Event

Economist, strategic planner, policy maker and conceptual designer. Alejandra has more than 15 years of experience partnering community-based, non-profit and government institutions to develop local economic empowerment strategies. As a policy advisor, she has led multidisciplinary, cross-sectoral teams in strategic planning efforts aimed at reducing inequity and exposure to risk. Her projects have ranged from the development of strategic plans, program design and policy strategies and disaster risk reduction assessments, to designing web-based community vulnerability and recovery tools.

As a consultant, she has worked with OXFAM-America, ACACIA Network, Boys and Girls Club of Puerto Rico. At RPPR she was the conceptual designer for the Puerto Rico Energy Toolkit and the Solar Energy Incubation Program. As a senior policy advisor in government, she was San Juan’s chief resilience officer under the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities nonprofit organization; task force lead for Puerto Rico’s National Disaster Resilience Competition (HUD-CDBG DR); and deputy advisor to the Governor’s Office for the Development of Vieques and Culebra.

Prior to returning to Puerto Rico, Alejandra was a guest lecturer teaching applied research methods, and researcher designing large-scale spatial datasets at the London School of Economics. She also worked as a consultant for DANIDA’s Local Economic Development in the Balkans program. She is currently president of the board for Kilómetro 0, and over the years has supported several non-profit organizations including COPRONU, 32 X Oscar and Casa Pueblo.

Alejandra graduated with honors from the Local Economic Development MSc program at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she specialized in economic inequities, with a focus on the spatial determinants of unequal development in transition economies.

Director General of the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change

María Amparo Martínez Arroyo is a biologist who holds a Master in Science from the  National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a PhD cum laude in Ecology from the University of Barcelona.

Dr. Martínez Arroyo was director of UNAM’s Center for Atmospheric Sciences from 2009 to August 2013, an institution where she has been a senior researcher and coordinator of the Research Unit on Atmospheric Aerosols since 1991. She heads the Commission on the Evaluation of Public Policies, which is responsible for generating educational and outreach programs on climate change and sustainable development.

She is a representative and negotiator for Mexico with international bodies active on climate change issues, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC), which focuses on reducing short-lived climate pollutants, the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI). and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, among others.

As an expert analyst of environmental problems and the linkages between science and society, she has made her mark in a variety of areas where applied science and public administration intersect.

Karime Guillén Libien is a young entrepreneur seeking to write her success story with mind, body and soul. A 21 year-old third-year student in biotechnology at the Autonomous University of Mexico State, Karime is a young entrepreneur interested in how science and biotechnology can benefit our planet. She had the wonderful opportunity to co-found BIOVATEC, with a professor and three classmates. A biotechnology company that has been a vehicle for developing innovative projects for the private sector, BIOVATEC is specifically focused on generating positive environmental impacts. Among their successful projects, particular stand-outs include: “NoPlastic,” which finished second place at the state level and third place nationally in the 2019 Canacintra Entrepreneurship Contest; “GreenYouth,” which was the local winner in Mexico City of the 2019 Hult Social Entrepreneurship Prize; and “BioPET for Energy,” which What Design Can Do deemed one of the twelve best projects worldwide and TecReview México named one of the seven best high-impact innovations of 2020.

In the course of her professional development, Karime has had experience in design, public relations, sales, marketing, academic advising, administration, finance, event organizing, and children’s entertainment events.  All of these experiences have taught her valuable lessons that she has incorporated into her daily life. She has also been active in extracurricular activities, including volleyball, dance competitions, volunteering, and baking.

Monique Chan, the founder of Bruized, started this venture as a result of her love of food. Although she is the product of a frugal upbringing and very mindful of the waste she produced, the initial spark to create change came during her time studying food waste in university, when she worked in restaurants and witnessed the horrendous amounts of fresh food that were simply being tossed. A new perspective on food systems emerged. Further investigation during visits to local farms and checking out the back of grocery stores confirmed that this was a common problem across the entire food system that was being neglected. Aided by her complementing passions of plant-based cooking, sustainability and health, she envisioned a business and community model that could highlight all these topics. Thus Bruized was born.

Ciara Imani May is a social entrepreneur from Kansas City, MO. Ciara received her bachelor’s in business management from the University of Missouri-Columbia with two minors in entrepreneurship and Spanish. Immediately following undergrad, Ciara decided to pursue a master’s in social entrepreneurship at the University of Southern California. Now with two degrees under her belt, it was clear that her passion for entrepreneurship was growing, so she relocated from Los Angeles to Charlotte, NC by way of Venture for America. After spending over a year at Johnson C. Smith University’s Innovation Center as an Entrepreneurship Program Coordinator, her interest in the circular economy really sparked, and Ciara began to draw connections between sustainability and the beauty industry. As an advocate for the circular economy, the idea behind Rebundle was born out of Ciara’s desire to reduce her carbon footprint and to address the inequities women experience with beauty products.

Based in Calgary, Carol-Ann is the Vice President of Cleantech and Innovation for the Delphi Group and GLOBE Series. Carol-Ann works with the private and public sectors on accelerating the development of clean technology solutions, strategic planning, as well as technology road mapping and market scenarios. Carol-Ann also leverages low carbon and innovative technology partnerships to deliver programming for the GLOBE Series, which convenes events that aim to accelerate the clean economy.  Since July 2019, Carol-Ann has been the interim Managing Director of GLOBE Series.

Carol-Ann brings 20 years of experience as an expert in clean energy and environmental technology development and commercialization. Her international and multidisciplinary experience focuses on the environment/energy nexus, encompassing a broad range of issues including emissions trading, policy analysis and formulation, and program development; and clean technology assessment, development and commercialization. Carol-Ann is a member of Canada’s Clean50 for 2020, as well as the Clean16 for 2020 – the leader in her category.

Carol-Ann holds a PhD in Geography and a MSc in Environmental Change & Management from the University of Oxford, and an Honours BA in International Development Studies and Biology from Dalhousie University.