Christiana Figueres is a Founding Partner of Global Optimism, co-presenter of climate podcast, Outrage + Optimism, and co-author of The Future We Choose: The Stubborn Optimist's Guide to the Climate Crisis. From 2010 to 2016 she was Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, leading the process that secured the landmark Paris Agreement on Climate Change. With Amazon, Global Optimism is a founding partner of The Climate Pledge.

Gavin Newsom is the Governor of California, former Lieutenant Governor of California, and former Mayor of San Francisco. Newsom is widely recognized for his willingness to lead – repeatedly developing, advocating, and implementing innovative and groundbreaking solutions to some of our most challenging issues. On a wide range of topics including same-sex marriage, gun safety, marijuana, the death penalty, universal health care, access to preschool, technology, criminal justice reform, and the minimum wage, Newsom stuck his neck out and did the right thing, which often led to sweeping changes when his policies were ultimately accepted, embraced, and replicated across the state and nation. Newsom’s top priorities for his administration are tackling our state’s affordability crisis, creating inclusive economic growth and opportunity for every child, and standing up for California values — from civil rights, to immigration, environmental protection, access to quality schools at all levels, and justice. Governor Newsom is married to Jennifer Siebel Newsom. They have four children: Montana, Hunter, Brooklynn, and Dutch.

Catherine leads climate market strategy at X (formerly Google X), the innovation lab at Alphabet Inc. Her work spurs the company to think strategically toward unlocking the full potential of early pipeline technologies such as machine learning, geospatial engineering, and advanced materials science for greater environmental benefit and commercial success. She began her career at Bain & Company developing business strategy for top CEOs across several industries and countries to outperform the market. As an accomplished financier and investor, Catherine advised on over $4.5 billion of capital market transactions and invested in listed equities worldwide. In 2015, she pivoted her career to address the climate crisis. At Emerson Collective, an investment platform founded and led by Laurene Powell Jobs, she helped to build and lead the environmental venture investing practice, where she also formed unique partnerships with major corporations and conservation nonprofits to collaborate on differentiated market-based solutions addressing conservation and climate change. Catherine holds a BS and BA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and graduate degrees from Harvard University and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she was a Sloan Fellow and a recipient of the Miller Social Change Leadership Award for co-founding the GSB Impact Fund.  

Danny Kennedy is the CEO of New Energy Nexus, connecting entrepreneurs everywhere to capital to build an abundant clean energy economy that benefits all. New Energy Nexus is a global platform organization for funds and incubators, with chapters in the USA, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Uganda and India. He Chairs a joint-venture with RMI, the Third Derivative, which is the world's largest climate tech accelerator and is Managing Director of the California Clean Energy Fund. This includes overseeing the CalSEED.fund of $25m for very early-stage companies driving innovation and building equity in the California economy. He is an adviser to Young Greentech Entrepreneurs in China with the Asia Society. Kennedy also serves as President of CalCharge, a public-private partnership with DoE National Labs, universities in California, unions and companies, working to advance energy storage. Kennedy co-founded Sungevity in 2007, the company that created remote solar design, and Powerhouse, a smart energy incubator and accelerator in Oakland, CA. He was the first backer of Mosaic in 2011, the $1B solar loan provider, and remains on the Board of Powerhive, a solar mini-utility in Kenya and is an adviser to SolarPhilippines. He is also a Director of the nonprofit organizations Power for All and Confluence Philanthropy. Kennedy authored the book Rooftop Revolution: How Solar Power Can Save Our Economy – and Our Planet – from Dirty Energy in 2012 and blogs at dannyksfun.medium.com. Prior to being an entrepreneur and investor, he worked at Greenpeace and other NGOs on climate and energy issues for 20+ years.

Pete Buttigieg currently serves as the 19th Secretary of Transportation, having been sworn in on February 3, 2021. 

Prior to joining the Biden-Harris Administration, Secretary Buttigieg served two terms as mayor of his hometown of South Bend, Indiana. A graduate of Harvard University and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, Buttigieg served for seven years as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, taking a leave of absence from the mayor’s office for a deployment to Afghanistan in 2014.

He is the son of Joseph Buttigieg, who immigrated to the United States from Malta, and Jennifer Anne Montgomery, a fifth-generation Hoosier. 

Growing up in South Bend—which was once home to Studebaker car manufacturing—Pete Buttigieg, like many other Americans in the industrial Midwest, grew up surrounded by empty factories and abandoned houses, sometimes hearing that the only way to a good future was to get out.

He returned to the Midwest after school, worked in the private sector, and was elected Mayor of South Bend in 2011 with a focus on delivering a new future for the city through a fresh approach to politics and bold ideas.

Soon known as “Mayor Pete,” Buttigieg worked across the aisle to transform South Bend’s future and improve people’s everyday lives. Household income grew, poverty fell, and unemployment was cut in half. The city established new resources to extend opportunity and access to technology for all residents, and he launched a “Smart Streets” initiative to improve street design in the downtown and the historically under-resourced West Side. This Complete Streets strategy led to benefits that included small business growth along previously neglected corridors, and hundreds of millions of dollars in new private investment in the once-emptying downtown.

His leadership helped spark citywide job growth and facilitated innovative public-private partnerships like Commuters Trust, a benefits program designed to improve the city’s transportation experience for workers.

At the same time, Mayor Pete worked to build a South Bend community where every resident could feel safe and included. His initiative on municipal identification cards for residents helped to bring undocumented immigrants out of the shadows, while a small business incubator established in a historically Black neighborhood worked to expand opportunity, and a surge of investment went into repairing or removing abandoned houses in lower-income neighborhoods.

In 2019, he launched his historic campaign for president. Throughout 2020, he campaigned for the election of the Biden-Harris ticket and served on the advisory board for the presidential transition. In December, he was nominated by President-elect Biden to be Secretary of Transportation. He was confirmed by the Senate on February 2, 2021, becoming the first openly gay person confirmed to serve in a president’s Cabinet.

Secretary Buttigieg lives with his husband Chasten and their rescue dogs, Buddy and Truman.

At the age of 13, Alexandria Villaseñor co-founded the U.S. Youth Climate Strike movement, part of the youth-led international Fridays for Future movement. Now, at the age of 17, Alexandria has become an internationally recognized environmental activist, public speaker, author and founder of several more initiatives, including the youth-led climate education non-profit, Earth Uprising International. She has addressed the Democratic National Convention, the United Nations, NATO and the World Economic Forum. She is a contributing author to All We Can Save, an anthology of women climate leaders, and a child petitioner for the ground-breaking international complaint to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, Children vs. Climate Crisis. Alexandria serves on the advisory board for the national climate policy platform Evergreen Action, is a youth spokesperson and advisor for the American Lung Association, and she is the youngest Junior Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences. For her work, Alexandria has received the Earth Day Network Youth Leadership Award, The Rachel Carson Environmental Justice Award, the Common Good American Spirit Changemaker award and was included on Politico’s top 100 people influential in climate change policy list.

Jennifer M. Granholm was sworn in as the 16th Secretary of Energy on February 25, 2021. Secretary Granholm is leading DOE's work to advance the cutting-edge clean energy technologies that will help America achieve President Biden’s goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 while creating millions of good-paying union clean energy jobs and building an equitable economy. Secretary Granholm is also overseeing DOE’s core missions of promoting American leadership in scientific discovery, maintaining the nuclear deterrent and reducing nuclear danger, and remediating the environmental harms caused by legacy defense programs. Prior to her nomination as Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm was elected Governor of Michigan, serving two terms from 2003 to 2011. As Governor, Jennifer Granholm faced economic downturns caused by the Great Recession and meltdown in the automotive and manufacturing sectors. She successfully led efforts to diversify the state’s economy, strengthen its auto industry, preserve the manufacturing sector, and add emerging sectors — such as clean energy — to Michigan’s economic portfolio. Today, one-third of all North American electric vehicle battery production takes place in Michigan, the state is one of the top five states for clean energy patents, and 126,000 Michiganders were employed in the clean energy sector prior to COVID-19. Secretary Granholm was also elected Attorney General of Michigan and served as the state’s top law enforcement officer from 1998 to 2002. After two terms as governor, Jennifer Granholm joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley as a Distinguished Professor of Practice in the Goldman School of Public Policy, focusing on the intersection of law, clean energy, manufacturing, policy, and industry. She also served as an advisor to the Clean Energy Program of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Jennifer Granholm began her career in public service as a judicial clerk for Michigan's 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.