Marie-Anne is a Vice President of Innovation  at Veolia Environnement. As a key member of the Research & Innovation team, she co-founded and now leads the innovation and cleantech practices for Veolia Environment, the world’s largest environmental services company.

Marie-Anne has been working in the environmental business for 13 years, leading international business development initiatives for Veolia Energy throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. She also led the Veolia Energy Executive Training Practice from 2003 to 2005.Marie-Anne started her career as Business Development Manager for North Africa and Middle East in the construction field, for Bouygues, a French construction company.

She has a Master’s Degree in Political Science from Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris in 1992, a Master’s Degree in Management from HEC School of Management in 1994 and a Stanford Executive Program Certificate in 2007 from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Mike Brooks has more than 25 years of experience in a wide range of areas including: chemical plant operations management; refinery planning and scheduling; distributed control and instrumentation project implementation; advanced control application development; as well as development of process information management systems and graphical user interface products. He also has 12-years experience with various software companies including director of products and technology at Wonderware. Brooks was also co-founder of INDX where he led marketing and product development efforts for the model-based visualization product that he invented. Brooks focuses on software architecture technologies to support operational activities for all Chevron refineries and the company's supply chain. Brooks is currently a board member for the Manufacturing Enterprise Systems Association and User Council chair of the OpenO&M initiative that drives interoperability standards for manufacturing.Brooks earned a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from Bradford University in the United Kingdom.

Jenny Chase leads the Solar team at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. She joined the company in July 2005, after interning with NEF shortly after its founding in summer 2004. In late 2006, she launched the Solar Insight Service, which provides information and analysis specific to the solar industry. Since then, the solar analyst team has grown to an international team of 6, and counts many of the world’s major corporations and financial institutions among its subscribers.

Jenny holds a BA in Physical Sciences and an MSci in Physics from the University of Cambridge.

James Cox is a Principal Consultant with responsibilities for gas and electricity market modelling, and how wind intermittency impacts and disrupts energy markets.

He is currently running a major multi-client study investigating the impact of wind intermittency on the NWE electricity markets for a number of major utilities and system operators across Europe, investigating how prices, running patterns and investment will change, and how interconnection, storage and market design can alter this picture.

During 2009 and 2010, James led a multi-client study on how wind intermittency will impact gas markets in GB and Ireland, which involved 10 utilities, looking in particular at how the value of gas storage will change in the future.  In early 2009 he completed another large multi-client project investigating the implications of large volumes of renewable generation on the UK and Irish electricity markets.  This project led to a publically available study that has been quoted extensively, and has redefined the debate for the future of the GB electricity market.

Ms. Kuiper is the Senior Director, New Business Development / Venturing for Philips. There she is responsible for designing and implementing corporate new business development / venturing policy and standards, business processes, governance, infrastructure, training and support for Philips worldwide. She is the primary point of contact between the NBD/venture initiatives in Philips Corporate Technologies and the Philips Sectors, and sits on all three of the Philips' Business Development Investment Boards. Ms. Kuiper also provides assistance in portfolio management to each of the company's incubators, as well as individual venture assessment and advisory support across Philips. She has been instrumental in shaping the venture development standards and internal venture training now employed by Philips throughout the company.

Tore Land currently serves as Director Ecomagination of GE International. He has responsibility for the ecomagination initiative of GE in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Before joining GE, Tore has been serving as President & CEO of  PEMEAS Fuel Cell Technologies, a leading alternative energy company created by him in 2004 through a venture capital backed spin-off. PEMEAS was acquired by BASF SE in December 2006 and Tore integrated the business into the global operations of BASF. His previous experience includes senior management positions at chemical and life science companies like Celanese, Aventis and Hoechst. Since 1999, Tore has led numerous corporate venture capital initiatives and has served on the Board of several start-up companies in the USA and Europe. Tore lives with his wife and three daughters in Frankfurt (Germany) and Chicago (Illinois). He obtained a Ph.D. in chemistry from the Philipps University of Marburg (Germany).

Michael Liebreich is the CEO of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a specialist provider of financial information and services to investors in renewable energy, low-carbon technologies and the carbon markets.

Michael is an experienced venture capitalist and entrepreneur who has helped build more than 25 companies. Before founding New Energy Finance early in 2004, he was UK managing director of a division of Groupe Arnault which invested $700m of technology venture capital. From 1995 to 1998, Michael was deputy managing director of Associated Press Television and founding director of Sports News Television, the world’s leading wholesale provider of sports news video. At the same time he acted as non-executive director of Interactive Investor prior to its IPO on the London Stock Exchange.  Before that, Michael spent five years with McKinsey & Company in their London office focusing on operations and finance.

Girish Nadkarni started his career as an attorney on Wall Street focusing on international banking and M&A. His business career spans Prudential where he was responsible for creating the Pru-Shelf  financing facility which currently has 600 customers with a portfolio value of $47 Billion, GE Capital and GE where he worked for Jack Welch on strategy and business development, and United Healthcare as Chief Operations Officer. He has also had a stint as an entrepreneur when he founded and ran vSimplify, VC funded startup. 

Girish has been at ABB since 2003, during which time he has been responsible for ABB’s global cost migration program and ran the global automotive business for the Robotics Division. In October 2009 Girish started ABB Technology Ventures, ABB’s corporate venture fund.

Girish earned his undergraduate and law degrees at the University of Bombay where he was a gold medalist, his masters of law degree from the University of Virginia which he attended as a DuPont Fellow, and an MBA from Harvard where he was designated a Baker Scholar.

As a Senior Investment Director with RBVC, Nils Schöche is mainly responsible for investments in the Energy & Environment sector. Prior to this assignment he was the General Manager for Engineering Hybrid Systems of Bosch in Japan and served as Business Development Manager of the product unit Hybrid Systems. Nils has an educational background as a mechanical engineer from RWTH Aachen, Germany, and Michigan State University, USA. He holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering and was trained on Corporate Finance at INSEAD.

Sabrina Soussan is a senior executive with 20 years of experience in guiding companies to market success and profitability. She currently serves as Global Head Marketing, Building Automation – a US$3 billion global business unit of Siemens Building Technologies Division. Under her leadership, Building Automation successfully markets Smart Building technologies and solutions including energy efficiency for buildings, distributed generation from renewable sources, and advanced topics such as dynamic management of smart consumption, storage and production of energy in buildings.  In addition, Mrs. Soussan oversees the Sustainable City initiatives of Siemens Building Technologies, which analyzes and promotes innovative concepts and solutions that contribute to CO2 abatement potential of large cities. Prior to joining Building Technologies, Mrs. Soussan held management positions in the automotive industry within Siemens and Renault.  She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering, and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration.