SET Award

Andreas Kuhlmann was appointed dena’s Chief Executive in July 2015. Among others, the graduate physicist has held positions at the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW), the German Embassy in Stockholm and the European Parliament, the German Parliament and the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. He worked as a consultant and office manager at various political organisations and establishments, including the Environmental Committee of the European Parliament, followed by the SPD party, the SPD parliamentary group and the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.

Angela is one of the world’s leading global energy futures experts, an experienced energy executive, a distinguished Oxford scholar and a published author. She has 30 years of experience in leading national, international and global multi-stakeholder transformation initiatives on a wide range of economic, energy, climate and sustainable development related challenges. Angela has worked as a senior executive in the public-, private-, academic- and civic sectors. She joined the World Energy Council in 2017 to create a practical energy transition leaders toolkit and direct a new strategic insights programme. Prior to that Angela led an upgrade in strategic foresight at the OECD, based in Paris. Prior corporate experience includes decades in Royal Dutch Shell and British Gas plc. Angela is an Associate Fellow, Said Business School, Oxford and a Strategic Foresight Fellow of the GOA, USA. She sits on two international advisory boards (HSE, Russia; ECI, Oxford) and is a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Science. She has published four books and numerous articles. Angela has a PhD in Physics.

Antje Danielson joined MIT in April 2016 after 8 years at Tufts University where she directed the Institute of the Environment and was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Health. She was elected President of the Council of Environmental Deans and Directors in 2012, and holds a number of board positions. Antje received awards from Harvard University and an Exceptional Contribution Award from Durham University. In 1999/2000 she co-founded the car-sharing company Zipcar.

Raamu has 15 years of project management experience gained in the energy industry. He started his career in the marine and energy sector in Singapore. Since then, Raamu has worked on a diverse range of small to large scale international projects in the upstream oil and gas and marine industries in various countries and regions of Southeast Asia. Within the last 5 years, he got more and more interested in the startup ecosystem. Raamu is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and Agile Professional (PMI-ACP). He holds a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the U.S.A. and an MBA from Imperial College in London in the U.K. He lives in Munich, Germany.

Aneri is an award-winning climate & clean energy ecosystem builder. She founded and built the largest energy access accelerator in Africa called ENVenture that was acquired by New Energy Nexus, and now serves as Nexus’s Chief Operating Officer. She also serves as Board Director for Rural Spark, a Dutch off-grid solar company, and as a Venture Partner for Prithvi Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and Republic.

Aneri has been recognized as Renewable Energy World’s Top 40 under 40 in solar, 2021 Ashden Awards winner for Energy Access Innovation, Nasdaq Milestone Maker, an American Express Emerging Innovator, Cordes Fellow, and member of the Forbes Nonprofit Council. She has a Masters in Environment & Development from the London School of Economics and a Bachelors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Hirad Horoufchin is an Investment Director at Virgin Group, the Growth and Venture Capital investment firm founded by Sir Richard Branson with a five-decade track record of driving positive change for consumers in several industries ranging from Music to Space.

At Virgin, Hirad oversees several early and late-stage investments, including in the mobility and climate tech verticals. Part of his role includes working with management teams on energy transition topics and investing in start-ups that are looking to drive the next wave of change.

Prior to joining Virgin, Hirad worked in Investment Banking at J.P. Morgan advising on M&A and capital market initiatives for companies in the industrial technology, chemicals, automotive, and aviation sectors. Hirad holds an MSc in International Finance from HEC Paris.

McIvor specialises in early-stage energy and mobility start-up investment at the European climate tech VC, World Fund (and backed by Ecosia). With a background in entrepreneurship and the nuclear decommissioning, prior to World Fund McIvor worked at start-up Trende, an off-shoot of Japanese utility company Tepco, before joining Amsterdam-based, energy-focussed VC, SET Ventures for 3 years as an analyst and associate.

A recipient of the prestigious Daiwa Scholarship, McIvors holds a bachelor’s in physics and maths from the University of Glasgow.

Julia Padberg is Partner at SET Ventures, the Amsterdam-based climate VC fund that has invested since 2007 in European technology companies that impact the future of energy. Julia joined the team six years ago after six years of working as a corporate finance advisor in the energy & green tech sectors. She serves on the supervisory boards of DEPsys, FlexiDAO, Trunkrs and Sensorfact.

Taavi Madiberk is the co-founder and CEO at Skeleton Technologies (SET18 winner), the global technology leader for high power energy storage. Skeleton’s supercapacitors are succesfully in the field from trucks, buses, wind turbines, grid power back-up, medical equiment up to space. Skeleton has raised over €200M of capital and currently has a team of over 300 people in Germany and Estonia.

Taavi Madiberk brings knowledge and experience from the IT, locomotive and NGO sectors. Among other board positions, he is currently a board member of the European Innovation Council. He has also served as the youngest ever Chairman of the Supervisory Board in an European national railway company Estonian Railways Ltd (AS Eesti Raudtee) from 2012-2014, also as the Member of the Supervisory Board of RKAS, a Estonian state-owned real estate company with over €400M of assets.

DTCP is an investment management group with $1.7 billion in assets under management from corporate and institutional investors and provides venture capital and private equity to the technology, media, and telecommunication sectors. It operates and invests in Europe, North America, and Asia with offices in Hamburg, San Francisco, Tel Aviv, and Seoul.

Previously Sarah Röhm worked at the European early-stage VC Capnamic Ventures; in Tech Consulting focusing on digital transformation projects across Europe as well as in the Renewable Energy Industry during her time living in Shanghai. Sarah holds a M.Sc. in Strategy & Digital Business from ESCP Business School.

Felix is an active Business Angel as well as Start-up Advisor and Coach for Clean-tech, Mobility & Smart City companies. For the last four years, Felix worked as an Investment Partner at innogy Ventures, the venture capital arm of one of Europe’s largest utility companies. At innogy Ventures, he had the end-to-end investment responsibility for early to growth stage investments in North America, Europe and Israel for the investment fields Future Energy, Smart City and Mobility. Additionally, he led the “Future of Cities” investment segment (Mobility, Smart City and PropTech) for the expanded innogy Innovation Hub (60+ investments and €162m under management). Besides his various board roles, he regularly provided post-transaction support to innogy’s portfolio companies in the form of B2B sales and marketing training sessions as well as preparation for and support during follow-on financing rounds. Overall, he has been part of the start-up scene for more than 10 years, founding two companies himself, leading the European expansion of a US start-up as MD, and supporting founders as consultant, interim manager, trainer and mentor. He holds a MSc in International Business Studies from University of Maastricht.

Robina is an Investor at Contrarian Ventures, the pan-European climate tech venture firm focusing on early-stage companies that work on innovations to decarbonize the energy sector, transportation industry, heavy industry, and urban space. Next to these industries, Contrarian looks at Carbon & Climate as markets separately. Robina has joined the team recently and manages the DACH market after founding and building the first circular economy software start-up in Germany for the last five years.

Robina holds an MSc in Politics, Economics, and Philosophy from the University of Zurich and ETH and recently joined the advisory board at dena.

Rushad currently leads two programs at RMI: Urban Transformation and Third Derivative. Prior to D3, Rushad helped establish the Global Cooling Prize, a global innovation competition to develop a climate-friendly residential cooling solution. He also worked with the Energy Web Foundation, a partnership between RMI and Grid Singularity to develop promising applications for blockchain technology in the energy sector. Prior to RMI, Rushad was the founding COO of WeGen Energy — a DER start-up developing off-grid energy solutions and virtual power plants in the Philippines and Vietnam — and spent 6 years at McKinsey & Company in its sustainability, infrastructure, and private equity practices, leading projects in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

Solmaz Moshiri is head of commercial for digital services at SSE Distributed Energy Solutions. She has been working in the UK low carbon electricity sector for over 10 years, in the areas of innovation, technology development & commercialization, and venture capital within utilities and start-ups.

Jane is the Managing Director for Venture Cup China which is an international Innovation and Entrepreneurship Service Platform based in Shanghai. It specializes in global competition, talents attraction and STI transformation primarily in Green & Sustainable Technology. The current operating projects include University Startup World Cup and Nordic Innovation Centre (Shanghai).  She is also the Executive Secretary General for World Young Scientist Summit as an academic event held once a year for the world young talents. The summit is jointly sponsored by the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) and the People’s Government of Zhejiang Province. It highlights the importance of integrating science with industries, venture capitals, arts and other societal endeavors as well as encourages multidisciplinary innovation among young scientist.

Before returning to her hometown, she has over ten years international management experiences in USA, Europe and Hong Kong.

A mechanical engineer by training Christoph was Senior Partner at McKinsey for 16 years, heading the global work in logistics and infrastructure. In the last 8 years as Member of the Executive Committee of the World Economic Forum and as Managing Director of European Climate Foundation, he engaged in net-zero transformation in energy and mobility. Before, as Board member of DB Schenker, he was responsible for the international growth and operations of the company´s rail division. He has been the CEO of companies in the renewable energy sector, namely Novatec/ABB GmbH and Solar Millennium AG. Christoph is on the board of several new energy start-ups and faculty at the University of St. Gallen, Institute of Mobility, and the Institute for Energy Economics at University of Cologne.

Tina Schirr is the Executive Director of the BusinessNZ Energy Council (the New Zealand representative of the World Energy Council). In her role she is shaping policy on matters relating to climate change, energy, transport, and innovation. She is a member of the Transpower Consumer Advisory Panel to help communities better understand energy. Tina a board member of the Young Energy Professional Network (YEPN) and part of the World Energy Council’s expert groups (for example on clean fuels and energy trilemma). She recently joint the start-up competition jury ‘Get in the Ring’. Due to her passion for entrepreneurism, she is always looking out for the next game-changer in the energy sector.

Stephan works is an energy innovation specialist with extensive experience in energy market innovation. Currently an advisor for the German Society for International Cooperation, he has worked across the energy market, from consulting on self-supply solar energy projects to conducting market studies on renewable energies, hydrogen and battery storage. He holds and MBa in energy management from Berlin’s Technical University.

Alex leads ecosystem programming at the Third Derivative accelerator, founded by the Rocky Mountain Institute & New Energy Nexus. Before Third Derivative, Alex herself worked on the SET platform. As a Senior Expert at dena, she managed over 2,300 start-up applications to the SET award across 5 years and supported the SET network in becoming a staple within the global climate community. Alex also supported external organizations like the GIZ and the Elia Group with their own energy innovation activities.

Freerk Bisschop is a seasoned investor and advisor in energy transition innovation. He has a long background in the energy industry, as a scientist, strategist, consultant, manager, entrepreneur, executive, non-executive, investor and advisor. Currently he acts as Venture Partner to Inven Capital and as an independent advisor to startups, scale-ups and investors.

Marie-Line Vaiani is since January 2023 Secretary General of the Conseil Français de l’Energie, the French committee of the World Energy Council (WEC).

In France, she has overseen multi-use water management of EDF’s hydroelectric dams, has developed new dispatching systems for the Electricity Transmission Network, as well as worked on local economic development and management for the “Une rivière, un territoire” programme’s investment fund.

Internationally, she has steered development and diversification strategies, from the regulation and design of energy markets to the development of national industry standards for renewable energies, hydrogen and batteries.

She is an ENSTA Paris-certified engineer, specialising in mathematical engineering, and holds a degree in corporate finance and capital markets from Sciences Po Paris as well as an executive MBA from HEC Paris. She is Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur.

Luis is managing partner at Wi Venture a Germany and UK-based early-stage VC with a focus on the most promising European climate tech startups in the fields of Energy, Mobility and Nature & Carbon Tech.

Luis has more than 15 years of experience as an entrepreneur, manager and investor in mobility and energy with a broad network to entrepreneurs, start-ups, corporates, investors, and the public sector. In addition to his consulting experience, he founded a company in the AI sector. At EIT InnoEnergy, Luis was part of the early-stage DACH investment team and also restructured and further developed the global mobility portfolio.