The Shift 2050 Jury is composed of the following six international senior experts in climate change and sustainable development, representing science, politics, business and civil society.
Polly Courtice is Director of the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership. She is also Co-Director and Chief Executive of both The Prince of Wales’s Business & the Environment Programme and The Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change. She is a member of the University’s Council for Lifelong Learning and serves on the Board of the Institute of Continuing Education. She is Academic Director of CPSL’s Postgraduate Certificate in Sustainable Business and a Director of Jupiter Green Investment Trust and chairs Anglian Water’s Advisory Group on Climate Change and Economic Growth.
In 2007 she was appointed by Al Gore to run his Climate Project in the UK, helping leaders deepen their understanding of climate change and explore appropriate action. In 2008 she was made a Lieutenant of the Victorian Order (LVO) announced in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list. She has a degree from the University of Cape Town and a MA from the University of Cambridge.
John Doyle is Sustainable Development Policy Coordinator of the European Commission, DG Media and Technologies. Currently he is working on mainstreaming Sustainable Development in the Information Society Directorate General with special emphasis on Business Partnerships to address Energy and Climate Security.
In his previous work, he focused on planning aspects of the 7th Community Framework Programme of Research and Technology Development for the International Cooperation. He is a licensed professional engineer and has been working for the European Commission since 1996.
Nicky Gavron has been at the forefront of land-use, transport and environmental policy making for over two decades, becoming London’s first statutory Deputy Mayor, 2000-2003/2004-2008. Having spent over a decade as a community and environmental activist, she was elected as a Labour councillor in 1986. Throughout the 90s she was the leader of the London Planning Advisory Committee, formulating policies for the development of a sustainable London. Nationally, she was active on the Association of Metropolitan Authorities and the first chair of the Local Government Association Planning Committee.
As Deputy Mayor, she led on the London Plan and climate change, introducing groundbreaking policies and strategies to reduce C02 emissions. Her initiatives included establishing the London Climate Change Agency, Better Buildings Partnership and the international C40 Large Cities Climate Leadership Group. Re-elected as a London Assembly Member in May 2008, she is now chair/deputy chair (alternate years) of its Planning and Housing Committee and promoting action on climate change in the UK and internationally.
Christine Loh Kung-wai, OBE, is the CEO of Civic Exchange, a non-profit policy think tank based in Hong Kong. She is a lawyer by training, a commodities trader by profession and a former legislator in Hong Kong. She is Senior Policy Adviser to C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, International Adviser to GLOBE G8+5 Climate Change Dialogue, Board Member of the East West Institute (USA), International Adviser to the Asia Society (USA), Board Member of the Tallberg Foundation (Sweden), and numerous other organizations connected to issues of climate change, sustainable development, urban planning, as well as human rights.
Ms Loh was named a ‘Hero of the Environment’ by TIME in 2007. She is a published author of many books and a sought-after speaker, and facilitator of multi-stakeholder processes.
Marcello Palazzi, BSc, MSc, MBA is a serial innovator and entrepreneur working in and across business, philanthropy, civil society, government and international organizations. In his early 20s, he and his father started 2 companies in environmental diagnostics, which he built up internationally during a 10-year period and then sold.
In his early 30s, he co-founded Progressio Foundation in Rotterdam with Dr Paul Kloppenborg with whom in 1989-90 he co-authored and edited 2 books pioneering the “civic economy” and “civic enterprise”. Through Progressio he has led 120 projects and ventures in 30 countries, in the pursuit of “civic and entrepreneurial” solutions to the key challenges of sustainable development, smart growth, creative societies and poverty eradication, among others (see www.progressio.org).
He has been and continues to be involved in several public-benefit organizations, for profit and not-for-profit in the USA and Europe, particularly the Tällberg Foundation in Sweden, where he has executive responsibilities (see www.tallbergfoundation.org).
Marcello operates from the Netherlands, where he is happily married to Leonore van Hövell tot Westerflier and is father to 3 teenagers. By education, he is an economist (University of Buckingham), a public and foreign policy scholar (LSE) and a business manager (LBS, MIT and RSM). He won The Economist Prize for the Best MBA Project at LBS on strategic philanthropy and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) in London.
Dr Fritz Reusswig is sociologist in the Research Domain “Transdicisplinary Concepts and Methods” at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. He is mainly working on lifestyles and consumption issues as drivers for global environmental change, especially climate change.
The sometimes paradoxical emergence of a global consumer society - including new forms of inequality, power, influence and voice - is not only a driver of resource use and greenhouse gas emissions; it also provides opportunities for a sustainability transition towards low-carbon lifestyles. Fritz is interested in the conflicts, but also the constellations for change that this tension provides. More recently, he has been investigating the possible role of sub-national agents like cities or professional networks for a low-carbon society.