Christiana Figueres was appointed Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in July 2010, six months after the failed COP15in Copenhagen.  

During the next six years she dedicated herself to rebuilding the global climate change negotiating process based on fairness, transparency and collaboration, leading to the 2015 Paris Agreement, widely recognized as a historical achievement. Over the years she has worked in the fields of climate change, sustainable development, energy, land use, technical and financial cooperation.

Figueres was recently named one of the top 100 most influential people in Climate Change policy.

I met up with Figueres at 'Collision' a high tech conference during a Q & A session.

Also at the Collision tech conference held in Toronto was another member of the top 100 Climate Change Influencers, the Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna.  In that capacity, McKenna drove her country's efforts in ratifying the 2015 Paris Agreement.  Since then, McKenna has been pushing the effort to establish a national Carbon Tax amidst strong backlash from several provincial governments.

At one session during the day, McKenna spoke about the fact that people should not rely on governments to do all the heavy lifting when it came to Climate Change mitigation – that everyone had a role to play.