2025 Speakers

Brian Sheng is the CEO and Co-Founder of 6, a climate technology company pioneering a new form of accessible, resilient, and abundant clean water infrastructure by harvesting water from the air.

Just as solar and batteries transformed energy into a distributed and secure resource, Aquaria is doing the same for water. The company currently supplies homes and communities in Texas, California, Florida, and Hawaii with on-site atmospheric water systems. Aquaria is building the first community of its kind, 1,000 homes, where the water is supplied from the sky.

Aquaria is backed by SoftBank Mistletoe, Ciri Ventures, Soma Capital, HF0, and former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt. Brian is a graduate of Princeton University.

Jason Bordoff is the Founding Director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where he is a Professor of Professional Practice. He is also on the faculty of the Columbia Climate School, where he is Co-Founding Dean Emeritus.

He previously served as Special Assistant to President Barack Obama and Senior Director for Energy and Climate Change on the Staff of the National Security Council. Prior to that appointment, he held senior policy positions on the White House’s National Economic Council and Council on Environmental Quality. Earlier in his career, he was a scholar at the Brookings Institution, served in the Treasury Department during the Clinton Administration, and was a consultant with McKinsey & Company. One of the world’s leading energy and climate policy experts, Bordoff’s research and policy interests lie at the intersection of economics, energy, environment, and national security. As a member of the Columbia SIPA faculty since 2013, he teaches and mentors the world’s future energy and climate leaders in government, business and civil society.

In 2013, Bordoff created the Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), which is now widely recognized as among the world’s leading energy policy research institutes, advancing evidence-based and actionable energy and climate solutions through research, dialogue, and education. In addition to serving as CGEP’s Founding Director, Bordoff co-led and created the nation’s first graduate school devoted to tackling climate change, the Columbia Climate School, from 2021 to 2023. Bordoff is a columnist for Foreign Policy Magazine and has authored numerous essays and articles for Foreign Affairs. He frequently publishes articles in leading outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Economist, and appears on NPR, CNN, NBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, CBS, and the BBC as a commentator. his Foreign Affairs article with Meghan O’Sullivan, “Green Upheaval: The New Geopolitics of Energy,” was selected as one of the “Top Ten” print articles published in that journal in 2022.

Bordoff also has extensive experience advising the private sector and non-profit organizations. He is a Senior Advisor at Macro Advisory Partners, a geostrategic advisory firm. He chairs the Aspen Institute-Columbia Global Energy Forum and serves on numerous advisory boards and leadership councils, including the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Sustainable Energy for All at the United Nations, The Nature Conservancy of New York, Foreign Policy 4 America, the New York Energy Forum, and the World Economic Forum’s “Future of Energy Stewardship” and “Mobilizing Investment for Clean Energy in Emerging Economies” programs. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Oxford Energy Club, and the National Petroleum Council (a federally chartered advisory committee to the Secretary of Energy).

Bordoff graduated with honors from Harvard Law School, where he was Treasurer of the Harvard Law Review, and clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He also holds an MLitt degree from Oxford University, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar, and a BA magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University.

Nick Myers is the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Phoenix Tailings. Prior to co-founding Phoenix Tailings, Nick served as a C-suite level executive at a genomics sequencing company and an EV charging startup, where he gained deep experience in scaling complex technologies and navigating regulatory and commercial landscapes.

Nick holds a bachelor’s degree in Physics from Saint Michael’s College and an MBA from Northeastern University. His background spans technical development, operational leadership, and public-private collaboration, making him a frequent speaker on topics related to supply chain resilience, cleantech innovation, and U.S. industrial competitiveness. With a focus on reshoring advanced manufacturing and building the infrastructure needed for a low-carbon economy, Nick brings a systems-level approach to solving some of the most urgent challenges in the energy transition.

Dr. Tim Heidel is Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer at VEIR. Tim served as VEIR’s first Chief Technology Officer from January 2020 when the company was founded until February 2023.

Prior to VEIR, Tim was a member of the investments team at Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), investing in companies that leverage innovative technologies to significantly address climate change. Prior to BEV, Tim served as Deputy Chief Scientist at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), where he helped lead NRECA’s technology scouting and research and development activities on behalf of NRECA’s 900 non-profit, member-owned electric utility members. Prior to NRECA, Tim served as a Fellow and Program Director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), where he led the development of 3 new programs and managed a portfolio of over 75 research projects. His focus at ARPA-E included new approaches for controlling and optimizing the transmission and delivery of electric power. Dr. Heidel also managed programs focused on high-efficiency power electronics, including new magnetic materials, new capacitor technologies, and wide band gap semiconductor devices.

​Prior to joining ARPA-E, Dr. Heidel was a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT and served as the Research Director for MIT’s 2011 “Future of the Electric Grid” study. Dr. Heidel holds S.B., M.Eng., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and an M.S. in Technology and Policy from MIT.

As the managing partner of Energize Capital, John oversees all investment and Limited Partner responsibilities. He is also a member of the Energize Investment Committee.

John brings over 20 years of experience in finance, investing and operational roles. His career and investment interests follow the ongoing integration of new technologies into the critical infrastructure and resource industries. John is integral to all aspects of the Fund’s operations, including network engagement, developing investment theses, driving diligence of potential investments, and supporting and monitoring portfolio companies.

Most recently, John was one of the first employees and ultimately scaled into the Chief Revenue Officer at Choose Energy, the largest online energy marketplace in North America. At Choose Energy, he led all operations and growth and raised over $30 million in capital. In 2017, John managed the successful sale of the company to Red Ventures. Previously, John was an investor at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, where he focused on platform investments at the intersection of technology and energy.

John holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and a BS from Duke University. John currently sits on the Board of Directors for DroneDeploy, Nozomi Networks, Matroid, PVcase, ZEDEDA and 5.

Julia leads Sightline’s research team. She manages a team of analysts writing research on clean firm power, low-carbon fuels, industry, carbon, and grid tech, and sets the company’s research strategy.

Prior to joining Sightline Julia led BNEF’s Industrial Decarbonization research. While at BNEF, she built cost models, forecasts, and analysed technologies across industrial decarbonization, batteries, EVs, digital and grid tech and advanced materials.

Julia has undergraduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering and a PhD in Materials Engineering, both from the University of Cambridge.

Cody Finke is the co-founder and CEO of Brimstone, a climate-tech company on a mission to decarbonize cement production. He holds a BA with distinction in Chemistry from Carleton College and a Ph.D. from Caltech, where he focused on electrochemistry and industrial decarbonization. Following his Ph.D., Cody conducted postdoctoral research at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab as a DOE-funded Cyclotron Road entrepreneurial fellow.

Cody co-founded the Oakland, California-based Brimstone to decarbonize an industry that today accounts for 5.5% of global GHG emissions. Brimstone is developing a technology to produce ordinary Portland cement using calcium silicate rock which at scale would be cost parity or better and lower emissions even with least-cost energy. Its innovative solution has been recognized by the International Energy Agency, the Global Cleantech 100, Norrsken’s Impact 100 list, and Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies in Energy and Sustainability. Brimstone's, and the MIT Technology review, which named Cody as a top innovator under 35. Brimstone's investors include Breakthrough Energy Ventures, DCVC, Collab Fund, Amazon Climate Pledge, and Fifth Wall.

Vijay is the Global Energy & Climate Innovation Editor of The Economist. He has produced numerous cover stories and won awards for his reporting. He is an accomplished public speaker and his three books have created a stir, with accolades ranging from lengthy reviews in The New Yorker to shortlisting for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year prize. The Financial Times has declared him to be “a writer to whom it is worth paying attention.”

From 2017 to 2021, he served as the New York-based US Business Editor. He opened the magazine’s first Shanghai bureau in 2012 and served as its China Business Editor until mid-2017. Prior to that, he covered biotechnology, healthcare and global innovation. He also opened the Mexico City bureau, the publication’s first in Latin America.

His opinion pieces have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The New York Times and Foreign Policy, and his commentaries on CNBC and Bloomberg. He has addressed groups ranging from the US National Governors’ Association and the UN General Assembly to the TED and Aspen Ideas conferences. He also serves as chairman of sustainability & innovation summits organised by The Economist, held annually in New York, London, Bangkok and Cape Town.

Vijay is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He serves as an advisor on innovation to the World Economic Forum/Davos, and has taught at NYU Stern Business School and Northwestern University. Vijay is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Danny Crichton analyzes technology, growth and power as Editor-in-Chief of "Securities" and Head of Editorial at Lux Capital. Prior to Lux, he was managing editor at TechCrunch as well as previously a foreign correspondent based in Seoul, South Korea. While there, he wrote more than 1,000 news stories and longform analyses chronicling U.S.-Asia technology relations, semiconductors, data infrastructure, fintech, disaster and climate tech, venture finance, product development, and a wide number of other complex subjects with technical and policy intersections.

In addition to his reporting and analysis at TechCrunch, he co-hosted its leading podcast Equity; co-programmed stages at its flagship Disrupt SF and Berlin conferences as well as its Sessions and Early Stage events; launched the premium news service Extra Crunch and grew it to seven figures of revenue; co-managed a multi-million dollar freelance budget; developed the TC-1 series of deep startup profiles and The TechCrunch List; and contributed broadly to the organization’s news, operational, and talent development strategy.

He’s also published research on semiconductors, technology and economic development with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, and the National Review. Formerly, he was an early-stage venture capitalist with General Catalyst in Palo Alto and Charles River Ventures in Boston and New York.

He was awarded a Fulbright research scholarship to South Korea, where he studied the development of Korea’s startup ecosystem. He’s an honors graduate of Stanford University, where he studied mathematical and computational sciences and wrote a thesis on the development of computer science as an academic discipline, which won the school’s Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research.

Danny is based in Brooklyn, New York.