Our team

Stephen has played leadership roles as a campaigner and advocate at international and national levels on climate change, international development, and other issues.

He was Chief Executive of Refugee Action from 2015-21, and previously Deputy Campaign Director of Oxfam International and a political adviser on climate change. As Chief Executive he is responsible for overall organisational strategy and impact, reporting to the board of trustees, a role he feels very privileged to have.

Stephen loves cycling, running, swimming and Crystal Palace football club.

Aleks was awarded a Princeton University High Meadows Fellowship with the Environmental Defense Fund, which is where she helped to launch Climate Catalyst as the new organisation’s first employee.

Today she serves as Programme Manager for Climate Catalyst’s aviation programme, a role in which she develops systems that allow a team spanning five continents to collaborate effectively.

Lately Aleks has been dabbling in wok cooking, which alternately results in a tasty meal or the smoke alarm going off.

Carlijn (pronounced Car line, like a line of cars) is passionate about helping operations and teams run seamlessly. Her career has spanned a wide range of fields, from working in the film industry and managing a dive centre in southern Egypt to supporting press operations at the European Commission. She also holds a master’s degree in Labour Law and Employment Relations and has led her own research business, Labour Lens.

An easygoing and curious traveller, Carlijn is known for booking trips at the very last minute and going wherever her appetite and curiosity take her. She happily admits that eating is her favourite part of travelling, whether it is discovering local street food, visiting family-run restaurants, or enjoying an elaborate tasting menu.

Committed to fostering collective action and solutions to regenerate our climate and environment, Madeleine has been working in the not-for-profit sector for over 5 years, particularly on program management and engagement with the private sector, civil society and grassroots organisations.

Supporting Climate Catalyst’s business and investor activation work, Madeleine designs and executes strategies, enables partnerships and increases the investor community’s engagement on our specific focus areas.

Outside of work, you’ll normally find Maddie outdoors on a trail run or long hike in the mountains, and exploring something new in the community.

Suka is an energy transition and sustainability professional who has worked across private industry, NGOs/development, and consulting—including GEAPP, Accenture, GIZ, and TMLEnergy. He moves between policy rooms and project sites—working across distributed and utility-scale renewables, industrial decarbonisation, green hydrogen, e-mobility, productive use of energy, just transition, and the policy pieces that glue it all together.

He brings a mix of technical, business, policy, finance, and stakeholder-management skills—turning big transition ideas into things that actually work on the ground, delivering real-world impact, and building the alliances that sustain it.

When he’s not working, you’ll find him in the garden, meditating under the roses, or on a road trip discovering new places.

Ferth’s career spans research, project management, policy advocacy, campaigning, and partnership building across diverse sustainability issues, including renewable energy transition, zero waste solutions, youth and stakeholder engagement, social media-powered disaster risk reduction, and sustainable urban mobility.

As Network Coordinator at Climate Catalyst, he focuses on supporting the organisation’s programmes and partnerships aimed at accelerating steel decarbonisation in Asia.

Beyond work, he finds joy in watching animated series, hiking, travelling, and listening to show-tunes.

Driven by a commitment to advance a just and sustainable industrial transition in Europe, Nikolas has worked across public affairs, advocacy and the social impact sector.

He spent several years in Brussels working on climate and energy policy with a focus on decarbonising energy-intensive industries, and later supported policy and advocacy at Impact Europe, the investing-for-impact network, helping connect EU policymaking with social and environmental impact.

At Climate Catalyst, he leads our policy work on chemicals decarbonisation in Europe, driving business mobilisation and strategic advocacy to ensure a transition for the sector that is aligned with climate, health and pollution goals.

Outside of work, he’s usually running along the Catalan coast, with his dog often setting the pace.

Emma has several years of experience working on energy and climate issues for governmental research and policy organisations.

Committed to confronting the climate crisis with strong evidence and robust legislative action, she brings a wealth of technical knowledge on energy and environmental matters alongside expertise on how to implement research and policy strategies to achieve climate impact.

Emma is also the lead of our Aviation Programme, heading up our multidisciplinary team working to put the sector onto a net zero pathway.

When Emma is not leading our aviation work or our policy and research activities, she is gardening or walking her dog in the countryside.

Juan has spent most of his career working at the intersection of finance, sustainability, and policymaking, primarily from non-profit and philanthropic perspectives. He has an in-depth understanding of EU policies and institutions, and lived in Brussels for several years after graduating from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium.

As Aviation Programme Manager, Juan focuses on the net-zero transition of aviation in Europe by engaging industry stakeholders—particularly in the oil and gas sector— alongside the financial community and private investors, with a focus on scaling Electro-Sustainable Aviation Fuels (e-SAF) and other decarbonization levers.

He is passionate about live music, international politics, languages, and all things related to finance and economics.

Driven by social impact, Sakshi has spent more than a decade working on policy advocacy and strategy development for nonprofits.

Sakshi now heads the steel programme at Climate Catalyst and works with our partners to implement strategies to accelerate steel decarbonisation in India and Asia.

When not working, she is busy travelling around the world and trying new things to eat.

Esther Wanjiru Kiarie is a seasoned Finance and Operations leader with over 20 years of experience supporting global, donor-funded organisations. She has led budgeting, forecasting, cash flow management, payroll, audits, and compliance across multi-country environments.

Esther is known for building strong financial systems, simplifying complex information for leadership and boards, and ensuring transparency and accountability. A collaborative and values-driven leader, she brings a stewardship mindset and a strong commitment to strengthening mission-led organisations for sustainable impact.

At Climate Catalyst, Esther is the Finance and Operations Manager and works on ensuring compliance and is part of the excellent operations team. Away from work, she likes taking nature walks and enjoying the outdoors.

Emily has spent most of her career working with businesses, investors, trade unions, and non-governmental organisations on tackling the climate emergency, most recently at The B Team before joining Climate Catalyst.

Here, she heads up our Business & Investor Engagement Department and provides a leadership role across our campaigns and networks.

Outside of work, she is a local politician in London, representing the people of London Bridge and West Bermondsey for the Labour Party.

With a keen passion for building people-centric and people-driven organisations, Ila has previously led on creating strong culture initiatives, diverse talent pools, accessible learning & development platforms, sustainable organisational growth and grounded business operations systems.

In her role as Director of People + Operations at Climate Catalyst, Ila works to build a people-first organisation with practices that drive both collective and individual growth, and leads on designing and implementing operational systems, processes and infrastructure.

When not working, she is busy being tutored by her human & furry babies alike.

Over the last decade, Nandan has worked in varied roles across impact investing, consulting, non-profits, academia and politics, with organisations like India Climate Collaborative, Omidyar Network India, Purpose, FTI Consulting, Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung etc.

At Climate Catalyst, he is supporting the build and implementation of policy and government engagement strategies for the India Green Steel Network.

Outside of work, Nandan regularly plays sport, runs a fitness support group for close friends and family and hosts a video podcast focused on deconstructing interesting career moves of early stage professionals.

Passionate about the role communications plays in driving positive change, Tierney has spent the last decade supporting communications and content creation for environmental non-profits.

Tierney is particularly passionate about using communications to bring new voices into the climate debate, and spends her days plotting new ways to support the Climate Catalyst team and our partners to deliver creative outputs that reach new audiences across multiple channels.

When not working, she can usually be found at the beach or in the mountains with her dog, Maisy, in tow.

Arief has long worked in campaigning for social and environmental change. He co-founded and was country director of Change.org Indonesia, and helped build other organisations committed to a social mission.

Arief leads Climate Catalyst’s efforts in building networks and partnerships that create collective action for the climate.

He is also an avid boardgamer and the undefeated champion in the Climate Catalyst Catan League.

Cathy has worked across many sectors on admin, business management, people and operations and executive assistance.

As Executive and Operations Manager, Cathy provides vital administrative support to the CEO and Climate Catalyst to ensure smooth and efficient operations.

When she isn’t working you can find Cathy reading at home cuddled up with her 2 dogs, 4 cats and family, having fun at a concert or hanging upside down at aerial silks.

Kinshu is passionate about making complex policy research actionable. A journalist turned policy professional, Kinshu was compelled by the impact her climate reporting had on policymaking. She has since worked with two senior members of the Indian parliament, helping them draft key amendments, bills and speeches. Most recently, Kinshu worked at the CEO’s office at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) where she was handling central government relations and built CEEW’s network across Asia and Oceania.

As the Network and Partnerships Manager for India at Climate Catalyst, Kinshu’s role is to find, engage and activate partners to accelerate steel decarbonisation.

Outside of work, Kinshu can be found attempting different forms of yoga, playing lawn tennis, and thrifting celebrity hand-me-downs.

Petra specialised in policy analysis and strategic thinking design, responding to gaps and opportunities for sustainable corporate ecosystem in Indonesia.

At Climate Catalyst, she works on programme design in Indonesia, focusing on corporations’ climate strategy internalisation through corporate capacity-building programmess and amplifying the decarbonisation pathways towards corporate’s net zero goals.

In her spare time, she likes to hike, explore nature and national parks in Indonesia.

Abhinav’s focus throughout his career has been on enabling sustainability and tackling climate change in big and small ways. This has ranged from advisory services for resource management to policy research on sustainable mobility. Most recently, he led policy advocacy for an EV OEM.

His role as Programme Manager is to develop and implement project plans to achieve objectives under the steel and chemical decarbonization programmes.

Outside of work, Abhinav enjoys elaborate cooking sprees and latin social dancing.

Seong works at the intersection of community-centered research and learning innovations. She has led participatory design of public services and coalitions at policy labs, managing multi-country government-academic collaborations. She also brings a decade of experience curating collective learning for frontline creatives – including for agricultural enterprises, planetary artist collectives, and civic education nonprofits across the Global South, most immersively in Myanmar.

At Climate Catalyst, Seong will be piloting movement building tools and cross-regional convenings for civil society organizations that are tackling clean air in 14 cities worldwide.

Seong enjoys getting lost in deep soul talks, community arts + storytelling spaces, mountainous borderlands, and nurturing green or growing things.

Harsheen is a digital marketer with several years of experience building and managing large scale digital campaigns in the B2B and B2C environments.

Here at Climate Catalyst he seeks to leverage these skills and experience to shape our digital efforts and help drive our impact across the various programmes and regions we operate in.

Harsheen is filled with endless curiosity, loves being outdoors, meeting new people and engages in several sports.

Focused on putting sustainable development into practice, Ali’s career has centred on delivering learning initiatives that contribute to a better future. Ali has designed and delivered transformative learning programs for diverse audiences around the world. Ali came to Climate Catalyst after time with both the Thailand and Peru offices of EarthRights International where she worked to grow the scale and impact of training programs for environmental and human rights defenders.

In her current role as Head of Network Learning and Innovation, Ali is responsible for designing and implementing Climate Catalyst’s learning and innovation strategy, tailored to each of our campaigns.

Ali is currently based in Canada. She can usually be found outside hiking or biking on nearby trails, trying to (re)learn a language or sport, or curled up with a good book.

A driven and determined fundraising leader, passionate about environmental philanthropy, Kat has spent 18 years taking collective ambition and entrepreneurial attitude and translating this into funding for scalable programmes, influence and organisational infrastructure to maximise impact for the ocean.

Leading the fundraising team, Kat serves the Climate Catalyst team by building strong relationships that deliver finance for high impact campaigns and partnerships.

When not bringing her curiosity to the climate challenge, she can be found building something out of lego with her kids or with her nose in a good book.