Jury Alumni

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  Avra van der Zee

  COO, Elemental Excelerator

  2023 Sustainability Jury Member

  Avra is a climate tech executive passionate about supporting innovative climate tech startups as they scale. She is an experienced advisor, organization builder, and board leader, including as Director of Made of Air. As the former COO & GC at micro-mobility company JUMP, she led the company from its early inception to its strategic sale to Uber. She is currently COO of Elemental Excelerator, a global, non-profit climate investor and impact organization with over a decade of experience investing in place-based climate technologies.

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  Cilia Indahl

  Head, EQT Foundation

  2023 Sustainability Jury Member

  Cilia Indahl joined the global investment organization EQT during the pandemic to set up the EQT Foundation, an impact first investor and incubator. The foundation provides catalytic capital to entrepreneurs, who are building solutions within climate, health or inclusion and supports research accelerating impact investing. Indahl has a double degree in sustainable innovation and international business from HEC Paris and the NHH and started her career as trainee for the Norwegian Mission to the UN, assisting on the negotiations of the UN SDGs. Prior to joining EQT, Indahl was CEO of the impact investing organization Katapult and Sustainability Director at Aker Biomarine, where she also holds a board position.

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  Dee Halligan

  Director, Forth

  2023 Sustainability Jury Member

  Dee Halligan is an accomplished creative strategist with expertise in new models for creative engagement and learning. As the co-founder and Managing Director of Forth, a London-based Community Interest Company, Halligan leads a team that researches and prototypes new ways to promote social and environmental sustainability through creative engagement. Her creative consultancy From Now On, founded in 2009, built a portfolio of forward-thinking community engagement projects with clients such as the National Trust, Marks & Spencer, and Google. In 2016 she co-founded FixEd, a non-profit think-and-do-tank concerned with reimagining creative education for a new generation, winning multiple awards and European Commission research funding. In 2021 a merger produced Forth as a vehicle for an increasingly urgent agenda around engagement, learning, and skills for climate response. Her dedication to sustainability, innovation, and creativity has earned her recognition from the design and education communities, including most recently the Misha Black Award for Innovation in Design Education.

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  Allison Dring

  CEO, Made of Air

  2023 Sustainability Jury Captain

  Allison Dring is CEO and Co-Founder of Made of Air, a company that produces carbon negative materials to actively reverse climate change. Made of Air was named the Falling Walls 2020 Science Start Up Breakthrough of the Year and listed in Norrskens’s top 100 impact companies, 2022. Allison is an experienced entrepreneur, initiating climate positive technologies and applying them to real world building applications. She is the 2022 recipient of AmCham Germany’s Female Founder Award. 
  
  Previously, as Founder of Elegant Embellishments, she co-invented and manufactured proslve370e, an award winning building product that reduces urban air pollution using only sunlight.
  
  She is a veteran speaker on topics involving technology and the environment, including a foundational TEDx Berlin talk entitled "Ornament & Climate", which launched the idea of storing atmospheric carbon in buildings. She is a BMW Foundation Responsible Leader, and serves as Advisory Board Member for the Falling Walls Foundation, Creating Urban Tech Berlin and the The Lifeboat Foundation.

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  Ethan Imboden

  Venture Partner and Business Activist, Tuesday Capital & Standard Deviation

  2023 Sustainability Jury Member

  Ethan Imboden is a sustainability-focused designer, founder, and investor, working closely with the entrepreneurs and leaders building our next economy.
  Until earlier this year, Ethan served as VP Design & Global Head of Ventures at frog. He joined in 2013 to found the firm’s Venture Design practice, and its investment arm, frogVentures. Frog’s venture practice drives both strategic growth initiatives with VC-backed startup founders, as well as ground-up corporate venture building for some of the world’s largest multinationals. In 2017, Ethan also took on executive leadership of frog’s Sustainability practice, often pursuing strong synergies with the venture toolset. Prior to frog, Ethan founded, scaled, and exited a VC-backed global D2C product company in San Francisco, across the bay from his hometown of Berkeley. Today, he lives in the French Alps outside Geneva with his wife and two children, with whom he speaks fluent franglais.