosystem Services and Forestry Restoration.
Dejan is also the curator of the world’s first Analogue Forest, Belipola Arboretum and Research Center ( www.belipolaarboretum.earth ) , which is managed as a successive forest ecosystem and gene bank using the 12 principles of Analogue Forestry.
Dejan’s field research and executive direction has developed a unique process for quantifying Primary Ecosystem Services (PES) by verifying the growth of Photosynthetic Biomass (PB) of tree species.The implications of the methodology is to engage rural landscapes and communities in ‘beyond organic agriculture’ and the restoration of the biosphere.
The company’s strategy for landscape development has integrated BlockChain technology which lays the foundation towards the creation of new wealth identified as BioCurrency which is based on the premise of externalizing positive impacts that are quantified and moderated by a global commons exchange platform. https://youtu.be/8s2aakVstxM
Domenico Leone
Law graduate, interested in all socio-eco-pol fields, broadening skill set through event planning, procedure-making, accounting and the like.
Participating as part of work for Giulio @CCA, gathering useful info and materials!
Dominic Sutton-Vermeulen
Principal
Dominic comes from a background in agricultural and alternative asset research and financial product development, with experience in environmental markets, exchange markets, trading, derivatives, and agriculture. Prior to founding Climate-Smart Commodities Corp., Dominic was a Director at ReHarvest Partners where he managed the Soil and Water Outcomes Fund, one of the largest ag carbon and ecosystem services market projects in the U.S. While there, he was responsible for building out the funds technology roadmap and end-to-end management of a portfolio of carbon and water quality assets spanning 7 states, 160 farms, and relationships with multiple public and private entities, including Fortune 500 companies such as Cargill, JBS, PepsiCo, Ingredion, Nutrien Ag, and BASF. Prior to Reharvest, Dominic was a Manager in Research & Prod Dev at the CME Group, the largest commodity derivatives exchange in the world.
Ed Chiles
Company Owner
Ed was born in Lakeland, Florida, to the late Governor Lawton Chiles and Rhea Chiles. A passion for all things Floridian was instilled in him at an early age. An avid outdoorsman, his favorite childhood memories are roaming the Florida woods hunting with his father. The family always had a passion for cooking, especially when it came to the local game, seafood, and southern favorites. He also carried on another proud Chiles family tradition by graduating from The University of Florida.
Ed owns and operates three restaurants under The Chiles Group umbrella on Anna Maria Island and Longboat Key, Florida. The historic flagship, The Sandbar, opened in 1979, followed by the Mar Vista in 1990 and The Beach House in 1993. He has become a staple in the sustainable tourism industry, with each restaurant menu featuring locally sourced Florida fare from a network of specialty producers that share in his vision. In 2021, Ed acquired Gamble Farm Organics, located in nearby Parrish, FL. A leader in permaculture farming, Gamble Farm Organics grows and provides unique strains of produce to the restaurants, as well as the local community through its Farm Market.
A recognized leader in promoting sustainability, Ed Chiles has been a driving force for best practices in his local community, Gulf region and the state of Florida. He works closely with the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) on sustainability initiatives, as his hospitality group has been designated as part of the first Global Observatory for Sustainable Tourism. Ed lends his expertise and resources through his involvement in several community and regional organizations. He serves on the Gulf Seafood Foundation board to promote tourism and the historic culture of the coast. He is a founding member of Solutions to Avoid Red Tide (START), board member of Gulf Shellfish Institute, Solutions from The Land, Sarasota Bay Watch, and Shellfish Growers Climate Coalition. Ed is also a founding member of the All Clams on Deck initiative, which promotes the use of biological mitigation strategies for seagrass and bivalve restoration which enhances and energizes local estuaries.
An avid fly-fisher and hunter, Ed resides with his wife Tina in Anna Maria. His two daughters, Ashley and Christin, and new grandson, Chiles, continue to fuel his emphatic support of immediate and decisive action to ensure future generations can enjoy our environment and natural resources.
Edwin Pinero
President
Mr. Piñero is President of EcoMetrics LLC, helping disseminate this methodology that identifies, quantifies, and monetizes environmental, economic, and social co-benefits resulting from nature-based solutions and ecosystems services projects. He has worked in the private and public sectors as a consultant to many clients on sustainability, environment, and energy. He was Head of Standards and Assurance for the Alliance for Water Stewardship, Director of Water Programs for the US BCSD, served as Senior Vice President for Sustainability for Veolia North America., as well as the Federal Chief Sustainability Officer in the White House. He has Bachelor of Science degree in Geology from the State University of New York and Master of Science degree in Geology from Texas A&M University.
Esther Val
EthicHub Ambassador
Fidel Chiriboga
Project Manager
Biologist. Ecologist. Environmental Scientist (PhD)
Passionate about international and interdisciplinary, synergistic nature- based solutions with multiple benefits supporting biodiversity, environment, and sustainable development
Global experience within conservation, ecosystem management, forestry, agroforestry, and restoration, seeking for large-scale implementation and monitoring solutions in interplay with value chains, and sustainable socio-economic development.
Strong project management, development, coordination, organization, communication and networking skills across stakeholders and countries
Engagement with NGOs, academia, industry, and policymakers, finding common grounds within sustainability approaches.
Assets: High and low throughput statistical data analysis; team building; logistics, time, budget management; and creative outreach with text, presentations, social media, and capacity-supporting workshops.
Florence Tison
Marketing Lead, Carbon Markets
Florence leads marketing for Sustainability and Carbon Markets at Ripple. Prior to joining Ripple, Florence was director of the industry, environment & technology practice at Business France, where she ran go-to-market strategy sprints for tech startups.
Francisco Cidade Alves
Since 2005 that Francisco is the farm manager of his family farm in Montemor (Portugal) where he grew up and from a very early age he realized that this was what he wanted to do for a living.
The name Porcus Natura comes from the unique system of maternity wards developed by his Father in 2002, where the main focus was already animal welfare and soil regeneration.
After decades in conventional management, where they have always been careful with soil management (e.g. never using pesticides or tilling), it was a natural transition for them to adapt their management to the principles of regenerative agriculture in their ancient Portuguese agro-silvo-pastoral Montado landscape.
This regenerative journey started in 2017 when he took several courses in holistic management and regenerative agriculture, after which they started applying the principles and practices in the field, even introducing two more species to the ones already on the farm. Currently, Francisco produces and sells four species of Portuguese indigenous breeds of sheep, goats, cattle and pigs.
Creating a rotational grazing dynamic with the four different animal species, with the objective of making the business more efficient as well as regenerating the Montado ecosystem, is Francisco’s main focus thus obtaining meat products with a positive impact on the environment and human health.
Speaks: Portuguese, English and Spanish
Francisco Telles Varela
Co-Founder
Francisco grew up in close connection with nature and animals during his childhood spent on his family farms in Alentejo (Portugal). This passion for nature, animals and global environmental fragility led him to study forest engineering and later to pursue a career in the field of biofuels, both on the research and business sides. Only a few years ago, after an aha moment about soil and regenerative agriculture, he decided to dedicate his life to regenerating agro-ecosystems.
Francisco works as a researcher and innovation manager in the regenerative agriculture on-farm research project KUHproKLIMA (Cow for the Climate) in Germany. His main research work aims to bridge the gap between science and practice. He works directly with farmers to create cost-effective solutions for practical farming challenges with a special focus on soil and plant health monitoring, microbiology analysis, composts/ferments and liquid extracts applications.
In Portugal, he is now also co-managing the conversion to regenerative organic of his family’s olive tree groves in the Avis region.
Francisco holds a BSc. Forest and Natural Resources Engineering (ISA-UL) and a MSc. Energy and Bioenergy (FCT-UNL). He is a Certified Lab Technician by Dr. Elaine Ingham’s Soil Food Web. His professional and personal interests led him to work with international and diverse teams in several countries like Malaysia, Australia, Netherlands, Germany and Portugal.
Speaks: Portuguese, English, Spanish and basic German.
Genevieve Bennett
Director
Genevieve Bennett directs strategic outreach at Forest Trends. She works to advance Forest Trends’ mission by building strategic partnerships to mobilize finance at scale and through thought leadership and meaningful engagement of our network. Genevieve is an expert in environmental markets and finance, and was lead author on the first comprehensive global market assessments of nature-based water sector investments and biodiversity credits. She has written for a range of trade and academic publications including Environmental Finance magazine, Civil Engineering, and Nature, on topics including biodiversity finance, natural infrastructure, eco-entrepreneurship, strategies for scaling public and private conservation investments, and other market cross-cutting issues. Prior to joining Forest Trends she managed a demand assessment project for the Willamette Partnership in Oregon, and has also held positions with the Breakthrough Institute, the NYC Commission to the United Nations, and the NYU Wagner School of Public Service. She holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and a BA from New York University.
Genevieve Leveille
Principal Founder and CEO
For over 25 years, Genevieve Leveille has been a noteworthy leader in the finance, supply chain optimization, and technology ecosystems. These days, she is recognized as the CEO and Principal Founder of AgriLedger but continues to contribute in the realms of digital identity and financial transformation.
In 2020, Genevieve implemented a blockchain solution in the Haiti Fresh Fruit Value Chain in collaboration with the Ministry of Commerce and the World Bank. As a result of this implementation, farmers, consumers, and families reaped the benefits of fairer prices and improved food security; participating small-holder farmers saw an increase of over 700% in their revenues.
AgriLedger continues to drive the adoption of blockchain in agriculture with implantation in the coffee value chain in Tanzania and an extension of Reimagined Finance (ReFi) for the maize and peas value chains in Haiti.
In her earlier career, Genevieve held executive management-level roles for several Fortune 500 companies including General Electric, JP Morgan Chase, Hewlett Packard, and the Royal Bank of Scotland. Currently, Genevieve serves as vice chair of the techUK Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Working group. She is also a non-executive director and board member for FinTech for International Development (F4ID), Resurgence, and a Senior Advisor for the digital ID roll-out for the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ministry of Education.
Genevieve has been recognized by several organizations for her work in technology and decentralized finance. In 2019 she was nominated for the Financial Times’ Top BAME in Technology UK. In 2021 Computer Weekly named Genevieve as one of the Most Influential Women in UK Tech. Genevieve holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from Columbia University, is a Certified Treasury Professional, and is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt in Process Improvement.
Geoff Wells
Principal Sustainability Analyst
Ecosystem service and carbon analyst. Combining ecological, social and earth observation data through statistics and qualitative methods in sites across Europe, North America, Africa and Asia-Pacific. https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoff-wells/
Gregory Landua
CEO Co-Founder
Gregory is co-founder of Regen Network, a community owned and operated eco-credit registry and marketplace. Regen is designed to support living carbon and biodiversity markets and other with verification, asset issuance, and community standards governance. Before founding Regen Network, Gregory co-wrote Regenerative Enterprise (2013) – a groundbreaking book outlining pathways to achieve ecological and social regeneration through business – and co-founded and grew Terra Genesis International from a Regenerative Agriculture consultancy and design firm, into a leader in the Regenerative Movement. Gregory also currently hosts the Planetary Regeneration Podcast.
Griffin Flannery
ESG and Social Impact Consultant
Griffin is a social impact measurement and strategy consultant. He’s an expert in stakeholder engagement, program design, and impact measurement with a particular focus on social equity. He’s passionate about building inclusive businesses that support indigenous populations, and in delivering equitable access for marginalized populations through technology and innovation.
Hania Othman
Director of Sustainable Impact Europe/Africa
Hania Othman is the Director of Sustainable Impact for EMEA at the HBAR Foundation — the organization helping to drive the adoption of the Hedera network. Hania’s background encompasses technology, finance, biodiversity, carbon markets, and digital assets. In her current role, Hania is helping to establish a sustainable economy on Hedera through the HBAR Foundation. She has a particular interest in emerging fields at the crossing of innovation and sustainability such as biodiversity. Hania worked on enabling biodiversity credits, developing the skill set to bridge science, sustainability, and traditional finance. Operating at the convergence of science, sustainability, finance, and technology, Hania is an expert in bringing these three fields cohesively together. Hania brings unique insights and experience to The HBAR Foundation’s Sustainable Impact Fund, to support investment and due diligence for the adoption of the Hedera network.
Hara Wang
Principal
Hara is a principal at RMI and a leader of RMI’s Carbon Markets Initiative, which applies data and technology to transparently trace, evaluate, and differentiate products in the carbon market.
Hara came to lead RMI’s Carbon Markets Initiative after six years in the climate tech venture community. She cofounded and led Third Derivative, a global startup acceleration platform within RMI, covering opportunities in industrial, building, transportation, electricity and carbon removal tech. She led and supported early-stage venture capital investments at Braemar Energy Ventures, focusing on digital energy, advanced materials, and industrial decarbonization. She also worked in strategy and business development at Eos Energy Storage, a zinc-based battery storage startup.
Hara started her career as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, where she advised clients in the renewable energy, specialty chemical, and enterprise SaaS sectors. She also volunteered as a product designer with TechnoServe’s Cocoa Program in Cote d’Ivoire and as an engineer with the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia.
Jake Fairbanks Kelley
Founder & CEO
Jake is the Founder & CEO of Blue-Green Futures, that is partnered with: Hot Planet Repair Team & Carbotura; Our Planet Our Future; Foundation for Climate Restoration (F4CR, in partnership with Open Air Collective). He has a Masters in International Relations from Leiden University with a focus on the Global Political Economy, AI, criminals/terrorists and surveillance states. He loves designing and growing circular and regenerative solutions and cultures. He enjoys turning trash to treasure with Carbotura’s zero-waste, no-emission Recycolotrons (which is also licensed to Hot Planet Repair Team). Our services accelerate humanity’s ability to untrash air, water and land as it doesn’t need to sort or clean waste, but breaks it down to the nano-molecular level and then turns it into valuable commodities like biofuel, biochar, graphene and water. As Janitors Without Borders, we’re closing the circularity gap, plus providing community development, reporting/tracking, and increased revenues to waste management and governments.
He believes in anti-corruption, education, transparency and “carbon tunnel vision”. At F4CR, he works on systems for accountable carbon removal policy, MRV and climate restoration (carbon removal) in Europe, Africa, Latin America and beyond. The sectors and opportunities that Jake also enjoys include: the built environment, education, regenerative agriculture/aquaculture, energy, policy, coalition-building and ecorestoration (as a founding member of Eco Restoration Alliance).
Previously, Jake worked at the UN (UNICRI) Centre for AI & Robotics in advancing action-oriented engagement on research, projects and governance frameworks that concentrated on the ethical, legal, social and security implications of how advanced technologies like AI are utilized by criminals, terrorists and stakeholders in security. Earlier, he worked at Tufts University for senior leadership to manage their communications, PR and university-wide strategic planning initiatives. He also has professional media and marketing experiences, like helping the VICE Media marketing team establish their new TV Channel, VICELAND.
Jakob Hackel
Cryptoeconomist and Technical Project Manager
Jakob is a researcher focussing on socio-technical systems. He has recently defended his PhD thesis at the Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics, part of the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU). Prior to his PhD he has earned a Masters degree in Digital Currencies at the University of Nicosia. In his 4 years at the institute he has worked on projects with start-ups, governments, central banks and large international organizations such as the World Bank Group. He continues to hold lectures at the university, presents research at conferences and takes part in hackathons. He currently works on cryptoeconomics systems through advisory and consulting, as well as with the engineering firm BlockScience.
James Bettauer
Co-Founder
Co-founder and CEO of the ecoToken System and a founding member of the WaterDAO. Seeking to develop a thriving water credit market and bring more projects online through prefunding environmental credit generation.
I have a very unorthodox background coming out of the professional sports world to focus on environmental regeneration.
Jan Hendrik Scheufen
Owner
Aldeia IT
Blockchain/Web3 Expert and Builder since 2016. Currently active in ReFi and supporting regenerative projects and environmental stewards through digital infrastructure. Advocate for bioregional economies to build resilience and restore ecosystems.
Jason Clay
Senior VP, Market Transformation
JASON CLAY is senior vice president for markets and executive director of the Markets Institute at WWF, which was created to identify and address emerging global issues, trends, and tools impacting conservation in more timely, cost-effective, and scalable ways. His career has ranged from working on a family farm to working for the US Department of Agriculture. He taught at Harvard and Yale and spent more than 35 years with human rights and environmental NGOs. In 1988, Clay founded Rainforest Marketing, set up a trading company within an NGO, helped Indigenous people access global markets, and launched Ben & Jerry’s Rainforest Crunch, plus more than 200 other products with sales of $100 million. From 1999 to 2003, he co-directed a consortium with WWF, the World Bank, UN FAO, and NACA to identify the most significant environmental and social impacts of shrimp aquaculture as well as practices to reduce them. From 2004 to 2012, he convened multi-stakeholder roundtables to create performance-based standards for commodities including salmon, soy, sugarcane, cotton, and beef. He has been a leader in WWF’s work on agriculture, aquaculture, livestock, and corporate engagement and launched the Market Transformation initiative in 2006. Clay leads WWF-US efforts to improve private sector supply chain management—e.g., ingredient sourcing, carbon emissions, water use, and effluent. In 2008, he created the Carbon and Commodities program to address supply chain GHG emissions. He has helped whole sectors improve their sustainability performance (e.g., the Global Salmon Initiative). Clay has authored 18 books and 400 articles and has given more than 1,000 invited presentations. He studied anthropology and agriculture at Harvard, the London School of Economics, and Cornell (PhD).
Jeanne Bloch
Co-Founder
Jeanne Bloch is Decentralized-Desires founding-Steward, a DeSci art based innovation lab for Regenerative Economy.
She is a 20+y sustainability professional, ReFi engaged and an artist-researcher. She teaches Sustainability, Blockchain/Web3 and Art thinking, to (engineer, business and arts) students around the world (Paris, Seoul, New York, San Francisco, Brussels, London, Warsaw, Ann Arbor (Michigan), St Louis (Missouri)… )
Kernel Alumni & TEC/Omega proud member, ReFi DAO supporter…
Jeff Emmett
Token Engineering Researcher
Token Engineering Researcher designing ethical market microstructures and local currencies for social & environmental impact.
Jeffrey Potent
Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affiars
Jeffrey Potent is adjunct professor of international and public affairs at the Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs. He serves on the Columbia Climate School, Healthy and Sustainable Food Systems Network, co-chairs the Columbia University Seminar Series on Sustainable Finance and numerous other food and agriculture planning, advisory and executive boards. Formally, Jeff held leadership positions with the US Department of Agriculture, US Environmental Protection Agency and Cornell and Rutgers Universities.
Joel Mason
Chief of Staff and Project Lead
Joel Mason holds a PhD in new organizational systems, and works to design such systems in partnership with tech and economy through a cultural and creative lens. He is the lead facilitator of the Department of Measures and Flows for Economic Space Agency, a network-in-becoming that creates protocols to value care, the environment, and creative contribution.
Johannes Pulsfort
Co-Founder
Ambitious experienced professional whose core strength is to consult clients and win partnerships by identifying strategic opportunities. Internationally oriented, speaking five languages and with proven entrepreneurial spirit. Eager to learn new skills and passionate about today’s technological possibilities such as Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, IoT and quantum computing.
Holds a Doctoral Degree in the topic of “Blockchain technology / DLT (distributed ledger technology) and tokenization as enablers of sustainable supply chains”
Various projects and papers with UN FAO on blockchain and sustainable agri food supply chains.
John Goedschalk
Founder & CEO
John Goedschalk is an accomplished business leader and conservationist from Suriname. John’s educational background includes a bachelor’s degree in economics and international relations from Beloit College in Wisconsin, USA, and an MBA in finance and marketing from NIMBAS University in Utrecht, Netherlands.
Throughout his career, John has held various positions at prestigious companies such as Ernst & Young, McDonald’s Netherlands, and ABN AMRO in the Netherlands, and later Suriname. In addition to these corporate roles, John is also a successful entrepreneur, having founded multiple start-up companies, including FreshCotton, which was a leading online Amsterdam streetwear sales retail company. John later moved into the public sector where he led the Climate Compatible Development Agency within the Office of the President, leading climate change negotiations and climate finance initiatives on behalf of Suriname. He then moved to the non-profit sector where he was the Executive Director at Conservation International Suriname for 10 years overseeing multiple conservation, governance and livelihood projects. Here he also helped found the Friends of Green Suriname program within Conservation International to collaborate with local companies for the conservation and restoration of Surinamese biodiversity. John is dedicated to preserving Suriname as the greenest country on earth. He is committed to advocating for forest sector reform, such as reduced impact logging methods. He is also passionate about developing alternative income sources for vulnerable and disadvantaged people. In BioTara these passions come together.
Joseph Boulos
intern
The born global foundation
Lebanese intern at the born global foundation.
Computer science and maths student at université Paris Saclay.
Josiah Hunt
CEO
Josiah Hunt graduated from UH Hilo in 2004 with a Bachelor of Science in Agroecology and
Environmental Quality. Since 2008 he has helped to innovate methods for biochar production, processing, and application in farming systems. He is founder and CEO of Pacific Biochar Benefit Corporation.
Juan Duran
Executive Director
As the CEO of EcoRegistry I combine my passion for technology with my love for sustainable development, biodiversity and society. I started my career developing software for electrical mobility, as I understood that the future would need more climate friendly transportation systems, and after moving back to my birth country (Colombia) I had the opportunity to work at the independent system operator and wholesale energy market administrator. At the beginning responsible for the real time simulation systems and afterwards as innovation leader I learned how important it is for a team to have a clear and passionate goal like getting energy to a whole country. Then we started with this interesting venture called EcoRegistry, to bring information and trust to sustainability markets, allowing me to understand more about the purpose of each action and how technology can shape the world.
Juan Sebastian Castellanos
Chief Legal Officer
Colombian lawyer specialized in Energy and Environmental Law with more than five (5) years of experience in the carbon market.
I worked in one of Colombia’s most important environmental NGOs, structuring multiple carbon Projects in the Colombian pacific, working with communities, private companies, and government entities.
I was head of the international legal team of ALLCOT, giving legal counsel to several projects worldwide, drafting multiple agreements, and reviewing environmental and climate regulations.
Nowadays, I’m a Rapporteur of the Sabin Center’s Peer Review Network of Climate Litigation for the Escazú Committee and Paris Agreement Committee to Support Implementation and Compliance and the Chief Legal Officer of the Environmental Markets Fairness Foundation.
My main goal is to understand the different legislations of the global South and promote a carbon market where all participants have crucial information and can make decisions that will protect the environment and avoid the climate crisis.
Kaitlin Archambault
Founder & CEO
Kaitlin Archambault is Founder & CEO of Open Future Coalition, developing social, technological, and financial tools that resource community based solutions at a global scale. Their Open Impact platform currently serves impact organizations and networks in 51 countries. With experiences that range from designing institutional-grade financial services platforms to leading global organizations through complex rebrands, Kaitlin has spent much of her time ensuring that technology is thoughtfully constructed for the greater good: taking into account issues of governance, compliance, and ethics. Prior to founding Open Future Coalition, Kaitlin spent over a decade as a designer, creative director, and communications strategist, growing and leading creative and product teams and launching social impact brands on 5 continents. Kaitlin founded Brooklyn-based studio Incendiary Designs in 2013, and has advanced policy and thought leadership programs for outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Hill. Kaitlin’s background is in public art and grassroots movement building, and she is a fierce advocate for issues of liberation and economic equity.
Katherine Von Stackelberg
Senior Research Scientist
Dr. von Stackelberg has long worked at the intersection of science and policy, originally in assessing public health risks of exposure to environmental contaminants, which expanded to the role of natural systems, expressed as ecosystem services, in supporting well-being, and the subsequent valuation of those ecosystem services to support policy analyses. Her ScD dissertation was based on a contingent valuation survey to monetize the benefit associated with risk reductions to ecological receptors exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls in the environment. She is currently working with a team to develop an ecosystem integrity index (EII; in review at a Frontiers journal) expressed as carbon-weighted hectares, that combines earth observation, machine learning, and confirmatory ground-level data and links to a monetized (or tokenized) valuation of biodiversity attributes. Dr. von Stackelberg attended COP15 as a delegate, and is a member of TNFD and the Ecosystem Services Workgroup of GeoBON.
Dr. von Stackelberg has an ScD and ScM from Harvard University in Environmental Science & Risk Management and Environmental Health and Health Policy & Management, respectively.
Ken Alex
Director
Ken Alex is the director of Project Climate. Ken was a senior policy advisor to Governor Jerry Brown in California, the director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, and the chair of the Strategic Growth Council. Before joining the Brown Administration, Ken was the head of the California Attorney General’s Office Environment section. For a short profile of Ken and some of his work from 2018, see CalMatters
Kevin Kelly
Founder
Kevin is the founder of Glasmor Software, a firm building a cloud-hosted greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions calculation engine. It is used in software calculators targeting specific domains. He maintains the open source software, atomic6ghg, a Python library implementing methods formalized in the international standard GHG Protocol.
Kevin’s software development career spans the PC and internet revolutions. With long runs at Microsoft, General Electric and LexisNexis, Kevin brings a breadth of domain, design, and implementation experience to his software products. His recent work in tools for ClimateTech has added a sense of urgency.
Kieran White
Co-founder & CEO
Co-Founder and CEO of Return. Background mainly in climate-tech, having started his career at Tesla working in special operations and projects. He then went onto work at an early stage hardware startup called Lasso Loop Recycling as their COO. In both instances he worked on projects to integrate voluntary carbon credits and came up against the current market limitations first hand. After seeing these limitations, he decided to set out on the journey of starting Return.
Kimberly Samaha
CEO
Dr. Samaha is a serial entrepreneur and investor with over 30 years of experience. She specialized in US deregulated energy market, launching a series of start-ups and managing the acquisitions into large multi-national companies such as AES-Constellation Energy, ABB and GE. In Europe she worked with ABB-Zurich and Alstom & Areva – Paris integrating start-up ventures.
Currently she is the CEO of Synthesis Venture Fund Partners and the Born Global companies which focuses on technology and process innovation acceleration in the Bioeconomy intersection of Waste Energy & Food.
She holds a BS- Electrical Engineering from Boston University, an MBA in Entrepreneurship from Babson and a Ph.D in the Diffusion of Influence from Fielding. She founded the international forum the Bordeaux Energy Colloquium, the Beirut Ethics Colloquium and is an adjunct professor of Business Ethics at AUB (American University of Beirut)
Kipp Stroden
Executive Director
Dedicated to connecting people with nature as the source of healing. Founder/CEO of Essential Living Foods, leading superfood brand (Acquired by Nestle in 2018). Founder of 501c3 Ancient Future Medicine. Natural products market maker, pioneer in: Superfoods, biohacking, functional foods, nutraceuticals. Founding member of the B Corp. Developed transparent, social impact supply chains, creating livelihoods for thousands of farmers and Indigenous communities in Amazonia. Currently focused on bringing new natural pharmaceuticals inspired by ancient botanical medicine knowledge to market, Carbon credit projects with Indigenous partners and an indigenous forward spring water brand.
Lauren Serota
Co-Founder & Advisor
I am a product and design leader focused on creating positive social and environmental impact in emerging industries. I have built and led product, strategy, and design teams across 4 continents to bring first-in-market propositions to life, many of which serve rural agrarian value chains. I advise sustainability, agriculture, and climate start-ups in their formation, product strategy, community engagement, and go-to-market.
A few activities past and present relevant to the EBF community:
- I was a founding board member for the US-based food policy non-profit The Greenfield Project.
- I co-founded and now advise Funga, a biotech startup restoring the forest mycobiome.
- I am an Entrepreneur-In-Residents with the Climate Collective, and lead a workstream (including a pilot) on payments for ecosystem services.
- I co-chaired a World Economic Forum working group on digital carbon credits and advise other multi-lateral groups in defining and driving best practices and standards for ecological assets and ecosystem services.
- I am a member of the founding faculty for the alternative social innovation school the Austin Center for Design, and now teach at the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Integrated Design.
- I founded and operate a clean cosmetics company with a cult following.
Letty Prados
Venture & Legal Counsel
Regen Living
Leticia has a 15-year expertise in impact entrepreneurship and mission driven organizations. Initially as a founder, she led startups in the purpose-driven work and gamification verticals under global networks such as Explorer and The Founder Institute, where she also became a mentor.
Her passion for technological development benefiting humanity led her to consult for the XPrize Foundation in the affordable housing roadmap, and for Bridge for Billions and other social innovation-led platform organizations within the Impact Hub brand internationally. She is now focused on ReFi, token engineering and blockchain applications for growing web3 impact projects and on the ground regenerative developments.
Before that, she was a licensed lawyer in the Madrid Bar Association advising in corporate and labor law at Cuatrecasas, and later a research consultant in a big media company in London, where she gained a MA in European and International Studies at King’s College London. She also completed the first accredited executive programme in Cryptoassets and Blockchain from the London School of Economics.
Lise Colyer
Founder and Executive Director
Lise Colyer’s background is in journalism – delivering at pace – and human rights. She worked with Shell Chairman Sir Geoffrey Chandler at Amnesty International on developing their first Corporate Social Responsibility network in the 90s.
She delivered CSR globally for FTSE 100 multinational Sage and worked directly with the CEO of AgriBriefing in developing and delivering their iteration as an agribusiness price benchmarking proposition. Through this work, she grew close to the challenges faced by their clients, the ABCDs, ADM, Bunge, Cargill, Louis Dreyfuss etc.
Lise initially mapped the full human rights impacts of the food system into a method of measuring sustainability after interviewing dozens of world leading experts for Quota.Media. They said:
- We need a harmonised approach
- Nobody wants a proprietorial system
- Sustainability rights need to be the same globally
Following a successful campaign to the UN Food Systems Summit in 2021 with Quota.Media, she launched OmniAction with co-founders including Professor Tim Lang (who founded the Centre for Food Policy at City University, London) and Foodsteps CEO Anya Doherty, in January 2022. So, Lise moved from advocacy to action.
OmniAction is now a global volunteer community of more than 600 food system experts working across science and academia, business, government policy, consumer rights, civil society, and everything in-between. Uniquely, it operates transparently, is free to join and thereby reflects no vested interests, allowing the best science and expertise to rise to the top. OmniAction’s data scientists and LCA practitioners are working at the coal-face of sustainability and bring their first-hand knowledge of the challenges to developing solutions.
OmniAction has published its first set of framework indicators, which it will continually update, and is now working with businesses and academia to apply
the framework. Collaborators include community members from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, World Benchmarking Alliance, Indigenous Peoples organisations including Tribal Link, COICA and the Indigenous Peoples’ Climate Justice Forum, along with Consumers International, HowGood, NSF, a variety of UN agencies, Slavefree Trade International, True Cost Accounting Accelerator, Access to Nutrition Initiative, European Economic and Social Committee, World Farmers Markets Coalition, Advance ESG, GAIN and FAIRR. We belong to the EAT Foundation’s Food Forward Consortium.
You can see OmniAction’s spokesman presenting at COP27 here: https://vimeo.com/showcase/9931881/video/770603463
Maex Ament
Co-Founder and Partner
Co-Founder of Crane Earth, a ReFi and web3-focused VC fund. 5x founder in enterprise SaaS, FinTech and web3. Founder of Centrifuge, a real-world asset tokenization and financing protocol.
Marcus Aurelius
KlimaDAO
Emperor of Rome; Governor of Tunisia; Stoic Philosopher
Just kidding 😛
While I did study philosophy in school, my professional background is in data science, machine learning, and software engineering. I’ve been in the Web2 data world for almost a decade, but became fascinated by the opportunity to use smart contracts to revolutionize entire segments of the economy via novel coordination mechanisms.
I’m excited to leverage my data science and engineering skillset to scale environmental assets at KlimaDAO – fighting climate change with incentivized cooperation. My favorite part about working for a DAO is that, in addition to my technical work building data infrastructure, dashboards, and Discord bots, I also get to dust off my philosophical and economic training as I help to manage the treasury on the Policy Team, as well as formulate the strategic vision of KlimaDAO as a member of the Core Team.
Mark Johnson
Sacred Waters
University degree in mathematics, dual major in medicine, 1980. Co-founder Trinity Springs Ltd., 1990. National/International marketer of Source spring water with out disinfection or processing. Nationally recognized, #1 in sales all case volume, Natural Foods 1998-2006. Offered in 5 Countries. Sold in 2014.
Martin Wainstein
Founder & Executive Director
Martin Wainstein is the founder and Executive Director of the Open Earth Foundation, a research and deployment non-profit focusing on digital innovations and open collaborations around planetary-scale projects such as developing a global climate accounting system—Open Climate. Martin held appointments at the Yale Center for Business and the Environment and the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale, where he launched and led the Yale Open Innovation Lab, and advanced projects at the Digital Currency Initiative of the MIT Media Lab. His PhD work focused on the transformation of the global energy business system. He founded the Hyperledger Climate Action and Accounting SIG at the Linux Foundation, and actively advises deep tech startups.
Matt Sheffer
Chief technology Officer
Matt Sheffer is a farmer, researcher, writer, and champion of the regenerative agricultural movement. Matt has worked in production agriculture for over 10 years. He has extensive experience working in diverse systems at varying scales, implementing large-scale regenerative transition, and developing regional regenerative supply chains. For the past four years, Matt has been leading a non-profit research organization, Hudson Carbon, working on advancing science and policy to support landscape-scale regenerative food system transition across the globe.
Matt is a systems thinker who is passionate about food systems, ecology, and ecosystem regeneration. He is dedicated to finding solutions that harmonize the production of food, feed, fiber, fuel, and medicine with the complex interactions and cycles that define healthy ecosystems.
Matthew Smithies
Managing Director
I’m a driven senior software engineer with a focus of Laravel on the backend and React Native on the mobile side. I love to learn and gladly offer any help to those around me grow and ensure that any codebase I touch is in better shape than when I started. I’ve worked the whole of my career as a remote developer, setting my own challenges, keeping my motivation sparked and getting work done every single day. I pride myself on being consistent, determined and getting the work done.
Matthieu Hayoz
Freelance Product/Project Manager
Product-oriented manager, trained at EPFL and Stanford, with strong achievements in the industry. Uses product development, feature analysis, product management and project management techniques to develop, improve, and market products with success. Experience in Blockchain, DeFi, ReFi, NFT. Passionate about web3 technologies and their capability to create fair decentralized environments accessible to everyone.
Monty Bryant
Co-Founder, Product & Contact Lead
See https://www.montybryant.co.uk/
Currently Product & Content lead @ReFiDAOist. Monty is a changemaker working with people and organisations to build a better future. He has a master’s in Management & Innovation from the University of Bristol with expertise in sustainability, digital technologies, blockchain, and design & systems thinking.
Ned Harvey
Chief Executive Offiver
Ned is the CEO and Co-Founder of Digital Gaia. Prior. to foundinG Digital Gaia Ned served for over a decade as a Managing Director at Rocky Mountain Institute developing market-based solutions for energy and climate transition. He has over 30 years of diverse business leadership experience, renewable energy development, consulting, consumer products, and military service in the US Navy. He is currently chairman of the Colorado Cleantech Industry Association.
Ned Horning
Co-Founder
Ned is an environmental remote sensing specialist and geospatial jack of all trades with over 35 years of experience. Before working for Regen Network Development he spent nine years at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, nine years working as a private consultant, and 18 years with the American Museum of Natural History’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation. He is thrilled to be applying his skills to support planetary regeneration.
Nicolas Alexander
Head of Partnerships & Policy
Passionate about the intersection of social impact and business, Nicolas has 8 years experience in building mission-driven partnerships with a range of public and private sector stakeholders. This includes 5 years in multilateral affairs as a UK representative to the United Nations in Geneva.
For the last two years, he consulted for a number of outfits and acted as Principal for an impact-driven investment firm, whilst also pursuing an MBA at the IESE Business School. He holds Bachelors and Masters degrees from McGill University and the London School of Economics and Political Science, respectively.
As Head of Partnerships & Policy at Thallo, Nicolas engages with stakeholders across the carbon and web3 ecosystems – striving to scale an efficient and more credible voluntary carbon market.
Pedro Parrachia
I’m Pedro, an action researcher, coordinator and storyteller who strives to lovingly make a difference toward a more equitable world, one that fits many worlds. A Kernel fellow, Token Engineering Academy alum, UNESCO-SOST board member, and recently I fell in love with writing.
I have been working in the areas of DAOs and blockchain since 2018. And conducted workshops, co-authored two books, modeled cryptoeconomic systems, and developed scalable solutions for DAOs. My experience spans across several domains, including education, token engineering, and decentralized governance. While enjoying this breadth of knowledge and skill set, I am committed to upholding the core values of mutual aid, playfulness, and accountability.
Full Proof of Work at http://bit.ly/Parrachia-Proof-of-Work
Peter Corke
Founder
Multi-disciplined entrepreneur who has shaped and launched numerous businesses, brands, products, and services both virtual and physical for bluechip international brands and start-ups alike. His commercial experience spans multiple disciplines, verticals and regions. A passionate technologist, futurist and environmentalist he believes humanity has the tools to create a sustainable and regenerative future– we just need to pivot the business models and culture to that end.
Peter Olivier
Head of New Markets
I write about transitioning to the climate fight here: peterolivier.substack.com
At the Financial Clinic, I built the software development team and guided the design and development of the Change Machine Salesforce Application.
At Agora for Good, I led our product development team, and now advise on strategy. At Endeavor, I led our software development initiatives, including web and app development, as well as data management and process implementation across our 22 countries.
I’m passionate about prototyping, iterative development, and human centered design when building new products, and meaningful metrics and reporting structures when managing or consulting on existing products.
Peter Rosberg
Vice President of Integration Engineering
Peter believes that the intersection of web3 and carbon markets will allow new business models to flourish and scale while also improving carbon credit transparency and quality. Most recently, Peter has been leading carbon markets product management at RippleX, working on solutions and services for carbon and ecological markets based on the XRP Ledger. Prior to that, he was VP of Engineering at Ripple working on the RippleNet product. He has been in the Silicon Valley Startup scene for 30 years working for iconic companies such as PayPal and across various industries including sustainability, crypto, fintech, and e-commerce. He is a technologist, startup mentor, and angel investor.
Prach Sri
Project Lead
Prach is a cross-disciplinary scientist. After a MS in biotechnology he moved into high-tech for hard science and now develops equitable carbon projects for smallfarmers in the Amazon rainforest — Savimbo.com
A prototype ‘delinquent savant’, Prach launched the Todreamalife.com international consulting network, then led serial startups in biotech and machine-learning applying emerging science to intractable problems. His current passion project is Savimbo, a fair-trade carbon credit platform which uses drones, satellite monitoring, and AI to support smallfarmers in tropical forests who want to conserve for a monthly micropayment.
Prach uses biology, applied science, systems and design thinking to solve complex problems. He is dedicated to enhancing the science behind climate change and biodiversity to make markets more transparent, and transactable for people who matter.
Ranil Senanayake
Chairman
Ranil Senanayake is a Systems Ecologist trained at U.C.Davis, He has developed Analog Forestry as a rural response to the critical need of restoring the worlds lost forests functions. He has served as Executive Director of the Environmental Liaison Center International in Nairobi, Kenya and as the Senior Scientist for Counterpart international, Washington D.C. He taught at Monash University and was the senior Ecologist at the Center for Farm Planning at Melbourne university, which assisted in setting up the national Landcare program for Australia. He was the first international crops inspector for the national Association for Sustainable Agriculture Australia (NASAA) and created the Forest Garden Products (FGP) certification system for the International Analog Forestry Network. Today he chairs EarthRestoration p/l in Sri Lanka which works at realizing value of Primary Ecosystem Services (PES) as a new source of rural wealth.
Rio Richardson
Head of Product
Rio is Chief of Staff at oneshot.earth, currently setting up operations and digital product development. She’s interested in using finance to solve sustainability issues.
Rob de Laet
Fellow
Dutch, born 1956, adventurer, world traveller, philosopher, climate activist, now living mostly in a damaged part of the Brazilian rainforest, where he is rewilding a secluded valley and restoring the small water cycle, watching with gratitude as many species return to the area. From an early age gripped by the question of ”what is consciousness” as well as by the likely collapse of global human civilization.
Rob understands the whole planet as one living organism and looks at solutions from the lens of biomimicry and at a planetary scale from a perspective of geo-biomimicry.
Rob is working on a plan to avert the dieback of the Amazon Rainforest based on strengthening the biotic pump function over the area. The discovery of the biotic pump by Antonio Nobre and others is crucial for planetary recovery and regeneration. The Amazon is an organ vital to a balanced climate and once revitalized, the great biome will help reinvigorate all life on Earth and open up new futures to humanity, connecting to the hidden wonders of biodiversity of the area and the scientific insights held by the Indigenous peoples.
Rob also developed a combination of strategies to activate humanity to reverse the planetary destruction fast. If successful, it is possible to see the first cooling of the planet within twenty years.
Samuel Seongeun Lee
ESG-specialist
Climatecoin
Samuel is a ESG-specialist with a background in supply chain management, ESG disclosure(CDP, TCFD) and corporate initiatives including EV100, SBTi, RE100, Corporate Renewable Energy initiative(CoREi) and Business Integrity Society(BIS). Samuel has also participated in legislative amendments in ESG disclosure, ESG public procurement and corporate renewable procurement in South Korea.
Samuel has contributed to the first coal finance report in Korea in an effort to disclosure Korean’s FI’s exposure to the stranded asset, the first corporate guideline for renewable electricity procurement, and annual climate-related disclosure reports of Korean companies.
Sonja Stuchtey
Founder and CEO
Sonja started her professional carreer as a strategy consultant with Booz.Allen & Hamilton. Soon she pivoted to an entrepreneurial path, founded an award-winning social entreprise, co-shaped this new field of social business, established the first social franchise and modernized science education. Her books are still serving for teacher trainings in the space.
After more than a decade in science education she moved into tech particularly internet platforms as Senior Advisor, Investor, and Board Member. In 2022 she co-founded The Landbanking Group together with her partner Prof. Martin Stuchtey to create and catalyze nature markets for the restoration and preservation of land at planetary scale.
Besides her business engagements she is chairing the Supervisory Board of Alliance4Europe, which she co-founded in the spirit of preserving democracy in the wake of extremism in 2018. Moreover, she serves the idea of responsible business, long-termism, ethical tech and inclusive metrics as member of the Supervisory Board of the Capitals Coalition, and as fellow in the Atlantic Council GeoTech Center.
Sonja has studied Business Administration at WHU (Germany), IAE (France), UC Berkeley (USA), International Education at Bath University (UK), Data Sciences at UC Berkeley (USA) and holds a PhD of TU Munich (Germany). She is a passionate learner delightedly picking up new skills. Sonja is married and the mother of six children.
Stefan Renton
Sustainability Lead
Stefan Renton is the Sustainability Lead at Polygon Labs, a leading blockchain protocol developer, offering scalable, affordable, secure, and sustainable blockchains for Web3. Prior to joining, he was a founder of Reverse Token, an environmental based project aimed to help assist in both educating awareness around the complexities of the climate crisis and create impact through an efficient and democratic sustainable grant program.
Stefan has also spent the past two years consulting with non-Web3 organizations on the applications of blockchain in their sustainability strategy and assisted Bitcoin mining operations in their transition to renewable energy infrastructure.
Tarah Stafford
The Elephant Room
My background is in screenwriting. Having spent so much time imagining new worlds, endeavoring to understand what makes characters tick, creating complex plots and then attempting to make those stories ‘felt’ experiences, I have developed a number of strange talents: learning how to thrive on very little sleep being one of them. This has been essential as I also work full time on various climate solutions. I say various because I have worked on everything from neighbourhood energy, to business advocacy, to political & PR campaigns to First Nation legal challenges to food security and climate action plans.
I am the Co-Founder of the climate communications think tank, ‘The Elephant Room’ where we conduct research, craft strategic campaigns and pilot projects to move the needle on climate change and the Co-Executive Director of eDemocracy’s ‘Carbon Budget’, working with cities, NGO’s, companies and Indigenous Nations on public engagements, decarbonization and energy and emissions plans. I have also been supporting Gitcoin grantees in web3 world and doing some blockchain enabled climate solutions research for the Ethereum Foundation.
What I love the most is using storytelling and dinners to bridge the gap between complex worlds and regular people – to wit I am told that my best asset is that I am friendly
Ted Schmitt
Senior Director
Ted Schmitt is the Senior Director, Conservation at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) and Director of Skylight. Prior to AI2, Ted has spent over 15 years leading efforts to bring fit-for-purpose technology for good solutions to a range of terrestrial and marine Conservation issues at Vulcan Inc. He has worked extensively in Africa with field organizations applying technology to secure and manage protected areas. Prior to joining AI2, Ted was a Senior Program Officer for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board at the United States National Academies of Science. He served as Business Development Director at several technology start-ups in Germany, Sweden, and the United States, leading the application of technology for impact on a range of issues. He started his career as a software engineer for IBM, earning patents and several technical achievement awards. Ted holds a Master of Arts in International Science and Technology Policy from George Washington University, a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, and a Bachelor of Arts in German from Purdue University. He is Chair of the Purdue School of Language and Culture Advisory Board.
Tica Lubin
Registry Program Coordinator and Project Manager
Passionate about using my skills in science communication, design, and project management to work towards more regenerative systems and enduring healthy ecosystems. 30 years experience in science communication design working as an exhibit fabricator, content developer, and project manager at museums such as the American Museum of Natural History, The Discovery, and consultant on multiple projects worldwide. MA in Sustainable Design focusing on sustainable and regenerative system transformation and design as well as communication strategies to enable and foster transformations. Lead coordinator at Regen Network for Science and Registry teams, in particular methodology development and collaboration efforts.
Wes Geisenberger
VP of Sustainability & ESG
At the HBAR Foundation Wes Geisenberger leads the Sustainable Impact Fund focused on Climate Markets, Biodiversity, Energy, and Supply Chain related areas. This includes deploying grant funding, developing open source tooling, research & development, as well as engaging partners and Hedera Governing Council members to bring their initiatives to market on Hedera in Regenerative Finance (ReFi). In his capacity overseeing the fund Wes has spoken at climate focused events including the UNGA, COP, & Davos. Wes was named to the Cointelegraph top 100 influencers for his work in web3 and sustainability.
Will Masters
Director
Attorney turned web3 enthusiast & refi builder; co-founder and chief voice at Ogallala Life, domain specialist, circle lead at dMeter.
Contributors
Agustin Matteri
Founder
United Species
Agustin Matteri, is an expert in Environmental Law and Policy, with proven sound capacities to integrate donors and beneficiary countries interests in order to develop robust green strategies and financing portfolios. He counts with relevant experience working for the UNEP Climate Change Unit of the Latin America and the Caribbean Office (USD 150 million mobilized) and the Ministry of Environment of Argentina. He was the Programme Officer for coordinating UN-REDD activities in Latin America and the Caribbean for UNEP (2021-22), where he performed as Task Manager for the biggest UNEP project worldwide: Paraguay GCF REDD+ results-based payments (USD 50M).
He has performed duties as the G20 focal point for the Argentina´s Presidency and Troika (2018-9) from UNEP. He has achieved the political buy-in, the endorsement and the drafting of some of the most relevant projects of UNEP: a USD 25M project under the GEF7 Sustainable Cities Impact Program for Argentina; 8 CBIT national projects approved by the GEF Secretariat for a total of USD12M (Costa Rica, Chile, Peru, Honduras, Argentina, Panama, Dominican Republic, Antigua and Barbuda); 3 National Strategies on Sustainable Mobility (Colombia, Panamá and Argentina); among others related to nature-based solutions in cities and food producers (City Adapt and MEbA Platforms).
He has also created and coordinated both the MOVE Platform to promoting sustainable mobility deployment in Latin America, and also the Regional Center for Climate Transparency for NDC tracking and LTS development, providing technical assistance for the development of MRV systems within Latin America and Caribbean countries.
Ameni Hasnaoui
Director of Carbon Removals
I am a carbon removal expert at TREEO, a startup company based in Stuttgart, Germany. I obtained a Ph.D. degree in Forest policy from the University of Göttingen, Germany in 2021 and have more than seven years experience in global forestland policy and sustainability with a special focus on the Mediterranean area. I got a Master’s degree in the management of natural ecosystems and an Engineering diploma in Agronomy from the National Agronomic Institute of Tunisia in 2014.
Andy Deacon
Director
Experienced sustainability professional and team leader, having led major research and delivery programmes in the UK, EU and globally. Policy and strategy expertise for Government, cities and in academia. Passionate about driving change at scale.
Specialties: energy efficiency finance and funding, city climate change mitigation and adaptation strategy and programme delivery, UK and international climate change science, urban air quality research
Anna Lerner
CEO
Strategic senior leader with expansive partnership, technology and social impact experience. I’m currently the CEO of the Climate Collective, a leading coalition of stakeholders––from investors and non-profit organizations to entrepreneurs and scientists––leveraging trusted, sustainable web3 infrastructure to unlock innovative and verifiable climate action at scale.
Most recently, I spent 4 years leading Meta’s (fm Facebook) strategy around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals; Meta’s investment in Gender Data; and the Global Strategic Partners program. Before that, I spent 7 years driving frontier tech adoption, climate finance, data and development innovation at the World Bank Group, including the Climate Mitigation portfolio of the Global Environmental Facility, the financing facility of UNFCCC, and decarbonization investments across the globe (RE/EE mostly). I lived several years in Mozambique, working for GIZ as a regional advisor on sustainable biomass policies, biofuels and project development of energy efficient cookstoves across several markets in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Anton Root
Head of Research
Experienced researcher with a keen interest in economics, carbon offsetting, alternative finance, climate finance, MSME funding, tech, international politics, and new media.
Antony Yousefian
VP Climate & Circularity
I’m passionate about transforming the food system, turning it from being extractive to regenerative. Focused on unlocking investment into the Agri-fintech ecosystem, promoting and helping to develop innovative solutions that change the incentives, economics and financial flows into the food supply chain. I started my career in asset management and investment banking, where I experienced the ESG capital wave and how the market was moving fast to quantification and impact measurement. With the desire accelerate positive change with finance, I started investing in early-stage start-ups that solved for this problem. The rollercoaster ride was too enjoyable and I got hooked. I’ve spent the last few years building an developing solutions for agtech, climatech which can drive system level change. I’m now convinced that If we can fix the food system, we have a shot at leaving a planet for our children, if we act now and get capital into the right teams and places.
Benjamin Leutner
Earth Observation Scientist
Dr. Benjamin Leutner oversees the scientific methodology and implementation of the cross-biome, cross-outcome natural capital MRV at The Landbanking Group. He has a background in environmental sciences, ecology and modelling as well as earth observation and machine learning.
Bill Baue
Senior Director
As an internationally recognized expert on Sustainability Context (thresholds & allocations), ThriveAbility, and Online Stakeholder Engagement, Bill designs systemic transformation at global, company, and community levels. A serial entrepreneur, he’s co-founder / instigator of a number of companies and initiatives: r3.0, Sustainability Context Group, Science Based Targets initiative, Currnt and Sea Change Radio. He played a key role in conceiving, developing, and piloting the United Nations Sustainable Development Performance Indicators (UNSDPIs), which mature beyond the UN Sustainable Development Goals by adding sustainability thresholds and transformation considerations) He works with organizations across the sustainability ecosystem, including AccountAbility, Audubon, Ceres, GE, Harvard, UNCTAD, UNEP, UN Global Compact, UNRISD, Walmart, and Worldwatch Institute.
Bryony Widdup
Co-Head Sustainable Finance and Investment
Bryony is a Partner and Co-Head of Sustainable Finance and Investments at Hogan Lovells, a large international law firm. She is a finance and fintech lawyer, with over 15 years’ experience advising on fundraising solutions in the financial services sector. Known for her dedication to clients, Bryony is skilled in transaction structuring, in finance for funds, broader lending platforms (including blockchain-based offerings) and digital assets including token structuring and issuance. She is passionate about sustainable finance and investment solutions and advises clients on a broad range of financings including green, social and sustainability-linked instruments, transition finance and impact investments.
Cate Kelly
Communications Manager
Communications manager at Open Forest Protocol, interested in the intersection between ReFi and culture, real-life application of ReFi and MRV. Happy to be learning!
Chris Mehus
Program Director
Born, raised, and educated in Montana, Chris Mehus has always maintained a joint passion for agriculture and the outdoors. He has applied his degrees in Wildlife Biology and Range Science to assist and advocate for ranchers who have a strong conservation ethic. After 10 years of ranching experience in Southern Montana putting his education to practice in numerous areas of grazing management and planning, Chris spent many years working in rural business, economic, and financial planning giving him unique insight into the workings of a ranch business to understand economic drivers and incentives that make ranching with nature a more profitable operating model than typical conventional practices. He is an outspoken advocate for the Ranching For Profit, Integrity Soils, Holistic Management International, and related schools of thought and how they can be applied to create a thriving ranch business while creating healthy, functioning ecological systems with rich soil and diverse wildlife populations.
Christoph Drayss
Coporate Finance
CFO of Green Gen Fund. Finance at Global Founders Capital.
Clément Gourrierec
Product Director
Clément is a Project Manager at Crystalchain, a leading company doing traceability since 2016 on the blockchain, with luxury brands, food companies…
To address the lack of transparency in the voluntary carbon market, we propose a new technology that tokenizes certified carbon credits and stores all project-related information on the blockchain. By leveraging the immutability and transparency of the blockchain, investors will have access to verifiable data on the carbon credits they are investing in. This will create a more transparent and secure carbon credit market, which will accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy.
David Bollier
Director
David Bollier is an American activist, scholar, and blogger who is focused on the commons as a new/old paradigm for re-imagining economics, politics, and culture. He pursues this work as Director of the Reinventing the Commons Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics [www.centerforneweconomics.org], and through international collaborations with commons scholars, activists, and policy experts. Bollier’s blog Bollier.org and monthly podcast Frontiers of Commoning, are popular sources of news and commentary about the commons, along with his ten books on various aspects of the commons. These include The Commoner’s Catalog for Changemaking (2021) Free, Fair and Alive (2019), and Think Like a Commoner (2014).
David Sisson
Senior Engineer
David has extensive experience designing and developing commercial software systems. Most recently he built and led Data Engineering and Data Science at an Ad Tech firm during their transition from a service-oriented business to platform provider. He has been a full product life cycle developer, and he has built teams necessary to scale these processes. He has experience building automated, data-driven, general business systems and data-acquisition/analysis applications in scientific and engineering settings. His tech career is informed by a Ph.D. in Neurophysiology and nine years of research experience in academic and pharmaceutical settings with a focus on using computational neuroscience to bridge micro (molecular and cellular) and macro (behavioral).
Donald Osborne-Moss
Senior Consultant
London Economics International
I am a 2nd year Social Impact MBA candidate at Boston University, with background career experience in construction management and a BS degree in mechanical engineering from Washington State University.
Elliot David
Head of Climate Strategy
An economist and carbon manager by training, Elliot is looking to create, scale, and support solutions that address some of the world’s most serious problems, with a particular focus on climate change, conflict, and justice. He is the Head of Climate Strategy and Partnerships at Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol, where he is addressing energy poverty, bridging the digital divide, and enabling financial inclusion. Elliot is a Schwarzman Scholar, climatetech startup advisor, and has worked across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.
Eric Watson
Co-Founder
Synergy Solutions
I was born in Boston, grew up in Northern California, live in Southern California, and am currently traveling in Central and South America. I produce film and series content globally. Am focused on developing regenerative economic solutions to empower indigenous communities to maintain sovereignty in the face of the tidal wave of extractive capitalism that threatens all life on earth.
Gabriel Orrego
Community Founder
I’m a systems thinker with background in Mechatronics Engineering.
Experimenting in the intersection of
🟢 Web3
🟢 Creator Economy
🟢 Cognitive Science
Helping self-managed individuals and self-organized collectives achieve efficient collaboration, enhanced productivity, effective decision-making and clarity of purpose.
By bringing alignment and transparency to information systems:
+ streamlining operations
+ shortening learning curves
+ facilitating context acquisition
Graham Wesolowski
Exectutice Director
Graham Wesolowski has been running around California’s wildlands from a young age and turned that into a career in landscape resilience beginning in 2009. In 2013, while a Master’s student at UCSB’s Bren School, he joined the Strategic Environmental Research Initiative for Wildfire and Climate Change. Beginning in 2015, he worked extensively on land conservation and stewardship efforts in the County as the Conservation Manager for the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County. His experience in landscape management and stewardship spans disciplines including steelhead restoration, large scale debris flow recovery and managing a commercial land-based aquaculture farm. He is currently the Executive Director of the non-profit Spatial Informatics Group – Natural Assets Laboratory and an incoming MBA student at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. When he is not helping communities to become more resilient, Graham is surfing somewhere along the Central Coast, or taking his kids to the SB Zoo to see the lions.
Guðmundur Sigbergsson
Chief Executive officer
Guðmundur is directly involved in climate actions and actively collaborates with domestic and international organizations. Both climate projects and actors promote transparent practices of carbon markets and facilitate the financing of climate actions in order to scale up real climate impacts.
Gudmundur is the founder and the CEO of the International Carbon Registry, a GHG program, and a climate registry. Earlier Gudmundur founded the accredited certification body iCert and was a managing director at the Central bank of Iceland.
Guðmundur also chaired a technical committee within Icelandic Standards that discussed responsible offsetting with the issuance of the prominent initiative ÍST 92:2022 Carbon offsetting: Requirements with guidance. He also participated as a member of the Nordic Dialog on Voluntary Compensation which outlined the Nordic perspectives on best practices for the voluntary use of carbon credits including a Nordic Code of Best Practice.
Guðmundur has served as a project manager for various initiatives, including iCert, Carbfix, and others in a project related to developing frameworks for carbon credit issuances based on CO2 mineralization.
Humberto Besso Oberto
Founder
Urbánika
To build a better world we need to first imagine it. I’m making sure postCapitalist and SolarPunk narratives are within mainstream conversation topics through gamifying learning about these.
Jakub Lanc
Research; Core Team
After studying computer science and psychology, I co-founded a youth mental health peer project. We started exploring the common paradigm, regenerative organizational patterns, and how P2P technologies like Holochain support those.
Currently, I am teaching courses “Commons, P2P and Digital Identity” and “Commons, Web3 and Design” at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, serving as a seed of the emerging “Distributed Commoning Lab”, where we relate those topics to Transition design.
I do also research for the Ministry of Environment, Czech Republic, related to Regenerative finance and Commons collaborative economy.
I’m also loosely collaborating with VisionsDAO – a ReFi DAO fund in the CZ and a regenerative modular housing project, “Live Differently”.
Jeremy Akers
Chief Vibe Officer
Enabling curiosity, care and courage with Liberating Structures
Josh Henretig
Managing Director, Climate Intelligence
Josh is a Managing Director at RMI, leading the Climate Intelligence Program, which focuses on applying data and technology to differentiate climate performance across material and energy industries and their associated value chains. Climate Intelligence works to enhance emissions visibility via open-source data platforms; advance carbon accounting systems that attribute emissions at various levels (corporate, facility, asset, product, etc.); establish and/or harmonize standards and marketplaces that allow us to differentiate the emissions intensity of raw materials, goods, and services; and advance the digital infrastructure and exchanges for tracing, valuing, and transacting these differentiated goods and services.
Prior to joining RMI, Josh served as Vice President of Global Partnerships at Higg, an integrated platform for sustainability insights that helps consumer goods businesses take responsibility for their entire social and environmental impact, from materials to products, from factories to stores, and across energy, waste, water, and working conditions.
Before Higg, Josh spent more than 17 years at Microsoft, where he played a leading role in shaping the company’s sustainability agenda, from its very first public environmental commitments in 2008 to its announcement in January 2020 that it would become “carbon negative” by expanding its internal carbon tax, reducing and removing its emissions since its 1975 founding, and deploying $1 billion to stimulate and accelerate the development of carbon removal technology. Over the years, Josh has worked on all aspects of corporate sustainability design and execution, from product development and strategic partnerships to developing scalable programs and tools to drive innovation while decoupling environmental impacts from the company’s business growth.
Julien Traisnel
Head of Carbon Markets
Currently running partnerships and investments in carbon markets at Ripple, a blockchain solutions provider. I spent the last 15 years in payments and financial inclusion, including some time at Google where I launched Google Pay in several countries. Also spent some time in West Africa, launching MTN Mobile Money
Kaushal Kumar Vaishnav
Boston University
2nd year MBA & MS digital technology student, passionate about clean energy and circular economy.
Leah Biery
Discovery Center Executive DIrector
Leah joined Tampa Bay Watch as Discovery Center Director in 2022. She is responsible for ensuring that the Discovery Center, a public education facility located on the St. Pete Pier, provides meaningful opportunities for locals and visitors to learn about Florida’s unique ecosystems and Tampa Bay Watch’s efforts to protect and restore them.
With an academic background in marine science and career experience in nonprofit management and communications, she is passionate about combining her skills to promote environmental stewardship. She is particularly interested in the intersection between food systems and ocean health, and how to effectively inspire behavioral changes that support health and sustainability.
Leah holds a Master of Science in Zoology from the University of British Columbia Fisheries Centre and a Bachelor of Science in Zoology from North Carolina State University, where she also earned a minor in Nonprofit Studies. She has been a collaborator on marine conservation, education, and aquaculture projects in Florida and abroad. In her free time she enjoys yoga, stand up paddleboarding, and exploring near and far.
Lilian Apaza Vargas
Investigator
Lilian Apaza Vargas, is a biologist, graduated from the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in Bolivia, with the thesis “Comparative study of the hunting and use of mammals in two Tsimane indigenous communities”. He worked in environmental organizations in Bolivia, such as Conservation International and Environmental Protection Tarija, Friends of Nature Foundation, in the areas of municipal management, protected areas and climate change, to promote actions for conservation and sustainable development in different territorial entities , at this stage, planning tools are published and a fund management event “Environmental Municipalities” is created.
Madina Firdaus
Graduate Assistant
Boston University
Social Impact MBA Graduate Student in Boston University with an Environmental Engineering background. Focusing on ESG strategy & Implementation.
Marc Johnson
Environmental Solutions Architect
Marc Johnson is an environmental solutions architect for Filecoin Green, a Protocol Labs initiative to decarbonize Filecoin and other Web3 networks. Before joining Filecoin Green, he was chief sustainability officer at BunkerTrace and senior associate at the non-profit Rocky Mountain Institute. Filecoin Green is a not-for-profit, public goods company that endeavors to decarbonize the Filecoin Network.
Marianne Sulzer
Policy & Markets
Professional with 15+ years of experience in international program management in sustainability, with particular expertise in sustainable agricultural sourcing and processing, corporate sustainability and supplier development in emerging markets.
Well-versed in structuring investments and providing technical assistance (TA) to leverage the impact of investments in agricultural finance, SME finance and green finance, including innovative financial solutions for blended finance.
Proven track record in program development and impact management for donors, investors (incl. foundations and philanthropists) and development finance institutions, thereby mobilising funding for inclusive financial products.
Emerging track record and expertise in philanthropic and corporate action for climate and biodiversity, achieving results and impact through investment and business strategy for conservation, regenerative agriculture and land restoration.
Maryam Ayati
Chief Executive Officer
Maryam is co-founder of Watr – the open blockchain ecosystem for physical commodity flows. Previously, she has led the creation of several multi-billion dollar physical commodity-based ventures and business models in start-up and Fortune 100 settings – including world firsts such as LNG to mobility, LNG-fueled mining, flare gas to mobility, LNG-fueled drilling and Shell’s LNG to Downstream and Marine businesses.
Prior to Watr, Maryam was the global head of Shell Trading’s Origination and Investments team – leading cross-commodity deal-making, investments and serving on the M&A executive team.
Maryam is also a co-founder of KomGo and Vakt enterprise blockchain coalitions (founding Board Chairperson for the latter). In 2017, these ventures were the first proofs of mass enterprise adoption of blockchain. Vakt for example launched to 67% of the Brent Crude market signed up as customers on day one.
In addition to Watr and Neo (ecosystem developer for Watr), she currently serves on the boards of Base Carbon and Exmar Shipping, Maritime and Offshore. Maryam continues to advise intergovernmental organizations, governments and energy C-suites on their response to digitalization, energy transition and the future of commodities. She is a contributor to Forbes.com and named in the top 200 most influential women in global commodities.
Mathew Yarger
CEO & Founder
Founder of DigitalMRV and Advisor for Sustainability and Climate at the IOTA Foundation. Mat also leads the Digital Infrastructure Working Group with Gold Standard and ClimateCHECK, has developed Data Confidence Fabrics with, Linux, Dell, Intel, ARM and others and currently leads secure data solution and service development at DigitalMRV as CEO and Founder. He is focused on solutions that enhance flexible and privacy centric data and value transfer for use in; Smart Cities, Critical Infrastructure systems, and environmental and energy systems.
Max Pinnola
Owner
I help digitize carbon standards and methodologies into Guardian policies to support the tokenization of GHG emissions and reductions, and identify Guardian features to support business requirements and a digital MRV ecosystem.
Meg Dennis
Senior Sustainability Consultant & Researcher
I’ve been a founder, program manager, CX designer and innovation consultant, however before all of these roles I was a farm girl in central-west Australia. Intensely curious about what I could learn from the world, I left the countryside to travel and work through at least a third of it (and still counting).
When I discovered Design Thinking, my career took a more impactful path, where today in all the work I do, people and the planet are at the heart of the problems to solve.
The more complex and digital life is becoming, the more I gravitate back to the environment, where I used to be connected to the weather, what we grew and raised and living a cleaner life. Sustainable principles and circular thinking now need to be central to everything we do as citizens and everything we build and create. This is core to my mission and purpose today.
My sweet spot is commercialising new technology, specifically climate tech and working on so many of the impossible problems to solve.
Michael Cooper
Technical Lead
Michael Cooper is considered an expert in Policy, Evaluation and Research given his 16 years of experience providing MEAL services to various UN agencies, the World Bank, USAID, Millennium Challenge Corp, the U.S. State Dept and numerous NGO’s and impact inventors. Michael specializes in MEAL for blockchain: his work includes creating the initial Learning Agendas for the adaptive use and performance measurement of blockchain for Social Impact with the Univ of Notre Dame, research and advisory services to World Bank with the Research Institute for Crypto Economics and trainings for USAID Missions on Web 3.0 solutions. He is a newly applied Trusted Seed with CommonsStack where he will provide technical assistance to incubate blockchain social impact projects. Michael has also published extensively on the subject.
Mihai Hrimiuc
Product Owner
Extremely passionate about building stellar teams and improving internal organizational systems.
4 years of experience in Project Management, I have a master’s in economics (Management) and combined my business experience in various roles with 6.5 Years of Youth NGO Work, building teams, projects and organizations with a total of 400 Volunteers, 4 Organizations, More than 25 projects and initiatives.
Have a Social Innovation Management Fellowship with the Amani Institute with a 9-month program in Kenya and 2 Years of experience in a fast-paced sustainability and web3 start-up, spanning 3 entities, 3 timezones and numerous products and initiatives.
Nate Louf
Director, Business Performance Analytics
Social Impact MBA student at Boston University
Paul McManus
Master Lecturer
I’m a 30-year tech industry, consultant and venture capital veteran and award-winning member of the faculty at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, teaching a range of courses in Strategy, Innovation and Sustainability/Social Impact at the undergraduate, graduate, and executive levels.
My journey in sustainability and social impact began in 2008, and current efforts focus on teaching and working with organizations.
– Developing innovative approaches to strategic knowledge creation and benefit-oriented strategic narratives that enhance value creation and delivery in the stakeholder economy.
– Implementing strategic pivots and transformational change digital, sustainability, or social impact initiatives,
– Investing in nature-based innovation and developing innovative business models and platforms to accelerate the development of regenerative/circular ecosystems, clusters, and bioregions.
– Rebuilding trust as the foundation of the social contract and stakeholder relationships and developing open organizations that deepen learning, enhance collaborations, accelerate social renewal, and amplify economic impact.
– Developing leaders who can respond effectively to complex and rapidly changing situations and lead others through uncertainty and ambiguity.
Pranav Khanna
Director of Strategic Initiatives
Pranav Khanna is Director of Strategic Initiatives at LOA Labs. He has a background in Sustainability, Circular Fashion, Plastic waste, Crypto, and Climate action.
Current work is at the intersection of Climate and Blockchain. In addition to LOA Labs, I have been a key contributor at the ReFi DAO community, and part of the Working group at Gitcoin Grants Climate Round.
Most recently organized India first ReFi summit, Dec 2022. Currently helping multiple startups in ReFi with scaling and goto market.
Past work includes an Accelerator, India first Circular fashion platform, Plastic traceability, and Circular Design challenge ( LFW )
Business mentor at Circular Design Challenge, Lakme Fashion Week.
Associated as Mentor with Fashion for Good, 500 startups, Amrita TBI.
Contributor to program on Circular Economy at Terra.do
UN/CEFACT – Contributor – Traceability for Sustainable Value Chains : Textile and Leather Sector
Rebecca Harman
Partnerships and Grants manager
Rebecca is the Partnership and Grants Manager at Regen Network Development PBC. She nurtures strategic relationships, catalyzes connections among stakeholders (land stewards, project and methodology developers and researchers), supports science initiatives and co-designs Regen Registry. She is a soil conservationist and a passionate birder.
Rebecca LeBlanc
President
Rebecca LeBlanc is a LCA, carbon accounting and climate change risk assessment consultant. She is an LCA practitioner, analyst and project manager who has experience in a broad range of business sectors including agriculture, chemicals, consumer goods, metals and mining and emerging biotechnology.
Sage Shelton
CEO and Co-Founder
Sage is committed to empowering ethical science in methodology development for holistic ecocredit classes.
Sage has experience ranging from primary research of soil microbiome composition by molecular techniques to consulting full time in GTM & sales enablement strategies for early-stage ventures.
Sarah Baxendell
Director of Ecosystem
Sarah Ashley Baxendell believes that ecological design and technology will catalyze climate change action. She is the designer and founder of Hilltop Urban Farm, the largest urban farm and first adult urban farm incubator in the US. Sarah spearheaded master plans for 625+ acres of urban parks and vacant land in the City of Pittsburgh. She currently leads the blockchain ecosystem at Regen Network, and advises the Blockchain Infrastructure Carbon Offsetting Working Group.
Since 2013 Sarah has raised $35M+ for climate impact projects. She speaks on topics such as regenerative design, technology and climate change on NPR and Bankless podcast. Sarah is the co-founder of the North American Permaculture Convergence, co-founder of Occupy Wall Street Sustainability Working Group, and former Senior Sustainable Development Director at Citizens Relief NYC.
Siska Martina Cahyati
Programme Officer
Currently work in the IUCN Headquarters in Switzerland, experiences in the Protected and Conserved Areas (PCA) topic: equitable governance and sustainable financing mechanism for PCA by implementing the IUCN Green List Standard. Specific thematic: economic development, financial inclusion, and passion in innovative solutions and blockchain for good causes.
Tara O’Shea
Senior Director, Forest & Land Use
Tara is passionate about realigning natural and human systems to forge more sustainable models of economic development, and has worked across the academic, nonprofit, finance and technology sectors towards this end. As a Senior Director at Planet, she oversees the company’s strategy for leveraging its Earth observation and analytics technologies to improve global forest monitoring systems today, and account for the value of forests in the global economy tomorrow.
With over thirteen years’ experience in sustainability and climate solutions, Tara began her career advancing ecosystem services research at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. In 2012, she helped start a nonprofit focused on engaging the private sector in Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), a financial mechanism for sustainable land use under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Prior to joining Planet, Tara advised several foundations and investment firms on integrating the reality of climate and environmental change into their portfolios, including organizing the Climate & Capital summit that brought together investors representing over $1 trillion AUM alongside the COP21 in Paris and launching the first web platform for verified forest carbon projects at the COP20 in Lima. She believes technology and human ingenuity can ultimately help us better measure, manage, and allocate capital away from climate and sustainability risks (and towards solutions!).
Tara holds a Master’s of Environmental Management and International Development from Duke University, and a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science from Gettysburg College.
Taylor Marshall
Director of Partnerships and Programs
Taylor Marshall has dedicated her professional life to identifying and promoting solutions and opportunities to address environmental issues. Taylor manages partner relationships for REF’s restoration projects. She is responsible for securing major grants and funding for REF and is the chief “in the mud” coordinator of all of REF’s corporate and community volunteer planting events.
Taylor fills a key role in coordinating with all REF’s partners in implementing strategic communications and outreach related to projects. Prior to joining Restore the Earth, Taylor was with The Water Institute of the Gulf in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she applied her expertise in integrated water resource management to develop and promote community-based approaches to protecting and restoring the Gulf coast communities from storm risk and land loss and enhancing community resilience. Taylor also has a background in renewable energy and biofuels from her time in Washington, D.C. at the American Council for Renewable Energy.
Taylor has a Masters of Science from McGill University in BioResource Engineering with a concentration in Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM).
Timm Reinsdorf
Co-Founder and CEO
Hi everybody, my name is Timm Reinsdorf. I am one of the Co-Founders & CEO of Particula. My professional background is in auditing and consulting regarding financial market regulation of crypto and other digital assets in Europe. With Particula we empower sustainable, data-driven investment decisions in the Web 3.0 environment.
Vincent Katchavenda
Co-Founder & COO
I am above all a humanist in the web3 ecosystem, on a mission to build bridges between “Web2 and Web3” to serve impact purposes.
Since 2017, I’ve been involved in numerous web3 projects and I believe blockchain technology will be an enabler of collective progress. Indeed, I believe in the potential of this technology to help rebuild our economic system: one that is fairer, more sustainable and which values positive action.
In 2021, I co-founded @Cardashift, the go-to infrastructure for funding & monetizing impact projects.
I am also a partner and advisor in multiple companies and collectives: @Smartchain, @cardano, @ADAN, @Ecota