The Climate Champions

David Elve, Executive Consultant, Vass Solutions, energy, utility, and IT executive with 30 years of experience at global positions based in Atlanta, Houston, Denver, Paris, Brussels, and London. Prior Board Member, EVP & Chief Marketing Officer, PayGo.

Rick Kornfeld, President & CEO at Kitu Systems, delivering a new generation of interconnection of solar PV, battery storage, electric vehicles, and other Distributed Energy Resources. Prior: VP Engineering Qualcomm, GM Wireless Chipsets Texas Instruments.

Hanna Grene, Worldwide Power & Utilities Leader, Microsoft, working alongside Microsoft's partners, customers, Fortune 500 executives, and policymakers to accelerate investment to enable a more resilient, decarbonized, secure, and affordable energy grid. 

Chris Black, CEO, GridX, previously a Principal Partner at Huck Capital, CTO & COO of Tendril where he led an aggressive strategy, acquiring five of the leading companies, that together with Tendril, form a new entity, Uplight, recently valued over $1.5b.

Congressperson Paul Tonko, representing New York’s 20th District, serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee, is serving his 7th term, and was elected by his peers in the 116th Congress to chair the Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change.

Tanya Barham, CEO & Founder, Community Energy Labs, offering modern AI-powered clean building control solutions that make smart energy management and decarbonization accessible and affordable for community building owners to accelerate decarbonization.

Tim Barat, CEO & Co-Founder, Gridware, an ex-power pole field worker, named in Forbes’ 30 under 30 innovator list for developing a 24/7 monitoring system increasing visibility along power distribution lines - after getting his EECS degree at UC Berkeley.

Chris King, Senior Vice President, e-Mobility, Siemens is an entrepreneur that thrives on taking new technologies to market. A true decarbonization evangelist, he co-hosted the U.S. Congressional delegation at the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Marzia Zafar, Deputy Director of Strategy & Decarbonization, Ofgem, Great Britain's Independent Energy Regulator, ensuring design of a multi-year clean and green environment strategy and roadmap protecting energy consumers, especially vulnerable people.

Suzanne Russo, Chief Executive Officer, Pecan Street, accelerating innovations in climate and conservation solutions, on the Board of the Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute, Member of the Forbes Technology Council and a Board Advisor for CleanTX.