Lawrence Bloom
Lawrence was appointed the first Chairman of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Global Agenda Council on Urban Management and he is a current alumnas of all Agenda Councils. He is former Chairman of the UN Environmental Programme, Green Economy Initiative, Green Cities, Buildings and Transport Council. Lawrence also served as an active a member of the Corporate Responsibility Advisory Group of the ICEAW.
He is Currently Secretary General of the Be Earth Foundation, a UN Inter Governmental Organisation which advises, assists and enables in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals on behalf those Countries with which it has Treaties.
Lawrence will speak on “ Changing the Economic Paradigm.” His passion is to support what is breaking through via what is breaking down in the current system. He considers this action will enable the emergence of a society whose understanding around the interconnectedness of all things will harmonise conscious economics, social wellbeing and environmental responsibility.
Willem Ferwerda
Willem is is CEO – founder of Commonland, an international organisation founded in 2013 by experts, investors and entrepreneurs with the goal to scale up landscape restoration jointly with local stakeholders by developing existing landscape projects on the basis of healthy underlying business cases. The work of Commonland is based on the ‘4 returns, 3 zones, 20 years landscape restoration approach’ that was developed by Ferwerda in 2012/2013. He is is Executive Fellow Business and Ecosystems at Rotterdam School of Management – Erasmus University and serves as Special Advisor in Business and Ecosystems to the IUCN, Commission on Ecosystem Management, the scientific commission of ecosystem managers of
the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Ferwerda ranked # 1 of the Sustainable Top 100 compiled by Dutch daily Trouw as the most sustainable doer and visionary of 2016.
Charly Kleissner
Charly Kleissner is a philanthropic entrepreneur who believes a grass-roots approach can be more successful and sustainable than a top-down approach. In emulating the social enterprises in which he invests, he wants to take an entrepreneurial approach, with measured risks and the potential for significant impact.
Charly is now focusing on breaking down the barrier between the for-profit sector and the not-for-profit sector by creating social enterprises as hybrid business structures, insisting that both vehicles can be effective for achieving social change. To that end, he has co-founded ‘Flowing Currents’, a for-profit entity in Sri Lanka as well as ‘Aspira’, a not-for-profit entity in Sri Lanka, both focused on providing biomass and other renewable energy solutions to the rural population. Charly is co-founder of the KL Felicitas Foundation and the Social-Impact initiative, and serves on the Advisory Board of multiple not-for-profit companies like Acumen Fund, Global Social Benefit Incubator, Alliance for a New Humanity, and Global Philanthropy Forum.
Tim MacDonald
Tim MacDonald, Senior Fellow at Capital Institute is a theorist-practitioner in the evolving new field of purposeful investment by stewardship investors. A lawyer by vocation, Tim integrates diverse experiences in finance, investment, and associated commercial transactions and their regulation, across multiple capital formation systems.
A student of history, anthropology, and philosophy by avocation, Tim brings a multi-disciplinary, multi-generational, evolutionary worldview to the great challenges of our time presenting at the intersections of law, economics, and technology.
Patrick Worms 
Patrick Worms, a molecular geneticist, works for the World Agroforestry Centre, the world’s premier research institution devoted to the study of the roles of trees in agricultural landscapes to policy makers in Brussels and elsewhere in Europe. Active since the 1970s, the Centre has reported on the astonishing benefits of multi-crop agriculture involving trees in thousands of peer-reviewed publications. Headquartered in Nairobi and active across the tropics, the Centre may be best known for its work in Africa’s drylands, where agroforestry is leading to a revolution in farming productivity.
John. D. Liu
John is a well-known ecologist, journalist and film producer who believes economic theory should be based on the true value of land, rather than the products and services we gain from it. His film “Hope in the Changing Climate” encapsulates his thinking. First screened in Copenhagen at COP 15, it was officially chosen to commemorate the UN Year of Forests, 2011. John is an Ambassador of the Commonland Foundation that works on large scale landscape restoration projects with a business approach called the 4 returns framework developed by founder Willem Ferwerda.
Micheal Akampa
Micheal is an Investment and Sustainability professional with vast experience working in Africa and in Global markets. Over the last decade, he has been actively involved in ESG and CSR initiatives of several African organizations. With a Background in Development Economics, Micheal also has advanced Masters degrees in Financial Management, and in Risk Analysis, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Investment and Risk Analysis at Stockholm University with a focus on evaluation models for sustainable investments. He is a member of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment (CISI), and the Association of Corporate Treasurers (ACT).
He is the CEO and Co-founder of Traction Capital, an Africa-focused impact investment company, as well as the Regional Director for Africa at WhistleB, a Swedish company that is active in the Business ethics and Corporate sustainability space and aims to help African organizations respond to governance and corruption risks by offering them a next generation whistleblowing service. Micheal has previously worked in various senior roles in the Treasury and Investment departments of Commercial Bank of Africa Group, Housing Finance Bank, and at Barclays Africa Group. He is also a Board member at Action10 and a Director at the Ethics Institute of East Africa among others.
Carl Pendragon
Carl Pendragon is an entrepreneur, philosopher and the inventor of SkyMining®, which is the world’s first mass scalable and highly profitable method of removing CO2 from the atmosphere. SkyMining converts CO2 into a clean, carbon negative diesel at lower production cost than products based on crude oil. It can also produce clean, carbon negative coal and charcoal replacements – all while sequestering carbon to restore marginal land.
Carl was raised in a family of diplomats, has lived in over 10 countries and travelled extensively throughout Asia, Africa, North and South America, the mid-East and Europe. He has extensive experience in energy markets since 1990. Since 2004 he has studied energy crop agronomics and economics, and went on to develop SkyMining .
Richie Ahuja
Richie’s areas of expertise include climate change, India, international development, international climate finance and climate change adaptation. An expert in business development strategies, he spearheads The Environmental Defense Fund’s (EDF) engagement in India. He helped to catalyze the formation of other institutions such as Indian Youth Climate Network (IYCN), India’s largest youth network on climate change, and Climate Parliament, an independent multi party body of elected leaders focused on addressing climate change in the country. Richie is also a leading voice on “climate smart” agricultural practices, both within India and at the global level, through initiatives such as the Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture, which EDF was integral in launching.