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Post Paris: A New Era in Global Sustainability? | Skoll World Forum 2016

Speakers

  • Senior Partner, Generation Investment Management LLP (U.S.)
    David Blood is co-founder and Senior Partner of Generation Investment Management. Previously, he spent 18 years at Goldman Sachs including serving as co-CEO and CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management from 1999-2003. David received a B.A. from Hamilton College and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business. He is on the Board of New Forests, Dialight, SHINE, The Nature Conservancy, Ashden and Social Finance UK, as well as a Life Trustee of Hamilton College.
  • Managing Director, Capricorn Investment Group
    Dipender Saluja is a Partner of Capricorn Investment Group, and a Managing Partner of the Technology Impact Fund, founded to demonstrate that it is possible to invest profitably while driving sustainable positive change. The firm strives for extraordinary investment results by leveraging market forces to accelerate large scale impact, and some of the past and current investments include Tesla, Planet Labs, QuantumScape, SpaceX, Innovium, and Helion Energy. Prior to Capricorn, Dipender was Chief of Staff at Cadence, a global market leader in electronic design, where he built and managed businesses that worked closely with electronics companies around the world. Prior to that he worked at Data General (EMC), Honeywell, ROLM (IBM), and the GF Energy Research Center. He is an electrical engineer by training, and attended UND, Univ of Minnesota and Stanford. Dipender serves on the boards of AST, Automatiks, Encell, Innovium, Joby Aviation, Navitas, QuantumScape, RayVio, Raxium, Saildrone, and Sense, and is a member of the Leadership Council of Cyclotron Road, and on the investment committee of PRIME. He is based in Palo Alto, California.
  • Chair of The Elders, The Elders
    Mary Robinson was elected Irish President in 1990 and served for seven years as a principled and transformative leader who fought for equality and women’s rights throughout her time in office. A firm believer in dialogue and reconciliation, she broke taboos by being the first Irish head of state to make official visits to Britain, as well as regularly visiting Northern Ireland. As UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002), Mary Robinson became renowned as an outspoken voice dedicated to investigating and exposing human rights abuses across the world. Mary Robinson has been a member of The Elders since the group was founded in 2007 and was appointed Chair of The Elders in November 2018. She has travelled to the Middle East several times with The Elders to encourage peace efforts and support Israelis and Palestinans working for peaceful coexistence; visited the Korean Peninsula to help ease tensions between North and South Korea and learn more about North Korea’s chronic food crisis; joined an Elders' delegation to Côte d'Ivoire to emphasise the importance of reconciliation following widespread civil conflict. Mary Robinson also founded The Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice. Its work from 2010-2019 meant climate justice went from being effectively a taboo topic to being an approach to climate decision-making and action that is people-centered, rights-informed and fair.
  • CEO / President, Ceres
    Mindy Lubber is the CEO and President of the sustainability nonprofit organization Ceres. She has been at the helm since 2003, and under her leadership, the organization and its powerful networks have grown significantly in size and influence. As a well-known global thought leader, Mindy has inspired coalitions of institutional investors, corporate boards, C-suite executives and capital market leaders to factor sustainability risks and opportunities into decision-making. She regularly speaks to high-level world and national political leaders on clean energy and water policies, and has helped to change the political conversation around tackling climate change to one focused on jobs and the economy. Prior to Ceres, Mindy served as a Regional Administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under former President Bill Clinton. She also founded Green Century Capital Management and served as the director of the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group (MASSPIRG).
  • Climate Policy & Communications Advisor, Independent Diplomat
    Thom Woodroofe is a Climate Policy & Communications Advisor with Independent Diplomat, which works with the Government of the Republic of the Marshall Islands to help it to navigate the international negotiations on climate change. Previously, Thom has interned with then-US Congressional Speaker Nancy Pelosi as well as then-Californian Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and was the youngest member of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue. The founder of both Left Right Think-Tank and Global Voices, Thom was recognized as the 2009 Young Victorian of the Year. He has also been named one of the ‘Top99Under33’ foreign policy leaders by Diplomatic Courier, awarded a NATO Transatlantic Research Award, and is an alumni of the US State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program. Thom holds a BA Global (Honours) from Monash University where he graduated with the Sir John Monash Medal, a Master of International Relations from the University of Melbourne where he was recently recognized as the 2015 Rising Star Young Alumni, and a Master of Science in Global Governance and Diplomacy from the University of Oxford. His two previous theses have focused on campaigns for non-permanent membership of the UN Security Council. He has also spent time studying at the University of California and the Graduate Institute of International Affairs in Geneva. Thom is currently pursuing a doctorate at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.