Dr Massimo Gasparon has been developing the EU Raw Materials sector for several years. He started as Innovation Director at EIT RawMaterials where the six value chain-based thematic areas are driving the EU Raw Materials sector towards a major strength for Europe.
Dr Gasparon is the European Raw Materials Alliance director where the main challenges are: to develop resilient value chains for EU industrial ecosystems; reduce dependency on primary critical raw materials through circular use of re-sources, sustainable products and innovation; strengthen domestic sourcing of raw materials in the EU; diversify sourcing from third countries and remove distortions to international trade, fully respecting the EU’s international obligations. These all provide many opportunities to develop green technologies and new approaches in Circular Economy to fulfil the EU Green Deal.

Dr Olli Salmi is the Director of EIT RawMaterials Baltic Sea Innovation Hub, representing EIT RawMaterials in Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Dr Salmi has two decades of experience in leadership, innovation management and capacity building in the mineral sector as well as in planning and design. At EIT RawMaterials, he strives to ensure better integration of innovation, education and business among the metal and mineral sector stakeholders in their efforts to turn raw materials into a major strength for Europe.

Prior to joining EIT RawMaterials, Dr Salmi has worked as Research Professor at VTT Technological Research Centre of Finland and as CTO of EPECC Ltd.

Darina Štyriaková is a professional research associate at Slovenian Building and Civil Engineering Institute, a biotechnologist and the Founder of ekolive. ekolive is the first and leading provider of a new ecological bioleaching method (InnoBioTech™) for the ecological release of elements and the degradation of organic contaminants.

She has registered 2 EU patents and coordinated 2 EU funded projects. She is a professional research associate at Slovenian Building and Civil Engineering Institute (ZAG), a member of the first sustainability expert community of the Visegrád Group focused on Climate Neutrality by 2050 and the EU Sustainable Development Strategy.

Darina is in the TOP 5 creative young Entrepreneurs of Slovakia 2020, a member of European Raw Materials Alliance ERMA, member of Artemis, and CircLean.

Alar Saluste is the Member Of The Management Board and Project Manager of the circular economy company Ragn-Sells, responsible for the innovative circular economy project of production of calcium carbonate from oil shale ash. He has wide national and International experience, when it comes to technology development, engineering and construction of utilities, circular economy solutions, chemical, oil&gas . Alar has carried out large multinational projects in several European countries, Middle East and Russia, involving designing, engineering as well as project management. His previous career includes Project Managers position in Aqua Consult Baltic OÜ, FLUOR B.V., Eesti Energia AS and Tartu University. He has a Master’s degree from Tartu University in environmental technology. He has also published numerous scientific articles in International scientific journals and is one of the inventors for 2 pending patents.

Marleena Ahonen works as a specialist in Sitra’s circular economy team. For Marleena, the circular economy is one of the world’s best and most inspiring strategies for a sustainable, meaningful tomorrow, towards which everyone can be inspired to build.
Marleena has a holistic approach to development, the circular economy and to the whole world, with a people-oriented emphasis. Marleena’s favourite topics include the processing industry, recycling, the gas economy, renewable energy, strategic life-cycle assessment, cleantech, climate change, environmental impacts and foresight.
She has worked previously as a sustainable development consultant, held an internship on cleantech in Los Angeles and also participated in a project in Tanzania. Her approach combines the best high-tech and low-tech solutions.
Marleena has a Master of Science degree in Environmental Engineering and strong science background from Aalto University.

Jüri Kaljundi is has founded many services and foundations. For example he is the co-founder of Weekdone, a weekly team management service that makes managers and employees more productive.

He is also the co-founder of Koosloodus, a nature conservancy foundation, that helps to protect and develope Estonian nature. And he is also the co-founder of Garage48, a regional non-profit startup foundation, that organizes weekend hackathons and startup events in the Baltics, Europe, Middle-East and Africa.

Merit Valdsalu is the CEO and Co-Founder of Single.Earth, a startup integrating nature protection into the economy. She's an avid environmentalist and equality advocate, and an ex-Pipdriver fond of super scalable and impactful tech solutions. Single.Earth combines her two passions: saving the planet from an ecological disaster by using cutting-edge technology.

Sten Aan is a green energy enthusiast. He is leading the energy sector advisory business in KPMG Baltics. His team is oriented to helping companies transition to a more sustainable future, primarily focusing on renewable energy investment projects and sustainable strategy.

Previously he has led business development at Eesti Energia group in various positions, most notably initiating the group's solar business in Estonia. Sten holds MSc in power engineering and MA in management from TalTech.

Andrus Treier will be the speaker at GreenEST Summit Investor Breakfast. He is the CEO of EIC, a state-owned foundation that offers innovative, smart and impactful solutions to tackle environmental problems and climate challenges.
Andrus has been active in private as well as public organisations. He has a history of working in leading positions as a CEO, CFO and consultant in the financial sector, logistics industry and advisory services as well as few years in molecular diagnostics startup (KredEx, KPMG, DHL, Lux Express, Self-Diagnostics).
Andrus has played a significant role in developing the Estonian and Baltic financing ecosystem, being one of the key persons designing the first public Pan-Baltic and Estonian risk capital fund-of-funds Baltic Innovation Fund, bringing several innovative concepts of mezzanine financing, trade insurance and loan guarantees into the market, including novel solutions for multi-apartment buildings renovation.
Andrus has a Master of Business Administration (MBA) focused in Strategic Management from the University of Tartu and he is a former Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) as well as CPA (Certified Public Accountant).
Personal funny detail: He likes to wash dishes. Sometimes ;) As Bill Gates does, by the way.

Thor Sigfusson is an Icelandic entrepreneur. He is the founder of the Iceland Ocean Cluster, Grandi Food Hall, Hlemmur Food Hall, Codland, Collagen and several other start-ups in the blue economy. In recent years, Thor has been expanding the Ocean Cluster network. Currently, five sister clusters are up and running in the United States, one in the Faroe Islands, and one in the Pacific’s.

Thor has published eight books on subjects as different as business and salmon. He has a PhD in international business and business networks and his research has been published in academic business journals. His main interest is entrepreneurial networks and better utilization of fish resources.

Thor is a well-known speaker and has been key speaker on various seafood related conferences all over the world including Abu-Dhabi, US and South-Korea.

James Gaffey has a lot of notable achievements. He is a Principal Investigator and Co-Director of the Circular Bioeconomy Research Group at Shannon ABC at Munster Technology University and a researcher on multiple national and EU-funded bioeconomy initiatives including Biorefinery Glas small-scale grass biorefinery demonstration (coordinator), BBI JU projects ICT-BIOCHIAN (scientific coordinator) and BIOSWITCH, and H2020 projects such as BIO4AFRICA, COOPID and agroBRIDGES.

He is also an Academic Collaborator in the SFI BiOrbic Research Centre and part of the SFI Farm Zero C team developing a worlds first net-zero emissions dairy demonstration farm. In addition to that he is also a part of MTU's core programme development team on the MSc Programme Bioeconomy with Business.

James has been a regular contributor to European-level studies into circular economy and bioeconomy, and has been a member of the Expert Panel for the Impact Assessment of Circular Biobased Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU) successor programme to BBI JU under the Horizon Europe programme.

He was previously biorefinery specialist on the EU Horizon 2020 AgriForValor Project and prior to joining MTU worked at NUI Galway (Technology Centre for Biorefining and Bioenergy) as part of the "Bio-Éire - a Bioeconomy for Ireland" team – the results of which are a key part to help develop a National Bioeconomy Policy Statement for Ireland.

James has worked in the field of advanced biorefining since 2009.

Kaisa has an MSc in food technology with a primary focus on non-animal-derived foods. While working as a dairy alternative developer, she saw a huge potential in biotechnology for producing more sustainable nutrition sources. Her previous experience with microorganisms made her passionate about these tiny creatures and the possibilities that biotechnology and synthetic biology offer for future society. Kaisa is now the founder and CEO of ProProtein, a company that aims to produce dairy proteins with yeast, without the need for cattle farming. These proteins can be applied for making dairy alternatives that have the real texture, flavour and nutrition, but without the downsides of commercial cattle farming.

Tanel is CEO and Co-founder of Vetik which is a startup for valorizing Estonian local red seaweed. He is currently finishing his PhD studies in Molecular and Cell Biology. For 4 years, he has been working towards building up new value chains based on the circular economy concept, using as an input a renewable stock of seaweed that is currently underused. The main focus of Vetik is in the extraction of natural red colorants (cosmetics) and biostimulants (agri industry).

Madis Tilga is working as an adviser for green transition and circular economy in the Nordic Council of Minister's office in Estonia. His main task is to facilitate the green transition in the region and work towards a common understanding of how this transition could happen and that the countries in the region follow a similar pace. In practice, this means coordinating joint research ventures, arranging round tables and seminars for better co-operation, also business outreach and capacity building among civil servants and NGOs. Madis Tilga acts also as a facilitator of discussions, leads projects and writes opinion pieces. Madis is also a partner in the social impact bioeconomy startup Nutriloop, which develops nutrient and carbon looping model for food system.

Tom Bosschaert has developed over 500 projects pioneering projects for cities, buildings, business, policy, and industry. His vision shows that we can flourish globally when we integrate environmental, societal, economical and technical aspects at the same time.
After his Master in Industrial Design Engineering from Delft, he studied Architecture in Australia at the University of Western Australia, and obtained his Masters in Architecture & Urban Planning from Yale University.
In 2017 his initiative, the UCo center for sustainable entrepreneurship in Utrecht opened, bringing together over 150 sustainability pioneers in the first energy neutral, circular and healthy listed heritage building in Europe.
Tom Bosschaert also developed the Symbiosis in Development (SiD) methodology which combines systems thinking, complexity analysis, iterative design thinking and co-creation in multi-disciplinary teams.
As director and designer, he has leaded Except bio-based architectural and urban designs, such as the Merredin Algae plant, Shanghai vertical agriculture tower systems and the urban redevelopment of large and small cities around the world.

Hanno Tomberg is the head of Open University at TalTech. Open University is responsible for lifelong education and schoolchildren activities at TalTech. He is also leading the Just Transition Fund workgroup at the university, which has proposed TalTech’s action plan to use the funds means in the next six years for higher and continuing education. Previously he has worked at the Management Board at Foundation Archimedes, responsible for implementing the European Union structural funds in higher education and science, as Managing Director of Enterprise Estonia (EAS) from 2014 to 2016 and at management posts at various Estonian publications and media houses. He has earned a Master’s degree in journalism from Tartu University in 1993.

An architect by training, Ivan has gained diverse professional experience in Estonia, Netherlands and the United States, most notably at the world’s leading office for architecture and cultural analyses Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA*AMO) in New York City. Between 2016 and 2020 Ivan helped reinvigorate Estonia’s Eastern-most city of Narva through both his main responsibilities as the city's chief architect as well as leading the city's bid for the European Capital of Culture title and co-producing the music and urban culture festival Station Narva. Currently, Ivan coordinates the process of drafting Estonia's territorial just transition plan at the Republic of Estonia Ministry of Finance.

Mart Luik is Business Director in Tallinn Strategic Management Office. He is leading City Enterprise Services, which one of the key responsibilites is successful development of cycling economy in Tallinn. Cultural shift of waste management and implementation of cycling economy are among cornerstones of Tallinn green transition. This cultural change is instrumental in order to reach long-term goals set in „Tallinn 2035“ strategy. Just recently he has taken personal green commitment to install solar panels on his house. Mart has 25 years of experience in executive positions in different media companies in Central and Eastern European counties. He holds BA in journalism from University of Tartu and MBA in media management from University of Cumbria.

Rutt Hints' main interests are currently connected with metallogeny and sedimentology of black shales. Her other research directions involve diverse problems of geochemistry, mineralogy and genesis of fine-grained sedimentary and volcanic complexes. During the last decade she has been engaged in several international projects devoted to geological information systems and digital educational resources.

Rutt has received her PhD in geology from the University of Tartu. Besides research activities, she is the study programme director for Georesources at TalTech.

Birgit Rusten is one of the founders of FutureBuilt, an innovation program in its second ten-year-period. FutureBuilt’s goal is fuelling the shift towards low carbon and people-centered cities and architecture.

Through FutureBuilt Birgit and her team have developed a quite unique model for cooperation between municipalities, developers and real estate, to help making buildings and city areas more sustainable and climate friendly.

FutureBuilt have initiated more than 50 pilot-projects in the Oslo region in Norway, to showcase that zero carbon and high quality buildings and city areas are within reach.

Abdolrasoul Habibipour (Ph.D.) is a postdoctoral researcher in Information Systems at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden and managing director of Botnia Living Lab, Sweden. His research focuses on participatory design and user engagement in living lab context, with a particular emphasis on users’ motivations and needs. Abdolrasoul has experience teaching and supervising students at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels and has published several journal and conference articles in his research topic. He has been involved in different international innovation and research projects such as Privacy Flag, USEMP and U4IoT projects and is currently working on UNaLab, LiLaCC and ACCLab projects.

Dr. Ralf-Martin Soe is a Founding Director of the FinEst Centre for Smart Cities. His previous positions include being an ICT Counsellor to the Minister of Entrepreneurship and Information Technology, a Supervisory Board Member at the Estonian Internet Foundation and a Government Fellow at the United Nations University’s e-Government Unit.
Since 2013, he has been involved with the NGO ITL Digital Lab (ICT Cluster of Estonia) as a Development Manager. During 2009-2013, he was a Financial and Digitalisation Consultant working with the UK Government, PwC, Praxis and United Nations University. From 2006-2009, he was an Investigative Journalist at the Business Daily Äripäev and was selected as the Best Young Journalist in Estonia by the Estonian Newspaper Association in 2008, after several nominations.
Ralf has two master degrees in Financial Management (MSc, Maastricht University/ United Nations University and MBA, University of Tartu) and has a PhD degree in Technology Governance from TalTech. He was selected as the TalTech Junior Researcher of the Year 2019 and most influential person of the year 2019 in Estonia by the Estonian Association of Information Technology and Telecommunications.

Mihkel Kaevats is an Estonian poet and a city activist, who now leads the Green Transition in Tallinn City. His latest achievement is taking the strategy „Climate Neutral Tallinn“ successfully through the City Parliament. He was also the writer for the city’s roof strategy „Tallinn 2035“. Focusing in achieving a human-centered change in city space, mobility and sustainability, „Tallinn 2035“ was an organization-wide effort to compile an ambitious big picture for the whole Tallinn city region. In private life, he is a passionate city cyclist, an inspired maker of walks and a devoted fan of his dog.

Maarten is trained as an urban planner and graduated on sustainable urban development at the University of Amsterdam and the Northeastern University in Boston. Before AM he worked for the City of Amsterdam on urban renewal programs.

As a Sustainable Development Manager at AM Maarten invents, develops and implements sustainability solutions for new district developments. He focuses on the energy transition, circular construction, climate adaptation and sustainable mobility and works with a wide array of partners to innovate and mainstream best practices. Among other projects he works on the transformation of the Amsterdam prison complex into the ecodistrict ‘Bajeskwartier’. AM won the project from a competition organized by the Central Government Real Estate Agency.

Tatsiana is the CEO and Co-Founder of Laava Tech. Core focus of Laava Tech is sustainability and data analytics for energy systems. Tatsiana is in Forbes 30 under 30 list for Industry & Manufacturing in Europe and also a member of Forbes Technology Council.

Konrad is the co-founder and CEO of Gridio. Gridio’s app boosts customers' wallets by automatically making electric vehicles and home energy devices use energy when it makes sense - when it’s the cheapest and cleanest. Before Gridio, Konrad spent 10 years studying and forecasting clean energy trends, electricity and CO2 prices, first in Bloomberg New Energy Finance in London and then in the world’s largest mining company BHP in Singapore. Konrad has an MSc in Energy, Environmental Technology and Economics from City University of London.

Georg's mission is to help power society by clean energy. He is starting a new venture in energy storage which is currently in the pre-seed phase. Previously Georg directed digitalisation at Elering, the national grid of Estonia, setting the digital strategy, selecting IT investments and executing key projects. In 2015 Georg co-founded Sympower, a flexibility provider today active in six countries and employing over 50 people. Georg holds a Master's degree in Sustainable Energy from Imperial College London.

Dr. Ivar Kruusenberg is the CEO and Founder of PowerUP Energy Technologies. With a PhD in chemistry from the University of Tartu and a Post-doctoral degree from UC Berkeley, Ivar has more than 15 years of experience in the field of fuel cells and nanomaterials. In 2016, Kruusenberg switched his focus from academia to entrepreneurship. Besides from being a deep tech hardware start-up entrepreneur, he is also a senior researcher at the National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics, where he leads a few fuel cell, carbon nanomaterial and battery related research groups. Ivar actively provides consultation to private companies working in the hydrogen storage space and works closely with governmental bodies on developing policies for their hydrogen strategy. Ivar is the recipient of a 2015 Fulbright research scholarship and winner of the 2017 “I am a UC (University of Canada) Entrepreneur” contest. Being a veteran in the field of hydrogen and fuel cell in Estonia, Ivar is a well-known and nominated speaker in the industry.

Erki is one of the founders of the Estonian cleantech startups sector. He’s actively seeking funding opportunities for promising startups and programs dedicated to delivering positive impact. Erki has helped Estonian cleantech sector develop since its birth. He has background in Environmental Management and Engineering and Business Administration and is responsible for developing a wide network of stakeholders in Estonia, Europe but also in more distant parts of the World. In 2014 Erki started his first cleantech startup journey in the Netherlands and pursued in 2016 back in Estonia. Thereafter moved to the Estonian Renewable Energy Association and soon after that started in Cleantech ForEst as the CEO, leading also the acceleration programmes for startups. He’s also the co-founder of Little Green Fund and one of the regions first cleantech specialized accelerator Beamline.

Holding a PhD degree and is researcher at Riga Technical University. In the last 5 years, Brigita has spent in the lab investigating the fungal potential for wastewater treatment from pharmaceutical substances. Currently, Brigita works in RTU Design Factory as a project manager in EIT RawMaterials RIS Baltic Hub and coordinates the Student Innovation Grant activity VIP. In these activities, Brigita is using her previous background and experience for developing new ideas for the academic field and industry. Brigita has a passion for beach tennis and she is a big fan of theatre, panda, and okapi.

Lukas Bartusevicius is a Business Development specialist at KTU Startup Space and he spends his time working directly with the teams. From formulating the initial business model through to hands-on fundraising, he can help you find your way forward. Lukas has 7+ years of experience in consulting, previously having worked as Business Developer at a financial investigations firm in London and later co-running his family business in Lithuania. Lukas also worked at a small product development company in London, where he gained a wealth of hands-on startup experience. Lukas has a BA (Honours) Law and International Studies from Coventry University and MSc International Real Estate from University College London.

Kaisa Hansen is the Head of TalTech Startup Centre which offers various development programs and support mechanisms to empower university startups and spin-offs; manages different national and international collaboration projects in the fields of entrepreneurship, open innovation, technology transfer, etc; organizes different ecosystem events, design sprints and hackathons (on the topics of smart city, sustainability, circular economy, etc). Kaisa has a background in economics and sustainable business from Estonian and German universities. She has been active in the startup field for 5 years having founded and led two greentech startups, passed over 10 development programs, incubators and accelerators and received international recognition. In addition, she has founded an NGO Circular Economy Estonia. Kaisa has strong leadership, mentoring, project, event & team management skills, communication, marketing, public speaking and strategic thinking skills. In total she has over 8 years of experience in sustainable business, innovation management, business model innovation and circular economy.

GreenEST Summit's legendary host (four years in a row), is the king of Estonian Comedy - Louis Zezeran! The Leader of Comedy Estonia has a background in Computer Science, which he combines with comedy experience to provide presentation coaching, helping companies refine their message and deliver a fantastic talk. He’s IT consultancy is centered around Enterprise Integration and the SoftwareAG webMethods software, for which Louis was a trainer for many years. Louis specialities include communication, team motivation, crossing cultural barriers and more.