Ciprian is leading the Social Innovation Solutions ecosystem, a group of organizations with a mission to empower individuals and organizations to understand future transformations and to develop sustainable solutions. SIS runs various educational programs in CEE, and the global conversation platform Climate Change Summit. He worked for 12 years for international organizations like Ashoka and the Aspen Institute, is a Global Shaper Alumni of the World Economic Forum, a Board Member of Rethink Romania, and a member of the Romanian Business Leaders community. As he strongly believes in the power of conversations, starting with 2023, Ciprian is hosting the ”Pro Verde” sustainability talk show at Stirile Pro TV. He teaches foresight and sustainability at The Entrepreneurship Academy in Bucharest. He has recently completed programs in sustainable finance and circularity at the Harvard Business School and the Cambridge Judge Business School.

Flavia Popa is the Secretary General at BRD Groupe Société Générale.

Mrs Maria Rousseva has a long-standing career in the banking field, held several executive and non-executive management positions, for most of the time within Société Générale, in banks owned by the Group in Eastern Europe. In 2021, she joined the Board of Directors of BRD Groupe Société Générale. Subsequently, she held the position of Deputy CEO in charge of the Corporate business. Currently, she is the CEO of the bank.

Gianpiero Nacci is the Managing Director of the Climate Strategy and Delivery (CSD) Department at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). He was appointed to this position in January 2025. Mr. Nacci leads a team of green finance specialists, economists, policy experts and engineers who drive the EBRD’s green financing, technical assistance, and policy engagements across all sectors of the economy. Mr. Nacci is also responsible for driving the development and implementation of approaches that maximize the EBRD’s green impact, particularly by leveraging private mobilization to deliver green finance at scale and ensuring that the EBRD’s activities are aligned with the objectives of the Paris Agreement. Before his appointment, Mr. Nacci was the Director of the Sustainable Business and Infrastructure team in the Climate Strategy and Delivery Department at the EBRD, where he was responsible for the Bank’s green activities in the corporate, energy, and infrastructure sectors. He was also responsible for coordinating the EBRD’s work on climate resilience, just transition, and nature finance. Mr. Nacci has over 25 years’ experience in climate policies, sustainable manufacturing, circular economy, and clean energy, with a particular focus on emerging markets. An Italian national, he holds an MSc in Mechanical Engineering from Politecnico di Torino (Italy) and an MSc in Renewable Energy from the University of Oldenburg (Germany).

Boyana Achovski is CEO of ATMIX, a leading Bulgarian producer of concrete and construction materials, spanning production, aggregates, and industrial supply. She is leading the company’s transition towards low-carbon construction materials and the disciplined decarbonisation of heavy industry. Previously, she served as the longest-standing Secretary General of Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) in Brussels, representing Europe’s gas infrastructure operators across 26 countries and operating at the intersection of industry, policy, infrastructure and governance during one of the most transformative periods for the European energy sector. Boyana serves on international boards and is a speaker and moderator at major global energy, climate and industrial forums, contributing to discussions on industrial transition, infrastructure, competitiveness and leadership. She holds executive education credentials from INSEAD and Oxford Saïd Business School and was recognised as Most Influential Woman in Energy Leader – Central and Eastern Europe (2023).

Esteban Arriaga is Chief Executive Officer of the European Food Banks Federation (FEBA), the largest network of food banks in Europe, active in over 28 countries. Under his leadership, FEBA supports the recovery and redistribution of surplus food, reaching more than 12 million people each year while contributing to the reduction of food loss and waste across the supply chain. Esteban works at the intersection of social inclusion and environmental sustainability, positioning food banks as key actors in the transition towards more circular and resilient food systems. He collaborates closely with European institutions, academia, international organisations, and private sector partners to advance policies and initiatives that address both food insecurity and climate change.

Manon Mura is an Associate Director, Investor Relations UK & Europe at New Forests, one of the world’s largest natural capital investment managers, specialising in nature-based real asset strategies. She is responsible for developing and executing the capital-raising strategy across the UK and Europe, leading investor engagement and supporting fundraising processes from origination through to close. With more than a decade of experience at the intersection of sustainability, climate action and finance, Manon brings a distinctive perspective spanning both corporate transformation and natural capital investment. Prior to joining New Forests, she spent more than four years at Climate Asset Management, where she led investor engagement and distribution activities across Europe, working with institutional and corporate investors to develop and position natural capital investment solutions aligned with their portfolio construction and impact objectives.

Juliette Lassman is a Policy Analyst at the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (CFE), specialising in water governance, the blue economy, the circular economy and nature-based solutions. She actively leads and contributes to policy dialogues across levels of government and drives analytical work at the intersection of these agendas. Notably, Juliette led recent OECD work on water governance for climate adaptation in Hungary and has been coordinating the OECD Programme on the Blue Economy in Cities and Regions since 2021, helping shape innovative policy approaches for resilient and sustainable economic development.

Roxana is the Executive Director of Social Innovation Solutions, supporting individuals and organizations in understanding the transformations of the future through sustainability education programs and conversation platforms in Romania and three other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, working with over 15,000 SMEs and NGOs. With professional experience on four continents, she has developed projects with global impact in education and sustainability, working in start-ups, NGOs, the corporate sector, and at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). She has contributed to Better World Initiatives’ impact investing program in Kenya and Nepal, as well as initiatives such as TEDxBucharest and TEDxCERN. Roxana was the Sustainability Manager for the Coldplay concerts in Romania in 2024, is a Global Shapers Bucharest Hub Alumna, an initiative of the World Economic Forum, and was included in the Capital Top 100 Women of Success.

Dr. André Månberger is Associate Professor in Environmental and Energy systems studies, Lund University, and research programme director for Mistra Mineral Governance. His research explores the intersection between low-carbon energy systems and security, assessing supply chains for critical raw materials (CRMs) and low-carbon technologies, geopolitics as well as the synergies and trade-offs between energy security and climate change mitigation policies.

Gareth Stapleton OBE is a Research Associate and Climate Ambassador at the University of Reading, with over twenty-five years’ experience at board, CEO and ministerial level across infrastructure, innovation, education and public service. His work focuses on the governance and delivery of complex programmes under significant financial, political, environmental and reputational scrutiny. He has provided strategic oversight across multi-billion-pound portfolios, helping governments, boards and institutional investors align capital investment and infrastructure resilience with long-term environmental and societal goals. At Henley Business School, his research draws on leadership and complexity theory and systems analysis to examine how influence, interdependence and constraint shape decision-making — with particular application to energy systems, AI and data-centre infrastructure, industrial decarbonisation, natural resources and regional economic resilience. Previously Senior Vice President at Colliers, Gareth led governance and delivery assurance on nationally significant infrastructure and public-sector programmes in Canada, advising federal and provincial governments on energy, digital infrastructure and long-term public value. He sits on the Estates and Sustainability Committee of Regent’s Park College, Oxford, and previously advised the Queen’s Green Canopy. He trained and practised as an architect, leading major civic and cultural projects internationally. He is a contributor to the Elgar Encyclopedia of Leadership and author of The Architect’s Edge: Innovation, Leadership and Practice. In 2025 he was appointed OBE in the King’s Birthday Honours for services to architecture, project management and construction management.

Prof de Magalhães leads the Genomics of Ageing and Rejuvenation Lab (https://rejuvenomicslab.com/) at the University of Birmingham. His lab integrates genomics, machine learning, and experimental biology to study the ageing process and how we can manipulate it to delay age-related diseases and improve human health. He obtained his PhD from the University of Namur in Belgium and trained with genomics pioneer Prof George Church at Harvard Medical School. He has published over 100 papers and delivered 200+ invited talks worldwide, including three TEDx talks. Prof de Magalhães also serves as Chief Scientific Officer of YouthBio Therapeutics, developing rejuvenation gene therapies, and he founded Oxford Cryotechnology (https://oxfordcryotech.com/), a company employing machine learning-guided design to develop improved cryopreservation methods with broad applications.

Dr. Roda Verheyen is an environmental lawyer, based in Hamburg with her own firm, Rechtsanwälte Günther. She has been advocating and advising on environmental law for more than 20 years. Her climate change cases list includes amongst others a case brought by a Peruvian houseowner against a major energy utility (Luciano Lliuya ./. RWE AG, Oberlandesgericht Hamm, I 5 U 15/17), the People’s Climate Case (Carvalho et. al../. European Parliament and Council, General Court, T 330/18) as well as the German Constitutional Complaint Neubauer et. al. (BVerfG Beschl. v. 24.3.2021 – 1 BvR 2656/18, 1 BvR 78/20, 1 BvR 96/20, 1 BvR 288/20). Most recently, she has taken a climate change damage case for farmers from Pakistan, see https://www.climatecostcase.org/en/ and two new constitutional complaints against the German Government, see https://zukunftsklage.greenpeace.de/

Jiayi Zhou is a Senior Researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, where she researches the intersection between sustainable development and great power politics. Her recent work has focused on strategic resource competition, including in the critical minerals sector. She holds a PhD in Environmental Science.

Alexandra Davidsson is the Co-founder and Head of Communication & Partnerships at ClimateHero, a Swedish impact startup on a mission to solve the climate crisis by helping people calculate and reduce their carbon footprints (climatehero.org). She is also the Co-founder of Circular Monday (www.circularmonday.com), the global campaign promoting circular consumption since 2017. From 2016 to 2022, she served as Secretary General of the Swedish Association for Responsible Consumption.

Amelia is the owner and General Partner of MCI Partners, a United Nations certified consulting group working as a trusted partner with heads of state, government ministries, development agencies and business leaders on their most pressing issues on gender equality and economics. MCI Partners provides strategic support to gender equality by helping countries and companies deliver gender economic governance in business strategy and operations, with a significant impact on economic sectors and growth. Amelia is credited with bringing gender equality into global development risks and establishing gender economic governance as an academic discipline. As an executive speaker, she advises top executives, asset managers, diplomats, and heads of state on gender issues and their integration into global business.

Carmen Sprus is CEO of Vaulted AG, an ETH Zurich spin-off transforming construction through material-light, circular structural systems that dramatically reduce embodied carbon. She is a sustainability leader, strategist and climate-tech executive focused on accelerating the transition to a net-zero economy through innovation, technology and business transformation. Prior to joining Vaulted, Carmen led EY’s EMEIA Sustainability Solution, where she helped global organizations translate sustainability ambitions into growth, resilience and collaborative advantage. She also played a key role in building EY’s decarbonization offering, working with some of Europe’s largest industrial companies. Over the course of her career, she has advised executives across Europe and the Middle East, including leadership teams in the pharmaceutical and energy sectors, and contributed to the development of low-carbon energy initiatives at ADNOC. Carmen has been featured by Forbes for her work in sustainability transformation and is a frequent speaker on climate innovation, industrial decarbonization and the future of sustainable business.

Andrea Basilova is the Co-Founder of Sensoneo, a technology company providing enterprise-grade smart waste management solutions that support the digital transformation of the waste sector and the transition to a circular economy by enabling greater efficiency, transparency, and sustainability. With a team of more than 150 professionals and an active presence across Europe, the United States, and the MENA region, Sensoneo helps waste management companies, DRS operators, and producers manage waste more efficiently through data-driven technologies. In her current role, Andrea leads Communication, Public Relations, and Public Affairs, focusing on stakeholder engagement and policy dialogue related to sustainable waste management.

Magdalena Jabłońska has over 20 years of experience in business advisory, focusing on innovation support and the development of startup ecosystems. She currently leads the Foundation for Technology Entrepreneurship, which runs the StartSmart CEE program, helping tech startups across Central and Eastern Europe. Magdalena has designed programs to foster tech startup incubation, promote startup-corporate collaboration, and implement open innovation. She also co-founded Cleantech for CEE, an initiative that accelerates clean technologies and promotes the region as a hub for climate innovation.

Elly Steers is Head of Marketing and Storytelling at Oxygen Conservation, one of the UK’s leading natural capital platforms, where she is helping build the brand, narrative and public profile of a business operating at the intersection of nature, capital and technology. Her remit spans brand strategy, investor communications, media and PR, events, social media and editorial — translating a complex business across institutional finance, conservation, land management and technology into a story that can cut through with very different audiences. Since 2021, Oxygen Conservation has built a natural capital portfolio spanning more than 50,000 acres across the UK, with the ambition to make nature investable at institutional scale and demonstrate that environmental restoration and long-term commercial value can work together. For Elly, the challenge is simple: Oxygen has the platform. Her job is to make sure the world understands what that means.