Top Sustainability Speakers

Melati Wijsen is a 22 year old full time changemaker. She founded Bye Bye Plastic Bags with her younger sister & has been leading the movement driven by youth since 2013 at the age of 12. She has also started the people movement One Island One Voice and the social enterprise, Mountain Mamas.

Melati Wijsen has given two global TED talks before she turned 21 and has spoken on world stages such as the UN & has also been selected as FORBES top ten most inspiring women in the country.

She graduated from high school one year early & has since been honored by TIME as part of the annual list of most influential teens in the world along with CNN Heroes Young Wonders & FORBES 30 under 30.

Jane Goodall is the world’s foremost chimpanzee expert whose 1960 landmark Gombe Research redefined the relationship between humans and animals, underscoring our interconnectivity and highlighting the need to care for the environment.

Throughout her career, Jane has founded and led several conservation organisations. In 1977, she established the Jane Goodall Institute, which continues the Gombe research and is a global spearhead protecting chimpanzees and their habitats. In 1991, she co-founded the environmental and humanitarian youth program Roots & Shoots which implements youth conservation schemes in over 60 countries.

She is one of the most recognisable voices speaking on how to protect chimpanzees and other animals from the threats they currently face, and she has been appointed both a Dame of the British Empire and a United Nations Messenger of Peach.

Lewis Pugh is an endurance swimmer and an ocean advocate who raises funds and awareness for the most vulnerable ecosystems on Earth via his expeditions and record-breaking swims.

He is the first person in the world to have completed a long-distance swim in every ocean on the globe, the first to have swum across the North Pole, and the first to have swum the length of the English Channel. He has been credited with protecting over 2 million km2 of vulnerable ocean – an area larger than Western Europe.

Lewis has received numerous awards for his work. He was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum; he was chosen as a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year; he was awarded South Africa’s highest honour the Order of Ikhamanga; and in 2013, the United Nations appointed him as the UN Patron of the Oceans.

Christiana Figueres was the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change from 2010 – 2016 where she was pivotal in delivering the historic 2015 Paris Agreement in which 195 governments jointly committed to limiting future global warming to below 2°C.

She has received multiple awards for this and has been credited with forging a new brand of collaborative diplomacy for the ground-breaking way in which she brought together a diverse range of environmental stakeholders. These of which include; national and sub-national governments, corporations and activists, women’s groups, scientists, spiritual communities, financial institutions and NGOs.

Since then, she continues to foster climate change action. She is the co-author of ‘The Future We Choose,’ and ‘The Stubborn Optimist’s Guide to the Climate Crisis.’ She sits on the Boards of ACCIONA and ACCIONA Energía, and is the co-founder of Global Optimism, a climate change action and awareness organisation.

Rifkin advises governments and organisations on environmental and economic issues. He is an advisor to the European Union where he has counselled three presidents of the European Commission, the European Parliament, and numerous EU heads of state. He is currently one of the leading architects of the European Union’s Third Industrial Revolution vision, which is committed to tackling climate change via the Internet of Things.

Through his role as a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Executive Education, Jeremy has been advising CEOs on making their businesses sustainable since 1995. He is the author of 20 bestselling books, focusing on how scientific and technological changes impact the economy, workforce, society and the environment. Amongst his most recent works are the international bestsellers, 'The Zero Marginal Cost Society,' 'The Third Industrial Revolution,' 'The Empathic Civilization' and 'The European Dream.'

Mimi Wu founded one of the world’s only post-consumer plastic bag recycling companies in a country – Myanmar – which consistently ranks in the top 20 hardest countries in the world to conduct business.

Her venture diverted 4 million pounds of plastic from waterways in just three years. An expert in global plastics waste management and circularity technologies, Mimi has over a decade of experience in the Global South, particularly in Myanmar and Uganda. She uses her deep knowledge to advise, consult, and serve on boards, passionately promoting sustainable waste management solutions worldwide.

Dr Vandana Shiva is the founder of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in Dehra Dun, which identifies and addresses the most significant ecological and social issues of our time. This is achieved through high-quality, independent research - done so in close partnership with local communities and grassroots movements that have first-hand experience of the impact of climate change.

She is also the founder of Navdanya, an Indian national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seed, organic farming and fair trade. She is the founder of Bija Vidyapeeth, an international college for sustainable living in Doon Valley.

Time Magazine has identified Dr. Shiva as an environmental ‘hero,’ Asia Week has called her one of the five most powerful communicators in Asia, and Forbes magazine named her one of the top Seven most Powerful Women in the Globe.

Gabrielle Walker is the founder and director of Valence Solutions, which accelerates climate change action. Through the use of innovative meeting design, Valence Solutions facilitates productive conversations between seemingly divided parties in order to tackle some of the climate change issues which are least addressed.

As an expert strategist, she has businesses embrace sustainability and works at the boardroom-level to analyse emerging global trends, challenge conventional thinking and turn analysis into meaningful action. She has been Climate Change Editor at Nature and Features Editor at New Scientist. Walker has written for international outlets, including; The Economist, Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. She is also the author of four books on climate change including the bestselling 'The Hot Topic' which Al Gore described as ‘a beacon of clarity.’

Claire Nouvian is a writer and environmentalist who has dedicated her career to protecting the distant and vulnerable deep sea. In 2018 she won the Goldman Prize, the Nobel equivalent for ecology for her work putting an end to deep-sea bottom trawling: a cause she has advocated for before numerous governments and institutions.

Claire is the founder of the Paris and Hong Kong-based non-profit conservation organisation BLOOM and lectures on deep-sea fisheries, public fisheries subsidies, and sustainable development communication strategy at several universities around the world. The former wildlife and science journalist authored the iconic book ‘The Deep’, which was accompanied by an exhibition she curated at the Natural History Museum, Paris.

Scott Harrison is the founder of the non-profit organization Charity: water, which tackles the global water crisis, bringing clean water to the world’s 785 million people who go without it.

Since its inception in 2006, Charity: water has raised over $640 million and funded 91,414 water projects in 29 countries. When completed, these projects will provide more than 14.76 million people with clean, safe drinking water.

Scott has been recognized on Fortune magazine’s list of 40 Under 40, Forbes’ Impact 30, and Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business, where he earned the #10 spot. He is currently a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and author of the New York Times Bestselling book ‘Thirst.’

Claire O’Neill is a global expert on sustainability and decarbonisation with a particular focus on practical action and the leading role of the private sector.

From 2017 – 2019, she served as Minister of State for Energy and Clean Growth. During this time, she created the UK’s Clean Growth and Green Finance Strategies; established the global Powering Past Coal Alliance; oversaw the deployment of £3 billion of international Climate Finance and £200 million of clean-tech innovation funding; negotiated the world’s first public-private Offshore Wind Sector Deal; led the UK Carbon Capture and Storage task-force; and in 2019, brought forward the country’s ground-breaking Net Zero legislation.

In 2020 she left politics to lead the Climate and Energy team at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the world’s leading corporate sustainability organisation. Additionally, she co-chairs the WBCSD global Imperatives Advisory Board and has several non-executive director and advisory roles including as Senior Global Advisor to McKinsey and Company.

Tom Rivett-Carnac has over 20 years of experience as a political strategist, focused on addressing climate and ecological crises. This includes as Senior Advisor to the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; Senior Advisor to Climate Envoy at the World Bank Group; and Senior Advisor to the Vice Chair of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCOM); and Climate Strategist at X, the Moonshot Factory (formerly Google X).

He is currently a Strategy Adviser at the Earthshot Prize, a Fellow at the Bezos Earth Fund, a Senior Advisor at Macquarie Group, and a Fellow at Stanford Law School. He runs Global Optimism, the climate change action an awareness organisation he co-founded with Christina Figueres.

His TED Talk has been viewed almost 3 million times, and he is the co-author of the bestselling book The Future We Choose.