2023 Uplift Summit
Mapping Your Sustainability Career
Friday November 17, 2023 @ Ethic (in Tribeca)
The 2023 W&S Uplift Summit was all about mapping your own sustainability career! The day began with an interactive personal branding workshop, led by Jess Storiale, where attendees learned how to position themselves for a career in sustainability. In the afternoon, attendees heard from a range of panelists in the sustainability space, across sectors, industries, and roles.
Workshop: Clarity, Connection, & Communication: Positioning Yourself for Your Future Sustainability Career
Jess Storiale, Founder of Reflect Your Light
Jess Storiale is the founder of Reflect Your Light - a career transition coaching practice where she helps overwhelmed millenial women go from day-dreaming of more fulfilling work to finding and thriving in a more aligned career. Jess has spent most of her career building early-stage tech startups from the ground up - moving from managing all customer operations in Customer Success, to leading fundraising and customer strategy as Chief of Staff to building software to solve customer problems as a Product Manager. She started Reflect Your Light after navigating a difficult career transition herself in 2020. In her coaching she shares her learnings and career transition strategy & tactics with women so they can dim their fears about what’s next & shine bright in their next chapter.
Panel 1: Shaping your own sustainability journey as an entrepreneur
Olivia Dell, Founding Partner at NOVA Impact, and Partner at Regeneration.VC
Olivia Dell is a Next-Gen Investor, and Partner at Regeneration.VC, where she leads a team investing in Circular Economy innovations that cover the Design, Use, and Reuse of materials transforming Consumer Industries. She is the Founder of The Cometa Collective and NOVA Impact, an intergenerational network of Investors, Entrepreneurs, and Philanthropists dedicated to supporting the Innovation Ecosystem. Olivia also serves as a Member of the Board of Advisors of The Keep Families Giving Foundation, Rockefeller Capital Management’s Next-Gen Advisory Council, Women Moving Markets, Climatetech.org, and more.
Max Moinian, Co-Founder at Future Earth Foundation
Max holds a masters in Urban Design from MIT. Future Earth Catalog, a thesis project published online as a book, documents her journey through the ways climate change is mediated, the psychology of inaction, and collective and individual agency. Max co-founded Future Earth, a nonprofit that seeks to inspire meaningful engagement with the climate crisis through social media. Max leads energy efficiency at The Moinian Group, her family’s real estate company, and founded an affordable art shop, For Your Guestroom.
Estella Struck, Founder & CEO at Viviene New York
Estella Struck, a trailblazer in the Climate-Driven Creator Economy for Gen Z, serves as the visionary Founder & CEO of Viviene New York—the world's foremost sustainable product marketing agency run entirely by Gen Z reaching over 90M users per month on TikTok. With an influential TikTok following surpassing 100k and featured in notable media outlets like CNN, Insider Business, Refinery 29, and Nylon Mag, Struck is dedicated to leveraging the creator economy's influence to drive positive change for our planet.
Nicole Loher (Moderator)
Nicole Loher is an award-winning climate communicator, communications researcher, and adjunct professor at NYU. Her work sits at the intersection of insights, strategy and emerging technology to help tell stories that advance complex communications goals, has been recognized in press (Forbes, Adweek), and is featured in the Smithsonian. In addition to her role at NYU, she is currently leading strategy and writing at Ideas On Purpose, a for-good agency based in NYC.
Panel 2: Navigating career transitions
Maité Duquela, Climate-Resilient Fisheries & Oceans Consultant at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF)
Maité was born and raised in the Dominican Republic. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from her home country. She also holds a Master's Degree in Environmental Economics and Policy, along with a graduate specialization in climate science from the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. She has +5 years of experience in socioeconomic, environmental, and policy research, as well as technical assistance in data processing and data analysis. Her main interest is at the intersection of climate science and the social sciences to build effective public policies for adaptation and resilience to climate change.
Somto Uyanna, Senior Consultant at Buro Happold’s Cities team
Somto Uyanna is a Senior Consultant with the Buro Happold Cities team, and has worked on a range of projects in integrated water resources and stormwater management, flood risk analysis, climate resilience planning, and commercial waste management. She has a passion for finding innovative and equitable solutions to environmental challenges with a focus on sustainability and climate resilience. She is a Fellow of the Urban Design Forum and is committed to improving quality of life through the built environment. Somto earned her Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and Master of Science in Environmental Engineering at Columbia University.
Jordan Taylor Sloan, at Project Director at WSP’s Circular Economy team
Jordan is a Project Director of Circular Economy for WSP’s Sustainability, Environment, and Climate Change team. She works in the implementation of circularity to fuel economic restoration and environmental justice, guiding Clients from strategy development to pilot programming and program scaling.
Previously, she worked in the public sector for Empire State Development's Division of Science, Technology, and Innovation (NYSTAR), at the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, and at the TN Dept. of Economic Development. She is a former entrepreneur and founded Grade for Good, a firm guiding young startups on their participation in the circular economy. She obtained her master's in management (ALM) from Harvard Extension School with a focus on innovation, corporate sustainability, and strategy. Her research on circular economy best practices was published in the 2020 Harvard Circular Economy Symposium and her business model for fashion waste reduction was awarded the Semi-Finalist prize in the Harvard University President’s Innovation Challenge.
Hui Wen Chan, Senior Director of ESG at Crusoe
Hui Wen Chan is the Senior Director of ESG at Crusoe Energy, a climate tech startup focused on powering clean computing infrastructure using wasted and stranded sources of energy, where she leads firm-wide sustainability and social impact initiatives. Prior to joining Crusoe, Hui was Head of ESG at the shared electric scooter company Spin (now a part of Bird), responsible for sustainability, safety and equity. She started her sustainability career at Citi, where she led ESG strategy and reporting and climate risk management. Before joining Citi, she advised clients across a variety of industries at Sagent Advisors, Inc. and Mercer Management Consulting (now Oliver Wyman Group) and worked in global health at the Clinton Foundation and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. Hui is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School.
Amanda Baker, Client Relationship Manager at Ethic
Amanda joined Ethic in 2019, and has worked across Ethic’s wide range of client types and geographies. Amanda currently runs the Family Office Solutions team, specializing in building relationships and creating unique strategies for family office clients. Amanda studied environmental engineering at Tufts before starting her career in financial services (physical commodities at Goldman Sachs) and impact (charity: water, a nonprofit bringing clean water to developing countries).
Panel 3: Collective care for change
Céline Semaan, CEO & Co-Founder of Slow Factory Foundation™ and Study Hall Conferences
CEO & Co-Founder of Slow Factory Foundation™ and Study Hall Conferences – Céline Semaan Vernon is a modern ambassador of cultures, fostering communication across industry, policy, academia and the broader citizen population. As an MIT Director's Fellow, her research focuses on circular design & communication, translating complex concepts and systems into approachable stories that resonate with a wide audience. Celine is known for her activism in social justice causes especially around refugees, cultural appropriation, and colonialism, her advocacy for sustainable practices in fashion, and her work as a digital and product designer. Her work has been featured extensively in US and international media, including The New York Times, CNN, Vanity Fair, Fashionista, Teen Vogue, Scientific American, Vice, Business Insider, Glamour and WWD.
Jezz Chung, writer, artist, and public speaker
Jezz Chung is a writer, artist, and public speaker who studies change, movement, and performance. Their autistic, disabled, queer, Korean American experiences shape their work and their commitment to building safer, freer futures. They are based in New York City and will be publishing their debut book in Spring 2024 with Chronicle Prism, titled This Way to Change. You can listen to Dreaming Different, their podcast about building a neurodivergent future, follow their journey @jezzchung, and read about the worlds they're building at jezzchung.substack.com.
Aditi Desai, Director of Partnerships at Voltpost
Aditi Desai is a founding team member and Director of of Partnerships at Voltpost, a climate tech startup that retrofits lampposts into electric vehicle charging stations to decarbonize mobility.
She began her career in financial services at Barclays Investment Bank. Aditi was nominated for a Barclays Citizenship and Diversity award for her work in Environment Network of the America (ENA), an employee-led group focusing on champing environmental activism within the bank, She has a MsC in Sustainability Management from Columbia University’s Climate School, where she led Women & Sustainability for two years. Aditi also served on Columbia’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee and led her program’s first DEI audit. She is a Slow Factory Fellow. Aditi is passionate about centering equity and environmental justice in her sustainability work.