Laura Whitford is the Director of Conservation Partnerships for The Nature Conservancy's Asia Pacific Program. She leads a regional team focused on public and corporate partnerships, as well as TNC’s engagement with the Asian Development Bank. She has worked in the Asia Pacific region for over 15 years, on partnerships, policy and programs that support the joint achievement of sustainable natural resource management, resilience, equity and economic development goals. She is particularly passionate about the intersection of issues relating to environment, climate and gender.

At the age of 19, Daniela founded Sustainable Ocean Alliance (SOA) as a college-room idea at Georgetown University. Six years later, she has built SOA into a global organization that is cultivating and accelerating innovative solutions to protect and sustain the health of the ocean. With phenomenal speed, SOA has created the world’s largest network of young ocean leaders - by establishing a presence in over 165 countries and has successfully launched the world’s first Ocean Solutions Accelerator to develop technological solutions that can address the greatest threats facing our planet.

Nick is the CEO and Co-founder of Ocean Impact Organisation (OIO). OIO is an Australian charity and startup accelerator with a mission to transform ocean health through inspiration, innovation, and good business. OIO launched in early 2020 and provides a range of startup programs, mentoring, and support to help people to start, grow and invest in businesses that improve ocean health. OIO has a five-year target of accelerating 100 startups that improve ocean health.

Ted Janulis is Founder and Principal of Investable Oceans, a New York ocean investment platform whose mission is to accelerate market-based sustainable ocean investing across all asset classes and all sectors of the Blue Economy. He has served in various executive positions, including CEO, at financial institutions involved in Capital Markets, Banking and Asset Management over a 30+ year business career. Ted is President Emeritus of The Explorers Club, an international multidisciplinary professional society with the goal of promoting scientific exploration and field study.

Dorothée Herr is the Manager for Ocean and Climate Change at the Global Marine and Polar Programme (GMPP) at IUCN – the International Union for Conservation of Nature. She joined IUCN in 2009 and is now leading the IUCN’s international policy and private finance engagement on coastal and marine Nature-based Solutions. Ms. Herr has authored and co-authored a suite of articles and reports on ocean acidification, Blue Carbon as well as on coastal and marine Nature-based Solutions (NbS) in the context of the UNFCCC, CBD, and other international policy fora. Ms.

Chris Gorell Barnes is a social entrepreneur. He is Founding partner of Ocean 14 capital a 150M Euro leading impact fund focused on ensuring a healthy ocean for everyone through a sustainable & regenerative blue economy and Co-founder of the Blue marine foundation a world-leading marine charity dedicated to creating marine reserves and establishing sustainable models of fishing. Chris is also an experienced marketer having founded one of the leading brand communication agencies at the forefront of content marketing and technology.

Jonas is the CEO of Katapult Ocean – the most active ocean impact venture funds globally. The fund invests in ocean impact companies such as offshore wind and solar, seaweed and seafood, alternative proteins, ocean health and maritime transportation. Katapult Ocean is based in Norway but invests in and accelerates impactful ocean startups from all over the world. He has fifteen years of experience from banking and global asset management. He joined Katapult after co-founding the successful sustainable investing hedge fund, CARN Capital, proving that profit and purpose can go hand in hand.

Karthik is a Senior Climate Finance Expert with Dalberg Global Development Advisors based in Mumbai. He advises private, public sector, and civil organization partners as well as development finance institutions on climate finance and sustainable finance strategy, strategy planning & implementation, and technical assistance. He has deep knowledge and expertise of best practices and finance access models for environmental and sustainable solutions and has worked with several sovereigns, sub-sovereigns as well as private sector players in Asia/AsiaPac, Europe, Australia, and LatAm.