Our Team
Dawn Lippert
CEO
“While technology has half the solution, the community brings the other half. If we invest with this knowledge, we will be able to decarbonize faster, center equitable solutions and be better investors.”
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Dawn Lippert is Founder and CEO of Elemental Excelerator, a global climate technology investor and nonprofit impact organization.
Under Dawn’s leadership, Elemental has invested in more than 150 startups in the energy, mobility, water, industry, nature-based solutions and agriculture sectors, and those companies have gone on to raise over $8 billion in follow-on funding. Elemental has pioneered a new model for equitable climate solutions that centers social equity in companies’ cultures, products and technology deployments. Over half of Elemental’s portfolio companies are serving customers in low- and moderate-income communities, and two thirds are working with community-based partners. Dawn has shared insight on climate investing and the energy transition in the Economist, Politico, Bloomberg TV, Axios Pro, TED, Yahoo! Finance Live, Canary Media and more.
In addition to leading Elemental Excelerator
Dawn serves as Founding Partner of Earthshot Ventures, a venture capital fund spun out of Elemental in 2021 and backed by Microsoft, John Doerr, Tom Steyer and others. Dawn is also Senior Climate Advisor at Emerson Collective, the investment and philanthropic platform led by Laurene Powell Jobs.
Dawn is passionate about scaling climate technology together with policy solutions, and currently serves on the board of Clean Energy 4 America and as a C3E Ambassador for the Department of Energy. On the investing side, Dawn is a member of PRIME Coalition’s Investment Advisory Committee. Dawn was a recipient of the 2020 UN Global Climate Action Award, was named a Grist 50 Fixer and served as an Omidyar Fellow. She is deeply committed to inclusion in technology, and in 2010 founded the nonprofit organization WiRE (Women in Renewable Energy).
Prior to Elemental Excelerator
Before starting Elemental, Dawn was a management consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton’s alternative energy practice in Washington DC. She also worked on energy and environmental projects in communities around the world, including Africa, India and Latin America. Dawn graduated from Yale University and the Yale School of the Environment.
Outside of the office
You can find her on the soccer field, enjoying the ocean and playing with her husband, daughter and son.
