Eligible applications will undergo a comprehensive review process by a Jury composed of individuals with deep insight into Steve’s personal and professional values. They collectively represent members of Steve’s family, GWEC, REN21 and Greenpeace, as well as a clean energy leader from the relevant region.

Kelly Rigg

Founding Director, Varda Group

Kelly Rigg has been leading international campaigns for more than 35 years on climate, energy, ocean, and other issues. She was a senior campaign director for Greenpeace International for nearly 20 years, including coordinator of the successful international campaign to save Antarctica.

In 2003 she co-founded the Amsterdam-based Varda Group consultancy providing campaign, communications, organizational and strategic advice to a wide range of NGOs, IGOs and philanthropic organizations. She served as Executive Director of the Global Call for Climate Action (GCCA) from 2009-2014, an alliance of several hundred organizations working to achieve a strong U.N. climate agreement which culminated with the Paris Agreement. She also led the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition for five years, campaigning for a UN General Assembly moratorium on high seas bottom trawling.

She has lived in Amsterdam since 1989 with her husband, the late Steve Sawyer.

Layla Sawyer

Head of Operations and Business Development, smartEn

Layla Sawyer is Head of Operations and Business Development at smartEn, the European business association integrating the decentralized solutions of the clean energy transition, where she works on flexibility, digitalisation and the future of prosumer models. Previously she worked at a national climate NGOs in the Netherlands, advocating for more urgency in the Dutch energy transition, and she spent a year in the Philippines working for a social investment fund specialized in climate resilient enterprises.

She studied Sustainable Business and Innovation at the University of Utrecht, with a special focus on energy and material transitions and p2p energy trading.

Arthouros Zervos

President, REN21

Arthouros Zervos is the President of the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21) since 2013. He is a Professor Emeritus at the National Technical University of Athens. He has been Chairman and CEO of the Greek electricity utility Public Power Corporation (PPC) as well as Chairman of the PPC Renewables, both from 2009 to 2015.

He has more than 35 years of high level expertise in policy, science, research and technology across the renewable energy sector. He led key European and International renewable energy bodies and has acted as policy advisor to Governments, EU bodies and policy fora.He has been President of the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) from 2001 to 2013, President of the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC) from 2000 to 2012 and President of the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) from 2005 to 2010. In 2013 he received the “Poul La Cour” prize for outstanding achievement in wind energy. He was the lead author of the White Paper on Renewable Sources of Energy for the EC in 1997.

He is a graduate of Princeton University with a Bachelor and Master Degrees of Science in Engineering as well as a Ph.D. Degree from the Université P. et M. Curie (Paris 6).

Ben Backwell

CEO, GWEC

Ben Backwell is a leading commentator and strategist in the renewable energy sector. Prior to joining GWEC, he was a Managing Director at FTI Consulting, one of the world’s largest advisory firms, advising companies in the clean energy sector on strategy, communications, and government affairs, including work on a number of major M&A transactions.

Previously, Ben worked as a journalist and analyst for 20 years, covering energy policy and markets around the world. He helped design the SolutionWind campaign for the European Wind Energy Association (now WindEurope) ahead of COP21 in 2015, before joining FTI Consulting. He has taken part in the work of a number of industry organizations, including the board of GWEC, the IRENA Business and Investor Group, the IEA’s Renewable Energy Industry Advisory Board, Solar Power Europe, and others. He is a frequent speaker and moderator at international conferences.

Ben is the author of two books on the wind industry as well as a number of reports and white papers on power markets and policy frameworks. His book Wind Power, the struggle for control of a new global industry,” (Routledge 2015, 2nd Revised Edition 2017) has been described as the “definitive” story of the global wind industry. He holds an MSc in Political Science from the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London and speaks Spanish and Portuguese as well as his native English.

Regional Jury Members

South East Asia

Athena Ronquillo-Ballesteros

Managing Director, Global Climate Strategies, Climate Leadership Initiative

Athena Ronquillo-Ballesteros is managing director of global climate strategies for the Climate Leadership Initiative (CLI), leveraging her deep climate expertise and extensive global network to guide new climate philanthropists to outsized impact.

Athena brings extensive experience in nonprofit and philanthropic organizations, with more than 20 years’ involvement in environmental development and natural resource governance. Prior to joining CLI, Athena served as director of programs and strategy for the Growald Family Fund, a high-impact venture philanthropy founded by Eileen Rockefeller and Paul Growald that invests in a rapid transition to a clean energy future. Athena also was the global director of the World Resources Institute’s Center for Sustainable Finance, where she led research efforts to shift finance towards low-carbon climate resilient development, and worked to improve the environmental and social performance of public financial institutions.

Prior to joining WRI, she was head of Greenpeace International’s climate and energy program in Asia Pacific, and led the development and expansion of climate policy and sustainable energy work in China, India, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Japan. She then joined the Greenpeace International board and served until 2019.

Originally from the Philippines, Athena also brings significant intercultural and international experience to the CLI team. She is a long-time policy advisor to the Philippine government’s official climate change negotiating team at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and has been widely published on climate change, climate finance, clean energy, governance, and human rights. She serves on multiple boards, including International Rivers, Action Aid, and True Costs Initiative. Athena has a Global Master of Arts degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and bachelor’s and post-graduate degrees from the University of the Philippines and the Asian Institute of Management.

Liming Qiao

Head of GWEC Asia

Liming Qiao is currently the Head of Asia at Global Wind Energy Council. Since joining GWEC in 2008, Liming has been in various roles at the association focusing on policy and Asia related issues.

Liming’s current focus is on wind energy policy in Asia and she is leading GWEC’s South East Asia (SEA) Task Force, which is a working group with major industry and institutional stakeholders active in SEA to advance better policy for wind energy development in the region. She has been working closely with the wind industry to promote a better policy environment for the wind sector in China and other parts of Asia. Liming pioneered GWEC’s work in new Asian markets like Mongolia, Vietnam, Thailand and Taiwan.

Liming has been working in the field of climate and energy since 2003, with a focus on renewable energy policy and international climate policy. Before joining GWEC, she worked with international organisations on various climate related programs.

Mike Townsley

Head of Story & Communication Greenpeace International

Mike has been on the frontlines of campaigning for over forty years as an activist, journalist, campaigner, strategist and storyteller.

As a journalist he reported on major environmental crisis and challenges for a range of international publications including the Guardian, Observer, New Scientist and BBC radio.

Since joining Greenpeace International over 20 years ago to campaign against the threat of nuclear proliferation, he has contributed and lead a number of critical campaign projects on land and sea. His work has taken him all over the world in opposition to destructive development, in support of local communities and clean technology solutions.

Today he overseas Greenpeace International’s Story and Communication teams around the world and their global digital channels. Their work is aimed at providing authoritative, trusted, science based, actionable information that places power in the hands of supporters and allies to demand a fairer, safer, cleaner future.

He believes of all of the crisis that lay before us perhaps the most pressing is the crisis of imagination: in which it is easier to imagine the end of nature than the fundamental system and technological changes needed to shift us onto a sustainable pathway.

Former Jury Members

Marcelo Furtado

HEAD OF FOUNDATIONS, COALITIONS AND START-UPS

Marcelo is passionate about leading environmental and human rights movements to overcome the climate crisis and eradicate inequality. He accomplishes this by sitting on boards and advising NGOs, Corporations, and Nature/ESG investment funds.

As an explorer of the world, he is curious and challenged by new discoveries and issues. He has been an activist for over 30 years at the local, regional, national, and international level. He engages with a wide range of environmental and human rights issues, including: climate change, forest, agriculture, renewable energy, pollution, clean technology, urban development, and public policy.

Multi-stakeholders engagement and mobilization is at the heart of his work. That is how many companies and NGOs that he is engaged with became partners in the Brazilian Coalition on Climate, Forest, and Agriculture. When at Greenpeace, he pursued solutions to expand the renewable energy matrix and helped build agreements to address the impact of soya or cattle ranching in the Amazon deforestation.

He envisions socially and environmentally oriented businesses, such as Block C/ZCO2, a start-up he co-founded that offers a relationship platform for consumers and companies applying AI and blockchain traceability on environmental assets.

Jennifer Morgan

International Executive Director, Greenpeace International

Jennifer is the International Executive Director of Greenpeace International, based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands but working around the world. She first became IED in April 2016 in a shared leadership role with former Bunny McDiarmid. When Bunny left the organisation in August 2019, Jennifer was appointed as the sole IED for Greenpeace International.

Jennifer is the former Global Director of the Climate Program at the World Resources Institute (WRI), Global Climate Change Director at Third Generation Environmentalism (E3G) and led the Global Climate Change Program of Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).

As the Global Director of the Climate Program at the World Resources Institute (WRI), Jennifer oversaw the Institute’s work on climate change issues and guided the WRI strategy in helping countries, governments and individuals take positive action toward achieving a zero-carbon future. She was responsible for day-to-day management of the 60+ person programme, and worked closely with the WRI China, India, Brazil and Indonesia offices. In addition, Jennifer was WRI’s lead representative at international climate meetings, including the UNFCCC negotiations. She has published on international climate policy issues.

Aniello Alioto

Global Engagement Manager, Global Engagement Department, Greenpeace International

Aniello Alioto serves Greenpeace International as a Global Engagement Manager and leads a number of special projects for the Global Engagement Department. Before joining Greenpeace International, Aniello was the Senior Campaign Director at NARAL Pro-Choice America (the largest abortion rights advocacy group in the USA) and before then he served for six years as the National Political Director of ProgressNow. Years before joining ProgressNow, Aniello learned his niche was fighting on behalf of various issue-oriented political campaigns. Aniello specializes in communications and information management, supporter engagement, infrastructure cultivation, effective coalition management, troubleshooting, crisis management, and staff development.

Aniello holds a Master of Arts Degree in Diplomacy from the Patterson School of Diplomacy & International Commerce, located at the University of Kentucky, as well as a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science from the University of Louisville.

While not working, you will likely find Aniello either cooking, traveling, sailing, hiking, researching obscurities, studying languages, or turning strangers into friends.