The Stream (with Will & Tom)

In this latest episode we were delighted to welcome water policy expert Felicia Marcus, a fellow at the National Academy of Public Administration and former Chair of the State Water Resources Control Board.

She was the chair of the board during the significant 2011-2017 drought, and shares some of the lessons learned.

During the conversation she provides commentary on what California has done to drive water resilience, and also reflects on the LA fires and intersection with water.

🔔 We hope you enjoy the episode and make sure to follow and subscribe to our channels to get alerts on the episodes. 

We’re delighted you can join us on this voyage of discovery, as we journey down The Stream.

Special thanks to this season's sponsor, Raymond James.

And our charity partner, Frank Water.

And thanks to our knowledge partners: British Water, WWF, Water Alliance, DCU Water Institute, SurplusWater25, Earth and Environmental Science at Berkeley  Lab, Water Foundry and Atlantean Media.

Former UN Under-Secretary-General Usha Rao-Monari joins The Stream to explore why blended finance isn’t working for water, lessons from the energy sector, and how her FIGS model can drive change through finance, innovation, governance, and social equity. 

In this episode of The Stream podcast, Will and Tom are joined by Usha Rao-Monari — Senior Partner at Wellers Impact and Former Under-Secretary-General at the United Nations.

Usha reflects on her 25+ year career across finance, infrastructure, and development, including her time as Associate Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). We dive deep into why blended finance — combining public and private investment, grants, equity, and debt — still isn’t working in the water sector, and what water can learn from energy and renewables when it comes to incentives and investment models.

She also shares her updated FIGS framework (Finance, Innovation & Infrastructure, Governance, and Social equity) — a model designed to drive real impact in complex systems.

If you've heard Usha speak before, you'll know how clearly she explains big ideas. This episode is packed with insight, inspiration, and practical takeaways for anyone working at the intersection of water, climate, finance, and development.

🧠 Topics include:

-The challenges and promise of blended finance
-Economic models for scaling water solutions
-Parallels between water and energy investment
-How to embed social equity into infrastructure strategy
-Career reflections from the UN and beyond

🔔 We hope you enjoy the episode and make sure to follow and subscribe to our channels to get alerts on the episodes. 

We’re delighted you can join us on this voyage of discovery, as we journey down The Stream.

Special thanks to this season's sponsor, Raymond James.

And our charity partner, Frank Water.

And thanks to our knowledge partners: British Water, WWF, Water Alliance, DCU Water Institute, SurplusWater25, Earth and Environmental Science at Berkeley  Lab, Water Foundry and Atlantean Media.

Former UN Under-Secretary-General Usha Rao-Monari joins The Stream to explore why blended finance isn’t working for water, lessons from the energy sector, and how her FIGS model can drive change through finance, innovation, governance, and social equity. 

In this episode of The Stream podcast, Will and Tom are joined by Usha Rao-Monari — Senior Partner at Wellers Impact and Former Under-Secretary-General at the United Nations.

Usha reflects on her 25+ year career across finance, infrastructure, and development, including her time as Associate Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). We dive deep into why blended finance — combining public and private investment, grants, equity, and debt — still isn’t working in the water sector, and what water can learn from energy and renewables when it comes to incentives and investment models.

She also shares her updated FIGS framework (Finance, Innovation & Infrastructure, Governance, and Social equity) — a model designed to drive real impact in complex systems.

If you've heard Usha speak before, you'll know how clearly she explains big ideas. This episode is packed with insight, inspiration, and practical takeaways for anyone working at the intersection of water, climate, finance, and development.

🧠 Topics include:

• The challenges and promise of blended finance
• Economic models for scaling water solutions
• Parallels between water and energy investment
• How to embed social equity into infrastructure strategy
• Career reflections from the UN and beyond

🔔 We hope you enjoy the episode and make sure to follow and subscribe to our channels to get alerts on the episodes. 

We’re delighted you can join us on this voyage of discovery, as we journey down The Stream.

Special thanks to this season's sponsor, Raymond James.

And our charity partner, Frank Water.

And thanks to our knowledge partners: British Water, WWF, Water Alliance, DCU Water Institute, SurplusWater25, Earth and Environmental Science at Berkeley  Lab, Water Foundry and Atlantean Media.

We were delighted to welcome Dr Peter Gleick, a leading scientist, innovator and communicator on water and climate issues.

He founded the Pacific Institute in 1987 to be one of the most innovative, independent non-governmental research centres to advance solutions for the world’s most pressing water challenges.

For the podcast we wanted to speak with him about his latest book entitled, The Three Ages of Water. The book covers Earth and humanity’s intricate relationship with water. From the prehistoric past where the cradles of civilisation were born around water, through to the current age and ‘imperilled present’, as Gleick calls it, where we learned to engineer water to our benefit, but also with unexpected consequences. And finally, the third age and hope for the future.

Now Dr Gleick rightly deserves to be on the legends series – as well as being a MacArthur Fellow, he’s also an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences.

As you’ll hear, he remains optimistic that we have the solutions to hand and with the right decisions, we can solve water.

The Three Ages of Water: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Ages-Water-Prehistoric-Imperiled/dp/1541702271

The Water Conflict Chronology: https://pacinst.org/water-conflict-chronology/

🔔 We hope you enjoy the episode and make sure to follow and subscribe to our channels to get alerts on the episodes. 

We’re delighted you can join us on this voyage of discovery, as we journey down The Stream.

Special thanks to this season's sponsor, Raymond James.

And our charity partner, Frank Water.

And thanks to our knowledge partners: British Water, WWF, Water Alliance, DCU Water Institute, SurplusWater25, Earth and Environmental Science at Berkeley  Lab, Water Foundry and Atlantean Media.

On this episode of The Stream podcast, Will and Tom are joined by the brilliant Colby Manwaring, the former CEO of Innovyse, the chair of Envirosuite and the director of many other companies, who orchestrated a landmark $1 billion acquisition in the water technology sector. 

In this episode, he shares his entrepreneurial journey, from shifting from mechanical to civil engineering to building a successful software company. 

Learn valuable insights on:

• Building a High-Growth Tech Company: Discover Colby's strategies for scaling Innovyse and navigating the complexities of mergers and acquisitions.
• The Human Element of Business: Gain valuable perspectives on leadership, team building, and fostering a strong company culture.
• Investing in Water Technology: Understand the growing investment landscape in the water sector and the potential for innovation.

Many will know Colby from his role leading Innovyse’s growth, acquiring companies in the build up to eventually being brought for a record $1 billion US dollars. Alongside Xylem’s purchase of Sensus for $1.7 billion, and then it’s subsequent acquisition of Evoqua for a staggering $7.5 billion, the Innovyze deal was a landmark sale and has certainly catalysed investor interest in the digital water space and the birth of new digital and AI companies.

Colby has been in the unique position of sitting both sides of the fence: as the buyer of companies but also as the company being bought.

We loved this episode and speaking with Colby, and hope you enjoy too. 

🔔 We hope you enjoy the episode and make sure to follow and subscribe to our channels to get alerts on the episodes. 

We’re delighted you can join us on this voyage of discovery, as we journey down The Stream.

Special thanks to this season's sponsor, Raymond James.

And our charity partner, Frank Water.

And thanks to our knowledge partners: British Water, WWF, Water Alliance, DCU Water Institute, SurplusWater25, Earth and Environmental Science at Berkeley  Lab, Water Foundry and Atlantean Media.

On the third episode of The Stream, Will and Tom were delighted to welcome Dr Andrew Benedek. He was the very first winner of the Lee Kuan Yew Prize, cited as someone who has revolutionised conventional water treatment.

For some people, founding, scaling and selling a global technology business once is enough. For Dr Benedek, he was just getting warmed up.

It was in 1980 that he founded Zenon to help accelerate the reuse of water. After selling the business to GE for over $600 million, he went back into academia and took a position at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

However, he then saw the need for a resource revolution and the need to turn food waste into energy. And then Anaergia was born.

In this podcast, he shares his personal story, or evolving from academia to entrepreneur, and the successes and challenges along the way. This is a great story for any budding tech entrepreneur with a vision, and what’s needed to make it happen.

When it comes to legends in water, Andrew Benedek is certainly someone who immediately springs to mind. And in his early 80s, he’s incredible sharp, articulate and funny – it was an honour to have him on The Stream.

🔔 We hope you enjoy the episode and make sure to follow and subscribe to our channels to get alerts on the episodes. 

We’re delighted you can join us on this voyage of discovery, as we journey down The Stream.

Special thanks to this season's sponsor, Raymond James.

And our charity partner, Frank Water.

And thanks to our knowledge partners: British Water, WWF, Water Alliance, DCU Water Institute, SurplusWater25, Earth and Environmental Science at Berkeley  Lab, Water Foundry and Atlantean Media.

This week on The Stream, Will and Tom are joined by the incredible Professor Dragan Savić, a legend when it comes to the intersection of water and digital.

He was the UK’s first professor of Hydroinformatics, the former CEO of KWR Water Research Institute, and a chartered civil and water engineer with over 40 years of experience in research, teaching, and consulting.

Plus hear about:

• How Will and Tom had the privilege of working alongside Dragan in recent years on an advisory board, at KWR and events.
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• Dragan sharing details of obtaining his master's in Belgrade, Serbia, before moving to Canada, the UK, and Exeter University. Tom would say it's probably the best university in the world, although, as a graduate, perhaps he's personally biased!
• They discuss elements of ‘chance’, and how we can help to stack the odds in our favour by being open to new opportunities and embracing changes.
• As well as touching on topics such as AI and population degrowth, he talks about development in Africa and how he wants to focus on the continent in the next phase of his very fruitful career.

🔔 We hope you enjoy the episode and make sure to follow and subscribe to our channels to get alerts on the episodes. 

We’re delighted you can join us on this voyage of discovery, as we journey down The Stream.

Special thanks to this season's sponsor, Raymond James.

And our charity partner, Frank Water.

And thanks to our knowledge partners: British Water, WWF, Water Alliance, DCU Water Institute, SurplusWater25, Earth and Environmental Science at Berkeley  Lab, Water Foundry and Atlantean Media.

It's time to celebrate the ‘Legends’ of water. 🎙️🌊

We are delighted to kickstart the season with this first episode, which welcomes Christopher Gasson, the owner and publisher of Global Water Intelligence, or GWI.

Christopher is well known analyst, publisher, business owner, and has been called the water industry torchbearer who has been building the GWI empire for over 20 years now. His monthly columns for the magazine are revered universally.

In this conversation he talks about the water and climate, the ‘Day Zero’ narrative and how it’s broken, the development of a global standard on water reuse, as well as project and procurement challenges.

🔔 We hope you enjoy the episode and make sure to follow and subscribe to our channels to get alerts on the episodes. 

We’re delighted you can join us on this voyage of discovery, as we journey down The Stream.

Special thanks to this season's sponsor, Raymond James.

And our charity partner, Frank Water.

And thanks to our knowledge partners: British Water, WWF, Water Alliance, DCU Water Institute, SurplusWater25, Earth and Environmental Science at Berkeley  Lab, Water Foundry and Atlantean Media.

In the latest episode of the season, we were delighted to be joined by Baptiste Tellier, the managing director of Fall Line Capital who is focused on farm management, data analysis and deal sourcing.

As a trained agronomist, Baptiste previously he oversaw the development and implementation of sustainable farming practices for over 200 potato farmers at Nestle. Before this, he was the former farm operations intern at The Mitchell Farm, conducting agronomic studies on corn yield.

As he currently manages both farmland and venture activities, he provides a super interesting perspective, with Fall Line essentially building out its own ecosystem – investing into the innovations and with the farmland to help deploy and scale those innovations.

Baptiste disagrees with the stereotype that farmers are slow to adopt innovations, instead shifting the focus onto the solutions that aren’t perhaps the right fit for the market.

As well as discussing previous investments, including into Lumo, he also talks about what excites him about the market – for example, robotic automation in agriculture.

🔔 We hope you enjoy the episode and make sure to follow and subscribe to our channels to get alerts on the episodes. 

We’re delighted you can join us on this voyage of discovery, as we journey down The Stream.

Special thanks to this season's sponsor, Raymond James.

And our charity partner, Frank Water.

And thanks to our knowledge partners: British Water, WWF, Water Alliance, DCU Water Institute, SurplusWater25, Earth and Environmental Science at Berkeley  Lab, Water Foundry and Atlantean Media.

In this second episode of the season we’re joined by Roric Paulman, a Nebraskan farmer and also chair of the Nebraskan Water Balance Alliance, an organisation that catalyses best practices among Nebraska farmers.

Roric has nearly 40 years of farming experience, including across the family Paulman Farms, an 8500 acre, rain-fed and irrigated farming operation. It’s located in southwest Nebraska, with land that extends into Lincoln, Keith and Perkins counties.

He talks about how the 4th generation in the family is currently running the farm, and the 5th generation, including his young grandson, knows everything there is to know!

Roric has witnessed almost 40 years of innovation across farming, from having to manually pipe water through to IoT and sensors able to measure down to the last drop.

Speaking to Roric was so interesting. He sits at the intersection between policy and practise, discussing at the highest level through the alliance and politics yet returning to help keep things running at the farm. This is a great addition to the water-agriculture focus of this seasons podcast.

We hope you enjoy the episode and make sure to follow and subscribe to our channels to get alerts on the episodes.

🔔 We hope you enjoy the episode and make sure to follow and subscribe to our channels to get alerts on the episodes. 

We’re delighted you can join us on this voyage of discovery, as we journey down The Stream.

Special thanks to this season's sponsor, Raymond James.

And our charity partner, Frank Water.

And thanks to our knowledge partners: British Water, WWF, Water Alliance, DCU Water Institute, SurplusWater25, Earth and Environmental Science at Berkeley  Lab, Water Foundry and Atlantean Media.