Climate Innovation & the Energy Transition

Sara Chamberlain currently serves as Co-founder and Managing Partner at Earth Foundry, leading investment activities and maintaining an active role with each of the firm’s portfolio companies.

Sara has worked in the energy and environment sector for nearly 20 years, with a core focus on helping startups develop commercialization strategies.  Working at the intersection of technology and entrepreneurship is a personal passion. Sara has received many awards for her work, including being named was named to Fortune’s list of Top Climate VCs, and Crain’s Leaders in Sustainability.

Prior to starting Earth Foundry, Sara built a government advisory practice for clean technology startups at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where she successfully led multiple teams and helped climate tech startups raise $300M in non-dilutive funding.  Sara’s previous experience also includes roles with GE Energy, where she developed a solar manufacturing expansion strategy, and with GaiaTech, where she led the environmental due diligence and regulatory compliance process for hundreds of industrial and manufacturing transactions across North America.

Sara holds several advisory roles including serving on the investment committee for accelerator Evergreen Climate Innovations, the advisory board for Chain Reaction Innovations, an incubator program at Argonne National Laboratory, and serving as an Executive-In-Residence at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business – Rustandy Center.

From working with large Fortune 500 companies to startup businesses, Sara has broad and deep industry knowledge of the energy sector.

She earned an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a BA in Environmental Studies from Emory University.

Anne Evans is the Chief Executive Officer of Elevate, a leading Chicago-based nonprofit advancing equity by improving outcomes for communities historically excluded from the clean energy transition. Under her leadership, Elevate partners with governments, utilities, and community organizations to design and implement data-driven climate and energy programs that reduce energy burden, accelerate decarbonization, and expand access to affordable housing and clean mobility.

Evans brings more than two decades of experience at the intersection of public policy, environmental sustainability, and impact-driven innovation. Prior to joining Elevate, she held senior roles across the civic and social sectors, where she led large-scale initiatives focused on climate resilience, infrastructure finance, and community development. She is widely recognized for her ability to build cross-sector coalitions and translate complex policy goals into programs that improve lives on the ground.

A frequent advisor to policymakers, philanthropic institutions, and industry leaders, Evans serves on multiple boards and task forces focused on climate equity and energy innovation. She holds degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan and is a proud Chicagoan committed to ensuring the benefits of the clean energy transition reach every community.

Michael Greenstone is the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. In addition, he serves as the founding director of the University’s Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth and the director of the interdisciplinary Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. He was previously the director of the Becker Friedman Institute for Economics.

During the Obama Administration, he served as the Chief Economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, where he proposed and then co-led the development of the United States Government’s social cost of carbon. He is an elected member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the Econometric Society, a Carnegie Fellow (aka the “Brainy Award”), and a former editor of the Journal of Political Economy. Formerly, Greenstone was the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics at MIT and directed The Hamilton Project.

Greenstone’s research, which has influenced policy in the United States and globally, is focused on the global energy challenge that requires all societies to balance the needs for inexpensive and reliable energy, protection of the public’s health from air pollution, and minimizing the damages from climate change. Recently, his research has helped lead to the United States Government quadrupling its estimate of the damages from climate change, the adoption of pollution markets in India, and the use of machine learning techniques to target environmental inspections. As a co-director of the Climate Impact Lab, he is producing empirically grounded estimates of the local and global impacts of climate change. He created the Air Quality Life Index® that converts air pollution concentrations into their impact on life expectancy and co-founded Climate Vault, a 501(c)(3) that uses markets to allow institutions and people to reduce their carbon footprint and foster innovation in carbon dioxide removal.

He received a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University.

At Chicago from 2000–2003 and since 2014

David Keith has worked near the interface between climate science, energy technology, and public policy since 1990. He took first in Canada’s national physics prize exam, won MIT’s prize for excellence in experimental physics, and was one of TIME Magazine’s Heroes of the Environment. David is Professor of Geophysical Sciences and founding faculty director of the Climate Systems Engineering initiative at the University of Chicago.

Best known for his work on the science, technology, and public policy of solar geoengineering, David led the development of Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program before moving to Chicago in 2023. His policy work has ranged from analysis of electricity markets and carbon prices to research on public and expert perceptions of risky technologies. David’s hardware work includes the first interferometer for atoms, a high-accuracy infrared spectrometer for NASA’s ER-2, the development of Carbon Engineering’s air contactor, and the development of a stratospheric propelled balloon experiment for solar geoengineering.

David founded of Carbon Engineering, a Canadian company developing technology to capture CO2from ambient air. David teaches science and technology policy, climate science, and solar geoengineering. He has reached >150,000 students worldwide with an edX energy course. David is author of >200 academic publications with total citation count of >20,000. He has written for the public in op-eds and A Case for Climate Engineering. For more details, please visit David’s website here.

Angela Tovar is chief sustainability officer for the city of Chicago. First appointed to this position in 2020, she was reappointed in 2024. Tovar is also commissioner of Chicago’s department of environment, committed to centering the climate and sustainability agenda on equity and mitigating environmental harm in the city’s overburdened and underserved communities. Under her leadership, the city of Chicago released the 2022 Climate Action Plan, an equitable decarbonization strategy for buildings and allocated $188 million for climate and environmental justice priorities as part of the Chicago Recovery Plan. Prior to this, Tovar was program manager for environment and sustainability initiatives with Cook County Government. Previously, she was director of community development for The Point Community Development Corporation.

A pioneer in modernizing and democratizing derivatives trading, Donald R. Wilson, Jr. founded his eponymous firm, DRW, based on his belief that quantitative modeling was an underutilized tool to identify and measure opportunities in the global financial markets.

In the three decades of DRW’s growth since then, Don has championed numerous innovations while advocating for policies that advance fairness and transparency. This is cemented in the firm’s mission: to solve challenging problems, capture opportunities and pursue positive change.

Reflective of Don’s commitment to harness the power of markets is his active engagement in cryptoassets and carbon initiatives. In 2014, he launched Cumberland, one of the world’s leading crypto liquidity providers. That same year he co-founded Digital Asset, which uses blockchain technology to address inefficiencies and risks in traditional financial markets. Don has been a thought leader on many topics in the cryptoasset space, including serving last year on the President’s Working Group on Stablecoins. To address climate challenges, Don partnered with the University of Chicago to develop Climate Vault, a markets-based solution to reducing carbon emissions. In 2020, using Climate Vault, DRW became the first carbon neutral trading firm, a commitment it has renewed each year.

Don also has guided the firm’s expansion into real estate investing and venture capital, believing DRW’s expertise in risk management and technology allows it to add unique value to projects. Convexity Properties, the firm’s real estate investment arm, seeks projects that benefit from the team’s unique blend of agility and expertise. Through DRWVC, the firm also is an active investor in financial technology start-ups, with a portfolio that currently includes Crusoe, Talos and OpenFin.

Don holds an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Chicago, where he is now a trustee. He also sits on the board of the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago Foundation. An avid competitive sailor, Don won the M32 world championship in 2019, 2021 and 2022.