Susan Kish
Susan Kish is a senior executive with more than two decades of experience in financial services, renewable energy, media, networks and building businesses.
Most recently, Susan was the Head of Cross Platform Initiatives at Bloomberg LP, responsible for a portfolio of mandates to coordinate, integrate and innovate across the media, data and analytical platforms and publications of Bloomberg worldwide.
Previously, Susan was the Director of Knowledge Services at New Energy Finance, a subsidiary of Bloomberg. BNEF is the world's independent provider of research in renewable energy, smart energy technologies, and the carbon markets. At the firm, she launched and produced the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit, the leading gathering of thought leaders across the global clean energy and carbon markets, now in its seventh year.
Prior to BNEF, Susan was the CEO of First Tuesday Zurich, which she founded in 1999. The firm was a highly regarded independent think tank that supported the development of thought leader networks and innovative knowledge sharing in areas such as sustainable energy, mobile/telecom, and financial services. After First Tuesday Zurich was acquired in 2006 by the professional online network XING, she became XING's Head of Network and Community Practice.
Susan is a director and co-founder of the Energy Venture Forum, the foundation which established and produces the European Energy Venture Fair in Zurich. She is an independent Director and Advisor on the boards of The Foundation Center and the SwissNex Science Consulate.
Susan was with UBS for more than 14 years, most recently as Global Functional Head of Structured Finance and Private Banking, based in Zurich. Before moving to Europe in 1995, she held a variety of executive positions at UBS in New York, where she was responsible for their successful entry into several new financial markets and products.
Ms. Kish has spoken at TED about her experience learning to code as a senior executive, and is an experienced facilitator on topics including energy, networks, innovation, and risk. She graduated from Harvard University where she studied the History of Science, and lives with her family in Boston, USA.
Simon K.C. Li
Simon K.C. Li is an editing and leadership consultant. Before retiring from newspaper journalism, he had held a wide variety of editing positions at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Los Angeles Times. At The Times, he edited international news for more than 16 years, almost half of them as foreign editor. He retired from the paper in 2007 as an assistant managing editor.
Simon serves on the Board of Visitors of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, where both school and university have honored him with alumni awards. He also is a member of the Board of Overseers at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens; the executive board of the International Research and Exchange Board (IREX), a Washington-based international NGO; and the Rector's Council of his alma mater, Lincoln College, Oxford University, of which he is a Fleming Fellow.
Simon is a former vice chairman of the International Press Institute, the Vienna-based press freedom organization, which has made him an honorary lifetime member. He is also a long-time member of the Asian American Journalists Assn. The group has twice honored him for his trail-blazing career and continuing support of other Asian Americans in the media.
He is married to June, an art historian and curator of the Chinese Garden at the Huntington.
Michael Northrop
Michael Northrop directs the Sustainable Development grantmaking program at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in New York City, where he focuses on energy and climate change. He provided the seed grant that got InsideClimate News started in 2007. He also moonlights as a lecturer at Yale University’s Forestry and Environmental Studies School, where he teaches a course on environmental campaigns. Previously he was executive director of Ashoka, an international development organization that supports “public sector entrepreneurs” and an Analyst at First Boston, an investment bank in New York City. Mr. Northrop also served on Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s PlaNYC Sustainability Advisory Board, the City of New York’s Waterfront Advisory Board, and on the boards of directors of Oceana and Princeton in Asia. Northrop has an Master of Public Administration from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, where he was an English major as an undergraduate.
Lawrence Rodman
Larry Rodman is currently a Master’s Degree candidate at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. He recently completed a 40 year career practicing law, to begin a new career in environmental policy with a focus on climate change issues.
During his law career, Larry served as counsel to privately held companies across a broad range of industries, including printing and media, distribution, education, real estate, heavy manufacturing, and professional service firms. His services included advising on corporate governance, advising on and negotiating agreements (such as employment agreements, distribution agreements, and commercial contracts), handling mergers and acquisitions, financings, and private equity transactions, assisting in hiring new CEOs and other senior executives, handling commercial disputes, assessing client company risk profiles, providing guidance in managing risk, and evaluating and rationalizing executive compensation programs.
Larry serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
He received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and his J.D. degree from Harvard Law School.
David Sassoon
David Sassoon is the founder and publisher of InsideClimate News, the non-partisan and non-profit news organization launched in 2007 that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2013. He has been a writer, editor and publisher for 25 years, involved with public interest issues: human rights, cultural preservation, healthcare, education and the environment. In 2003 he began researching the business case for climate action for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. BusinessWeek used that research to help it rank the Top Ten Companies of the Decade for emissions reductions and to produce a multi-part project that examined how leading U.S. corporations were responding to climate change.
As an outgrowth of his research, Sassoon founded the blog which has grown and evolved into InsideClimate News. He earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.