Executive Committee
Prof Ese Owie
Chief Executive Officer
An international trade lawyer, Ese is an energy transition and climate change expert specialising in environment, energy, trade policy, and sustainability. He works at the intersection between finance, public policy, and academe, having held senior roles in each domain. Over the course of a sterling multi-jurisdictional career spanning over two decades, he has garnered extensive experience advising national governments, multilateral agencies, firms, and third-sector organisations on trade, energy, and sustainable finance issues. Ese currently serves as a Senior Advisor and President at the Cavendish Institute, leading the client-facing trade, sustainability, and climate change advisory team. He is Associate Professor of International Law & Policy at Euclid University, Visiting Fellow at University of Essex Law School, and Senior Advisor for the Remaking Trade for a Sustainable Future Project.
Gautaam Borah
Director: Global Networks
Gautaam is an innovative leader and published author with a proven track record in customer service, digital transformation, and business excellence. He is an expert in managing multi-geography operations and leading diverse, multicultural teams. Currently, he is leading a women-centric eCommerce start-up, connecting underprivileged artisans to a global market. He is former VP and Head of Regional Customer Service Operations and Deployment Lead - Business Transformations at Vodafone India, driving customer experience strategies and digital transformations. Gautaam is a published author with Bloomsbury and board member in CX Network. He is committed to empowering businesses and individuals, leveraging expertise to fuel growth, profitability, and lasting impact.
Melinda Miklos
Director: Finance Working Group
Melinda is an ESG expert with 14 years working with C-suite leaders of multinationals, startups, and SMEs. She has built a proprietary model, turning ESG into a business model driver across geographies. She engaged 1,134 firms to take ESG actions and built a service portfolio to support them. She utilises sustainability in brand and growth strategies and relationship management. The business and social impact Melinda delivered won her a scholarship to Oxford, where she built an ESG value creation framework for private equity. After ten years of experience working with regional C-suite leaders of global financial services and investment firms, Melinda focuses on ESG in private markets. She is also a mentor to startups and entrepreneurs, and an angel investor.
Dr Andrew Lee
Director: Communications & External Liaison: UK
Andrew has been a geographer and geography educator in prep schools for more than 25 years. He has built and delivered teacher training for the Royal Geographical Society, edited an Atlas for the Philip's Atlas Company, toured through Asia for Apple training teachers how to use iPads in geographical education, and given lectures on teaching pupils how to think in the humanities. He has published scores of articles in the geographical press and produced a large amount of teaching material. He has been on the Senior Management staff of St Paul's School in London, and worked in other capacities at Westminster School and the Dragon School in Oxford. Andrew holds a doctorate in Geography from the University of Oxford, having worked with Professor David Harvey. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a Chartered Geographer. He is an associate fellow of the Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education at University College London.
James Sutherland
Regional Director: North America
James serves as Managing Director and Head of Investments at Avalon Growth Capital, leading the firm’s investment management and investor relations functions and responsible for sourcing, evaluating, structuring, and executing transactions across the platform. Prior to joining Avalon Growth Capital, James was a Director at Rock Elm Capital Management, an investment advisory and investment banking firm focused on sustainable infrastructure and industrial decarbonisation, specialising in food and agriculture, energy, critical metals, and the circular economy. James holds a BA (Hons) in Modern Languages and Linguistics from the University of Oxford and a Master’s in Business and Management from ESCP Europe Business School in Paris.
Barbara Izilein
Regional Director: Africa
Barbara is an experienced infrastructure investment professional and fund/portfolio manager with extensive experience working on PPP Projects (from inception to financial close), direct investment deals, private equity deals, and setting up and managing sector focused funds in different sectors (privately owned funds and funds partially owned by the government). This experience cuts across various sectors including agriculture, healthcare, renewables (hydropower, solar, biogas, etc.), water (irrigation, water supply, aquaculture, etc.), power (IPPs), transport, road, and railways.
Allan Marega
Director: Transport Working Group
Allan has been an airline professional for over two decades and is an entrepreneur currently working in the industrial renewable fuel production space. Formerly an airline pilot, Allan founded Global Supply Solutions Limited, a company with an industrial plant he built, to produce and supply to industries a patented type of sustainable Biomass Briquette at industrial scale. Allan's company's work led to representing Africa as a UN Environment renewables example at the World Circular Economic Forum in 2017 and the Katerva Awards finals in 2018. Allan has an MSc in Air Transport Management from the University of London, a Postgraduate Strategy and Innovation Diploma from Said Business School, University of Oxford, and is currently working on his PhD research in sustainable aviation fuel at the University of London. Allan is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
Anupama Panikar
Treasurer
Anupama is a management consultant focused on designing and implementing internal controls over the end-to-end sustainability/ESG reporting process. She has experience in identification, assessment, and management of risk, internal controls, and internal audit across global and local entities. She is also experienced in management of cross-functional teams and senior stakeholders to deliver large- and small-scale engagements, focusing on opportunities arising from the changing risk landscape in the UK and abroad. Anupama completed the MBA at Said Business School, University of Oxford, with a focus on strategy. She is a qualified Chartered Global Management Accountant under the aegis of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountancy.
Adi Bar-Yoseph
Director: Operations
Adi has worked in the sustainability space for nearly a decade. As a consultant at Deloitte, her work focused on supporting organisations across diverse industries in identifying shared-value initiatives that are viable in the long term within a business context, as well as training the next generation of sustainability consultants. She is a co-founder of Hubitus, a centre for urban sustainability that advances cross-sector collaboration and supports civil society initiatives for creating more sustainable cities. Adi holds an MBA from Reichman University, alongside degrees from the University of Oxford, King’s College London, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Tobias Huzarski
Director: Membership
Tobias is an impact investment professional with deal execution, fund structuring, and strategy development expertise. He is driven by passion for renewable energy and green deal infrastructure. He led the launch of one of Europe’s leading climate impact funds focused on renewable energy with €1.3 billion equity raised to date. Tobias has hands-on real asset investment experience, including renewables and real estate at leading investment firms, with a sourcing, structuring, and execution track record.
Şule obtained a B.A. in economics and econometrics from the University of Istanbul, a MSc in economics from the University of London, and a Ph.D. in economics from Oxford University. She has held teaching and research positions at the Universities of Oxford, Kent, Bonn, Tel Aviv, California at San Diego, Zurich, Neuchatel, Bern, EUI, Vesalius College - Vrij University of Brussels, Tilburg, METU, Suffolk and Coventry; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, SRH Berlin University of Applied Sciences, and DIW. Her research interests include macroeconomics, international economics, climate change. sustainability, economic history, development economics, econometrics, public economics, political economy, labour economics, demography, and international migration.
Dr Şule Akkoyunlu
Director: Food & Food Security Working Group
Faye Thijssen
Director: Climate Justice Working Group
Faye is a PhD student in Environmental Social Sciences at Stanford University. Her research focuses on the political economy of the environment with a particular emphasis on how transnational corporations shape climate politics through their global political, social, and economic embeddedness. Prior to coming to Stanford, her research focused on indirect corporate influence in environmental politics, investigating executional greenwashing and its potential to affect public perceptions and preferences for regulatory policy. This research primarily employed experimental methods, with support from the University of Oxford Department of Politics & International Relations (DPIR) and Nuffield College's Centre for Experimental Social Sciences (CESS).
Lena is a geographer and interdisciplinary scientist whose portfolio of work spans the social and physical sciences. As a DPhil student at the University of Oxford, she studies the environmental governance of the gold supply chain from the Peruvian Amazon rainforest to Switzerland. Lena began a DPhil after working in Washington, D.C., for six years with The Nature Conservancy and the RAND Corporation. As an analyst at RAND, her research spans climate adaptation and data tools, environmental justice, environmental health, extreme weather, and disaster preparedness and response. Lena was previously a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and Mary Gates Scholar and led independent research in the Amazon rainforest for three years. Her research focused on climate change impacts, adaptation strategies, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) in remote Indigenous communities of Peru and Bolivia. Lena holds an Honours BA in Medical Anthropology and Global Health from the University of Washington and an MSc Distinction in Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford.