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Our programming is delivered by industry experts. We bring in diverse perspectives to help you solve complex problems.





︎︎︎            Guest Speakers

 

Meet our guest speakers.







Week 1 ︎︎︎


Maddie Hall
Maddie is the CEO & Co-founder of Living Carbon, a climate change biotech company. Living Carbon’s mission is to responsibly rebalance the planet’s carbon cycle using the inherent power of plants. The team develops photosynthesis-enhanced  seedlings that capture more carbon and metal accumulating seedlings to clean soil and increase the duration of stored carbon. Prior to Living Carbon, Maddie worked on special projects at OpenAI and held various roles in VC and product management. ︎︎︎            Living Carbon


Week 2 ︎︎︎



Shannon Nangle

Shannon is the co-founder and CEO of Circe and has been building out the technology for the past six years. Circe is a carbon transformation platform, that converts carbon dioxide and hydrogen into chemicals on demand through the use of fermentation and synthetic biology. Circe spun out of her postdoc research while in Pam Silver’s lab at Harvard. Prior to joining the lab, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington where she studied structural biology of protein complexes. She is an Activate Fellow, has her work featured in the MIT Museum, and was named an MIT Tech Innovator under 35.
︎︎︎            Circe Bioscience



Week 3 ︎︎︎


Andee Wallace
As CEO and founder of Robigo, Andee Wallace is redesigning crop treatments to create a more sustainable food system. An Activate Fellow and Forbes’ top 10 women founders leading the field of synthetic biology, Andee is applying synthetic biology to improve plant health, agricultural productivity, and sustainability. An ardent advocate for women and diversity, equity, and inclusion, Andee also founded Transcending Glass, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting female and non-binary entrepreneurs in the Boston Area. Andee has a bachelor’s degree in Bioengineering from Stanford and PhD in Biological Engineering from MIT.
︎︎︎            Robigo


Week 4 ︎︎︎


Elliot Hershberg
Elliot Hershberg is a scientist, writer, and investor. He has helped design cancer vaccines, built computational tools for spatial genomics technologies, and worked as a software engineer on a modern genome browser project. Elliot is the author of the Century of Biology newsletter, and the Biotech Partner at Not Boring Capital.
︎︎︎            Not Boring



Week 5 ︎︎︎


Moji Karimi
Moji is a natural resource entrepreneur and a technology futurist. As the CEO of Cemvita, he leads a team of scientists and engineers that are creating radical solutions to reduce the carbon and environmental footprint of industries such as energy, chemicals, and mining. From converting waste to valuable fuels, to subsurface biomanufacturing of natural hydrogen, and using microorganisms to effectively extract lithium and copper from low-grade ore. Fueled by curiosity and optimism, Moji's mission is to create the natural resource industry of the future. His vision is to help create a future where waste products and ready-to-retire infrastructure can be reimagined as the foundational drivers of economic growth and energy independence. 
︎︎︎            Cemvita


Week 6 ︎︎︎


Pae Wu

Pae is a General Partner at SOSV and CTO at IndieBio, where she is responsible for portfolio management and technical oversight. Prior to joining IndieBio, Pae served as the Scientific Director of Telefónica’s moonshot factory, Alpha (in Barcelona). She was Science Director at the US Office of Naval Research – Global (out of Singapore), and technical consultant at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Her whole career, Pae has been investing in high-risk solutions to intractable problems for national defense, humanity, and the planet. She is especially passionate about bridging engineered materials and systems to biology.

Pae earned her PhD at Duke in Electrical Engineering and her BSE from Princeton. 
︎︎︎            SOSV
Week 7 ︎︎︎


Speaker TBA
Week 8 ︎︎︎


Speaker TBA



︎︎︎            Curriculum Leaders

 

Meet the experts and educators leading our 12-week program curriculum.






Daniel Hussey
Co-Founder
ValleyDAO

Daniel has a background in biotechnology and has worked with 20+ cleantech startups as an advisor or early-stage team member. He is a founding member of ValleyDAO, a decentralized community that helps translate early-stage synthetic biology research into products and companies that can help our planet. He is also an Advisor to Tandem Repeat Technologies, a seed-stage startup decarbonizing the fashion industry by creating high-performance sustainable textiles from engineered protein derived from squid genes. He has a BS in Biomedical Engineering from Drexel University and a Master of Biotechnology from The University of Pennsylvania. At the University of Texas at Austin he holds the position of Associate Director of Licensing. Through his role at UT Austin, Daniel has helped researchers secure IP protection for hundreds of inventions and has contributed to more than 100 IP license agreements.



Chris Burk
Founder
Burk TechnoEconomics

Chris is a thought leader in the field of techno-economic modeling. He has over fifteen years of experience developing techno-economic models, has authored touchstone whitepapers and publications, and regularly teaches about techno-economics for startup incubators and universities. In 2017, Chris founded Burk TechnoEconomics as an engineering consulting firm dedicated to techno-economic modeling and analysis. His philosophy is that a techno-economic model should be a living document that represents a team’s best current understanding of their technology. It should be agile, user-friendly, and enable rapid iteration as a team develops its technology and its understanding of the business. Chris is a Licensed Professional Engineer and holds BS and MEng degrees from Cornell University.


Jaye Goldstein

CEO and Founder
Founder to Leader

Jaye Goldstein is the CEO and Founder of Founder to Leader, a coaching company that equips technical leaders to scale their startups. Jaye spent the last 20+ years at the intersection of education and innovation. Previously, she launched and scaled a lab at MIT to help engineers learn to communicate effectively, she oversaw education innovation across Harvard University, and was on the founding team of Petri, an early stage biotech venture capital fund.

Lori Lennon

CEO
Thinkubator Media

Lori Lennon is a communications and media coach and consultant for Founder to Leader, and founder and CEO of Thinkubator Media. Lori spent nearly a decade in television news before becoming the founding communications lead for the College of Science at Northeastern University in Boston. Her experience as a communicator has allowed her to work with leading researchers who are tackling some of the biggest and most important issues of our time, such as climate change, renewable energy, and drug discovery. Her goal is to provide the tools and resources needed for founders to put their best and most authentic foot forward.





Jennifer Kan, PhD
Founding Partner
Juniper

Jenny is a bioengineer, tech entrepreneur, and investor in more than 40 early-stage biotech companies that accelerate the decarbonization of the largest and least sustainable industries of the world. She holds a PhD from Cambridge and worked at Caltech, where she led enzyme engineering projects featured in the 2018 Nobel Prize lecture. She has been named by Forbes as one of 10 leading venture capitalists driving investments in synthetic biology.

Michael Luciani
Founding Partner
Juniper

Michael is a founding partner of the Climate Capital Syndicate and has led over 100 investments into early stage climate tech startups. Previously Michael was founder and CEO of The Tuesday Company (sold in 2020), which created political organizing products with over 2M users. Prior to The Tuesday Company, Michael worked in the Obama White House.

Sedale Turbovsky 

CEO & Co-Founder
OpenGrants

OpenGrants is Sedale’s fourth venture-backed startup and second in the public sector, which aims to transform the grant funding landscape by making it more accessible, equitable, and transparent. Sedale firmly believes that technology can be used as a powerful tool to democratize access to resources and opportunities, and is passionate about improving government and the citizen experience. 
Prior to embarking on his entrepreneurial journey, Sedale worked as a issues management consultant supporting firms working with government and in heavily regulated environments.
︎︎︎        Investment Partner Network

 

Our Investor Partner Network is a community of angels and VCs from prominent funders in the climate tech space, including Climate Capital, PowerHouse Ventures, Clear Current Capital, Creator Fund, Re:Wire Ventures, Fundie Ventures, Possible Ventures, Mercia Ventures, Vectors Capital, dCarbonVC, and more.


Sponsor the next wave of climate innovators! Juniper Zero is a non-profit. Every dollar donated to the program is matched 4X. To sponsor or donate, please email Program Director Mackenzie Scurka.


©Juniper Zero