Fellows mentioned in this story:
Dawn Lippert
Yunji de Nies

From Hawai‘i News Now:

Dawn Lippert has spent her life turning ideas into action for the planet. As CEO of Elemental Impact and Earthshot Ventures, she raises and invests millions of dollars in entrepreneurs building a cleaner, more sustainable future. That passion for the environment started early.

“When I about six, I used to charge my family a quarter when they left the light on and they left a room,” she laughs. “And no one else in my family was particularly interested in the environment and waste like this. But I had this sort of sense of efficiency from early on that kind of channeled that way.”

She grew up in rural Washington State — exploring the outdoors and launching her own small ventures. “I always had a business going or a project going and making money, selling things, starting different companies when I was little,” she recalls. “In some ways, Elemental is this sort of marriage of working on environment, working on companies with impact, and backing entrepreneurs… building the next generation of infrastructure.”

That curiosity and drive carried her from conservation work to clean energy — and eventually to Hawai‘i. “One of the projects I was first staffed on was the Hawai‘i Clean Energy Initiative,” she says. “It was unprecedented in terms of the federal-state partnership to completely transition a place from fossil fuels to clean energy.”

Watch at hawaiinewsnow.com.