Climate Breakthrough Awardees

Isabel Cavelier Adarve is a Colombian changemaker who envisions an equitable transition towards a clean, just, and regenerative economy and society across Latin America. PROFILE Isabel understood and harnessed the power of diplomacy in pushing for change in her time as a diplomat representing her country. Now she wants to use that experience to take care of leaders, expanding and deepening their reach to bring climate policies

A veteran leader in environmental justice and community development, Denise Fairchild is dedicated to untangling the multidisciplinary root causes of climate change. SELECTION AND BREAKTHROUGH STRATEGIES Denise Fairchild exemplifies the key qualities of a Climate Breakthrough Awardee: ambition, a strategic mind, systems-changing thinking, and a track record of effecting change. Denise is president emeritus of Emerald Cities Collaborative (ECC), a network of key U.S. nonprofits coalescing to advance

Sara Jane Ahmed is a finance advisor and strategist who sees transitioning to a resilient and clean energy economy as the path to prosperity for the countries most vulnerable to climate change.  SELECTION AND BREAKTHROUGH STRATEGIES Few people have Sara’s ability to dive deeply into the technical while continuing to foster and strengthen a larger vision. Sara has deep expertise in financial and energy markets and uses this

Nicole Rycroft is an accomplished environmental activist, an Ashoka Fellow, and, unusually, a former physiotherapist and elite rower. A systems thinker, she confronts the world’s rapid and dangerous destruction of forests with the same holistic, solutions-focused perspective she once used to address the root cause of symptoms in a patient.  Over the last two decades, as the Founder and Executive Director of the Canada-based NGO Canopy, Nicole

Nguy Thi Khanh is a pioneer leader of Vietnam’s environmental movement and has played an instrumental role in shifting Vietnam from coal and towards renewables and energy efficiency. Khanh’s breakthrough strategy will focus on accelerating Vietnam’s clean energy economy, safeguarding clean air and water for public health, and sharing lessons with partners in Southeast Asia to usher in a clean energy era for the region. In 2011 the

Tzeporah Berman has a long record of leading and winning major environmental campaigns and negotiating significant policy victories. Now she is focused on curtailing the global oil and gas supply. She was a creator and lead negotiator of the Great Bear Rainforest agreement that protected 6 million hectares of old growth forests, co-founded Stand.earth (previously ForestEthics), and was co-director of Greenpeace’s Global Climate and Energy program

Founder and lead strategist of the Beyond Coal Campaign, before receiving his Climate Breakthrough Award, Bruce’s efforts secured the retirement of over half the United States’ coal fleet. When selected for an award, he decided to shift his attention to eliminating natural gas and its impacts on air quality from U.S. buildings and homes, focusing on states accounting for 58% of consumption. He launched the electrification

John is Executive Director of The Sunrise Project. He used his Climate Breakthrough Award to launch Insure Our Future, a global campaign to hold the insurance industry accountable for its role in the climate crisis. John built a coalition of organizations to pressure insurance and reinsurance companies to stop underwriting and investing in coal. By just the end of 2017, 15 major insurers had divested US$20 billion