Speaker

Hui Wen Chan, MBA '10

Vice President, Corporate Sustainability, Citigroup

Hui leads Citi’s ESG reporting strategy, and supports sustainable finance and other cross-functional initiatives that drive environmental and social impact with clients and other stakeholders. She also currently serves as the North America Representative on the UN Environment Program Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) Banking Committee. Previously at Citi, she was the Impact Analytics and Planning Officer at the Citi Foundation.

Hui has prior work experience in both the private and nonprofit sectors. Before joining Citi, she advised clients across a variety of industries at Sagent Advisors, Inc. and Mercer Management Consulting (now Oliver Wyman Group). She also served as a Program Officer for the William J. Clinton Foundation’s pediatric HIV/AIDS program in Beijing, China, and was a Harvard Business School Leadership Fellow and Associate Director at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, focused on strategic planning and business development.

Hui is based in New York City. She received an A.B. in Economics from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Speaker

Michael Ellis, MBA '08

Managing Director and COO, Inherent Group

Michael Ellis is COO and a Managing Director of Inherent Group, an investment management firm focused on long-term investment opportunities as well as opportunistic dislocations. The firm uses environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors to source and underwrite investments. Through its engagement with companies, the firm aims to inspire investors and managers to incorporate sustainability into their decisions and to encourage business more broadly to address environmental and social challenges.

In addition to his operational responsibilities, Michael focuses on water-related investment opportunities and engagement with corporate management teams. As a trustee of Inherent Foundation, he works with mission-aligned academic, policy, and social enterprises. Prior to Inherent Group, Michael was EVP at Cleantech Group, where he advised corporate investors on their investments in and partnerships with cleantech companies and on associated growth strategies. Michael received a BA from Yale College and MBA from Harvard Business School.

Speaker

Claire Broido Johnson, MBA '02

President, CBJ Energy

Claire is a senior operations executive with a proven track record in creating and managing successful businesses and products and driving operations in the clean energy space. She is currently the President of CBJ Energy, a financing, operations, and business development energy consulting firm headquartered in Baltimore, where she works with financers, contractors and building owners to retrofit commercial buildings and install ground-mounted solar. Her clients have included new build construction company Katerra, Inc., solar developer Power52 Energy Solutions, and Next Step Living where she managed business development and opened NSL’s Connecticut and New York offices, and created a community solar product.

In 2003, Claire co-founded SunEdison, at one point the world’s largest solar energy services provider. At its peak, SunEdison had an asset value over $10 billion and more than 7,000 employees.

After founding SunEdison, Claire served as the acting program manager for the Office of Weatherization and Intergovernmental Programs (OWIP) within the Department of Energy. Also at the DOE, she served as an energy-efficiency advisor to the Secretary and — leveraging the Recovery Act — guided the deployment of $11 billion in economic stimulus funds for clean energy while championing policies to expand the impact of public investment through public-private partnerships.

Claire earned a B.A. in environmental science and public policy from Harvard College, where she helped to create that major, and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School. Specialties include: energy efficiency markets and financing, driving operations, solar energy financing, renewable energy, origination, and renewable energy credit markets.

Speaker

Jackson Lehr, MBA '07

Director, Distributed Energy Ventures, National Grid

Jackson is a collaborative, entrepreneurial leader with proven execution across investment, development, early-stage and multinational corporate settings, focused on sustainable energy, mobility and real estate. He is committed to creating a clean energy future, currently building a distributed energy business for National Grid, including a pioneering partnership with industry-leader Sunrun (residential solar and storage).

Previously at National Grid’s US regulated-utility business, he led the market strategy team, which built and managed a product-development portfolio of innovative customer solutions in areas such as energy efficiency, smart grid, distributed generation and storage, electric vehicles, and oil-to-gas conversions. He also served as the customer lead on transformational proceedings such as New York Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) and Massachusetts Grid Modernization, and represented the company at the White House 21st Century Utility CEO Roundtable in 2013.

Prior to National Grid, Jackson was a partner in GO Ventures, a holding company that incubated energy-efficiency, renewable energy, and other green businesses, including California Bioenergy, a biogas project development company. He also helped grow the boutique management consulting firm GreenOrder as co-head of the real estate practice, and began his career at Bechtel where he worked in the field on large civil infrastructure projects.

Jackson holds undergraduate engineering degrees from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Harvard Business School and enjoys spending time with his wife and two children in Brooklyn, NY.

Moderator

Joseph B. Lassiter, III

Senior Fellow, Senator John Heinz Professor of Management Practice in Environmental Management, Retired Harvard Business School

Joe is the Senator John Heinz Professor of Management Practice in Environmental Management, Retired. He studies one of the world’s most pressing problems: developing clean, secure and carbon-neutral supplies of reliable, low-cost energy all around the world. He teaches in the Harvard Business School MBA program as well as in Harvard University’s Executive Education programs. In addition to being a Senior Fellow at HBS, he is a Faculty Fellow of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program (HEEP) and a Faculty Associate of the Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE). Since joining HBS in 1996, his work has focused on financing high-potential ventures and bringing their innovations to market in different parts of the world. Outside Harvard, he has been an active investor in and director of a wide range of new ventures and public companies.

From 1994 to 1996, Joe was President of Wildfire Communications, a telecommunications software venture backed by Matrix Partners and Greylock Partners. From 1974 to 1994, he was a Vice President of Teradyne (NYSE/ automatic test equipment) and a member of its Management Committee. Professor Lassiter began his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Department of Ocean Engineering as an Instructor in 1970 and was promoted to Assistant Professor in 1972. He received his BS, MS, and PhD from MIT.