Sustainability Talks ETF Partners

Welcome to the latest episode of Sustainability Talks, the podcast delivering real talk on the future of sustainability and innovation, brought to you by ETF Partners, Europe's original sustainability and impact venture capital firm. 

In this episode, our Partner Zoë VanderWolk hosts a special roundtable discussion with some of the founders of our esteemed portfolio companies including Fairly Made, Dexter Energy & Hellas Direct. This dynamic conversation explores the challenges they faced, the victories they've celebrated and how technology has been an indispensable ally in their journey to drive sustainability forward.

Our guests also share practical advice and insights for other businesses looking to tread the path of sustainability, ensuring that the road to a greener future is one that we could all embark on together.

Meet Our Guests 

Alexis Pantazis is the Co-Founder of Hellas Direct, a company redefining insurance with a focus on transparency and customer empowerment, proving that even traditional sectors can pivot towards more sustainable practices.

Laure Betsch is the Co-Founder of Fairly Made, a company transforming the fashion industry by providing unparalleled transparency and promoting ethical manufacturing processes.

Hubert Penn is the CCO & Co-founder of Dexter Energy, a company at the forefront of utilising AI to optimise energy usage for businesses demonstrating the power of technology in achieving efficiency and sustainability.

Find out more about our guests below:



Alexis Pantazis 

Alexis Pantazis is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Hellas Direct. Prior to Hellas Direct, he was an Executive Director at Goldman Sachs where he led principal investing and new strategic initiatives for the firm in the European investment management field. A former strategy consultant with the Boston Consulting Group, he also worked for Miramax Films in New York and the Competition Directorate General of the European Commission in Brussels. Alexis is a Fulbright and British Chevening Scholar, a Robert & Diane Levy Fellow and has been honoured with the prestigious EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ Cyprus 2022.

Find out more about Hellas Direct on ⁠hellasdirect.gr/en⁠



Laure Betsch

Laure Betsch is the co-founder of Fairly Made, a Parisian start-up founded in May 2018 which helps fashion companies become more sustainable and environmentally friendly. Betsch, a graduate of Parisian management school IESEG, teamed up with high-school friend Camille Le Gal to jointly set up Fairly Made, with the goal of “helping labels create collections that are both attractive and sustainable.” Fairly Made is based in Paris in the sustainable fashion incubator La Caserne, and is a green tech company that advocates a more environmentally friendly fashion, with sustainability as its driving principle.

Find out more about Fairly Made on ⁠fairlymade.com ⁠



Hubert Penn

Hubert Penn is the founder and Chief Commercial Officer of Dexter Energy, where he helps build and commercialise the industry’s leading AI-based forecasting and trade optimisation services. He started his career in private equity after which he kickstarted a leisure business. Hubert holds an MSc in Aerospace Engineering from TU Delft and is a Certified Management Accountant.

Find out more about Dexter Energy on ⁠dexterenergy.ai⁠

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We’re heading to the movies for our latest episode of the ‘Sustainability Talks’ podcast. Our host and managing partner Rob Genieser sat down with Hollywood screenwriter and director Jeffrey Nachmanoff who wrote the screenplay for the 2004 blockbuster film 'The Day After Tomorrow'. The film depicts the catastrophic effects of climate change and the dawning of a new ice age.

Life often imitates art, but how much of the film’s predictions have come to pass? The answer is in places as chilling as the film's closing scenes. In this episode we explore Jeffrey’s journey into filmmaking, the science behind ‘The Day After Tomorrow’, and how telling fictional stories can have real-world resonance. 

Whether you’re a film enthusiast or a sustainability expert, this episode offers a unique perspective that combines the world of entertainment with pressing global issues. 



More About Jeffrey Nachmanoff

Jeffrey Nachmanoff was born and raised in Virginia and moved to London with his family as a teen. He majored in Visual Arts and English at Harvard, where he somehow convinced his instructors to give him credit for travelling with a family circus as a senior thesis. The photo-documentary book he made about the experience, a mix of black and white images and oral histories, convinced him that what he really wanted to do was tell stories with pictures. He subsequently went to USC film school and, after a brief stint as an editor, embarked on a career as a director and screenwriter. 

His big break came when he wrote the ecological disaster movie “The Day After Tomorrow.” He spent several years as a screenwriter before transitioning to writer/director on the feature film “Traitor,” an international espionage thriller starring Don Cheadle and Guy Pearce. 

Nachmanoff’s extensive television credits include directing the pilots for the dramas “Detroit 187” (ABC), “Chicago Fire” (NBC), and Hostages (CBS), which he also wrote and served as co-showrunner on for the series. In addition, he co-wrote the pilot for “Legends” (TNT). His episodic directing work includes “Homeland” (Showtime), “The Brave” (NBC), “The Passage” (FOX), “Lovecraft Country” (HBO), “Echo 3” (APPLE) and “Daredevil: Born Again” (MARVEL). He served as a consulting producer on Chicago PD (NBC) and directed the independent sci-fi feature “Replicas” (starring Keanu Reeves). He currently lives in Los Angeles with his family.



Find out more about Jeffrey Nachmanoff and his work HERE 

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The team at ETF Partners presents 'Sustainability Talks', a new series featuring in-depth conversations with influential leaders from across the global sustainability, investment, and startup ecosystems. The podcast examines the biggest challenges and opportunities in delivering sustainable prosperity.



Find out more about ETF Partners here: etfpartners.capital



Theme music by Lee Olivier Hall. Listen on Spotify

In this episode of Sustainability Talks, our Managing Partner Rob Genieser checks back in with Professor Tim Benton, Chair of Chatham House’s Climate Change Science programme, that works to develop evidence-based solutions for tackling climate change.  

Our regular listeners will remember that Professor Benton was a guest on the podcast back in March 2023. Tim is back to discuss the key points from COP28 and the prospects for climate investment and action in 2024. Tim shares his expert insights on how environmental risks impact societies and the strategies needed to mitigate, adapt to, and build resilience against these risks. Tim and Rob also discuss the ongoing challenges around food security, a pressing concern in the context of climate change.



About Professor Tim Benton

Professor Tim G. Benton leads the Environment and Society Centre at Chatham House. He joined Chatham House in 2016 as a distinguished visiting fellow, at which time he was also dean of strategic research initiatives at the University of Leeds. From 2011–16 he was the ‘champion’ of the UK’s Global Food Security programme which was a multi-agency partnership of the UK’s public bodies (government departments, devolved governments and research councils) with an interest in the challenges around food.



As a leading expert on food security and food systems, he has worked with UK governments, the EU, G20 and a range of other governments around the world, as well as leading businesses and civil society organizations, and has conducted many foresight exercises on the future of food systems, how to increase their resilience to climate change, reduce their environmental footprints and increase public health through nutrition. He has been a global agenda steward of the World Economic Forum and was an author of the IPCC’s Special Report on Food, Land and Climate (2019), and the UK’s Climate Change Risk Assessment (2017, 2022).



He has published more than 200 academic papers, many tackling how systems respond to environmental change. He has an h-index of 83, and >35,000 citations on GoogleScholar. His work on sustainability leadership has been recognized with an honorary fellowship of the UK’s Society for the Environment, and a doctorate honoris causa from the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. He also remains a (part-time) Research Professor at the University of Leeds.



Find out more about Chatham House at chathamhouse.org



Follow Professor Tim Benton HERE



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In this episode, we had the privilege of hosting the insightful Maryam Golnaraghi, Director of Climate Change & Environment at The Geneva Association. With a 25-year career spanning executive leadership, entrepreneurship, and advisory roles in private and public sectors, Maryam is a seasoned expert.



In this episode, Maryam joins our managing partner Patrick Sheehan for a lively and in-depth conversation about her fascinating journey into the realms of sustainability and the transformative projects she has spearheaded.



About Maryam Golnaraghi

Over the last 25 years, Maryam’s career has spanned working as a senior executive, founder& entrepreneur and serving on advisory boards in private and public sectors and the United Nations. She has launched, led and managed transformative climate change initiatives and multi-stakeholder partnerships with systemic impacts, to enable transitioning to a resilient low-carbon economy. In 2020, Maryam was included on the list of 20 ‘Most Influential on Climate Change’ by InsuranceERM and among the top 100 influencers in the world on ‘Resilience’ by The Leaders’ Magazine.



Since 2015, Maryam is the Director of Climate Change and Environment at The Geneva Association, the strategic international think tank, whose members are CEOs of 90 largest insurance companies, globally. Working with corporate boards and CEOs, regulatory and standard setting bodies, fintech and insurtech firms, governments and policy makers, she leads strategic initiatives to innovate and scale up insurance industry’s contributions as risk managers and investors to transitioning to a resilient low-carbon economy.



From 2004 to 2014, Maryam was the Chief of Disaster Risk Reduction Program at the World Meteorological Organization, where she headed up and built an international program and led major initiatives with 40+ governments for development of their national polices, institutional and operational capacities in climate and disaster risk management. Maryam was actively involved in the formulation and implementation of international framework agreements for disaster risk reduction and the UN climate change agreements. She developed the initial concept of demand-driven climate information services and data policies to enable private-sector access to publicly-funded, climate data and modelling for decision-making support. Following the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, she served as an adviser to former U.S. President Clinton in his capacity as the UN Special Envoy on Tsunamis. She negotiated international agreements and coordinated activities that enabled the development and dissemination of tsunami alerts to all countries in less than five minutes. 



From 1997 to 2004, as founder and CEO of Climate Risk Solutions, Inc. the first climate risk analytics and advisory firm, headquartered in Boston, USA, she delivered innovative climate-risk assessment and risk management solutions to companies in the energy, agriculture and financial sectors and the U.S. government. 



Maryam mentors high-tech start-ups with climate risk analytics and net zero transition focus. She serves on a number of executive and advisory boards of companies, governments, centers of excellence and multi-lateral organizations, and is a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Her work is regularly featured by platforms such the Economist Climate Summit, Responsible Investor, ClimateAction, Risk.net, InsuranceERM, among others.

She has authored numerous internationally referenced reports on climate change as well as a book, “Partnerships in Multi-hazard Early Warning Systems” (Springer-Verlag). 



Maryam holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University, an MS in Applied Physics and a PhD in Physical Oceanography from Harvard University after which she served as a senior research fellow at the Harvard Business School.  



Follow Maryam Golnaraghi HERE



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It's time for our latest episode of Sustainability Talks and we're thrilled to have our Partner & Head of Sustainability & Investor Relations Zoë VanderWolk hosting this episode. Zoe is joined by strategist, investor and serial entrepreneur Azeem Azhar.

Zoe and Azeem discuss the intricate dynamics shaping the future of sustainability startups and VCs. They explore thought provoking topics such as how ESG factors are influencing investment decisions and the potential of technology as a catalyst for sustainable innovation. They also discuss the challenges and opportunities startups face while embedding sustainability into their business models.


You can follow Azeem on Twitter and Instagram.



Follow Zoë VanderWolk here: https://bit.ly/47cG5UK



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