Dawn Lippert is the Founder & CEO of Elemental, a nonprofit investor focused on scaling climate technologies with deep community impact. In addition to leading Elemental, Dawn serves as Founding Partner of Earthshot Ventures, a $90M venture capital fund that spun out of Elemental in 2021. She is also Senior Climate Advisor at Emerson Collective, the investment and philanthropic platform led by Laurene Powell Jobs.

Dawn has spent her career building solutions at the nexus of technology companies, capital and communities. Under Dawn’s leadership, Elemental has invested in 160 startups, and those companies have gone on to raise over $10 billion in follow-on funding. Elemental has pioneered a new model for investing in climate solutions that centers social equity in companies’ cultures, products and technology deployments. Over half of Elemental’s portfolio companies are serving customers in disadvantaged communities, and the technologies are deployed in 50 states and more than 100 countries. Elemental is supported by organizations such as Rockefeller Foundation, Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, Waverley Street Foundation, Emerson Collective, the U.S. Navy, Amazon, United Airlines, and others.

Dawn has contributed her insight on climate investing and the energy transition in publications such as the Economist, Politico, Bloomberg, Axios, and Canary Media. She was invited to give a TED talk on how “Community investment is the missing piece of climate action,” which has garnered 1.5m views.

Dawn grew up in Washington state and graduated from Yale University and the Yale School of the Environment. You can find her on the soccer field, enjoying the ocean and riding bikes with her husband, daughter and son.