Chicago Corporate & Climate Tech Startup Mixer
Chicago is home to many industries and corporations, proudly ranked as the most diversified economy of the largest 10 U.S. metros based on employment. The city is also home to a growing climate tech innovation ecosystem.
As part of Chicago Climate Tech Week, we invite corporate leaders to connect with climate tech founders developing technologies to achieve renewable energy and decarbonization goals. Join us to network and hear from sustainability leaders in Chicago!
Guest speakers include:
Sunny Elebua, Chief Sustainability Officer at Exelon
Alaina Harkness, CEO of Current
Toya Garcia-Bradow, Senior ESG Associate William Blair
Batchimeg Ganbaatar, Managing Partner at Nomadic Venture Partners
Dr. Garry Cooper, Co-founder and CEO of Rheaply
Host: Nomadic Venture Partners is a Chicago and Denver-based climate tech venture capital firm investing in early-stage startups decarbonizing mining, manufacturing, and heavy-duty transportation sectors.
Sponsors: Thank you to our sponsors Current, William Blair, and Cooley for making this event possible.
Guest Speakers:
Sunny Elebua is the Senior Vice President, Chief Strategy & Sustainability Officer at Exelon and leads the Strategy and Sustainability organization for the company. He has been with Exelon since 2008 and currently overseeing a wide range of sustainability, strategic and technology-driven responsibilities. Prior to this role, he worked on Exelon’s Corporate Development team for several years, managing the evaluation and due diligence of a number of M&A transactions. Before joining Exelon in October 2008, Sunny worked as an Associate in Wachovia Securities (Investment Banking) in the Energy & Power Group from 2006 where he covered primarily the energy and power sector. He received his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 2006.
Batchimeg Ganbaatar is the Co-founder and Managing Partner of Nomadic Venture Partners, a climate tech venture capital firm investing in early-stage companies decarbonizing mining, manufacturing, and heavy transportation. She previously built brands and launched products for companies like Airbnb, Allstate, Boeing, KraftHeinz, and Twitter. Batchimeg has also been a co-founder of fintech and energy efficiency startups, and supported portfolio companies at Lofty Ventures and Gen 1 Capital. She received her MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Bachelor's degree in Marketing at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Alaina leads Current, the Chicago-based water innovation hub, and Great Lakes ReNEW, the National Science Foundation-supported Great Lakes Water Innovation Engine. Prior, she held impactful roles at the John D. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation, the Brookings Institution, RW Ventures, and the Chicago Community Trust. She has published commentary for the Brookings Institution, Chicago Tribune, CityLab, Crain’s, and the San Francisco Federal Reserve. Alaina holds appointments to the Illinois Workforce Investment Board and the Illinois Energy Workforce Advisory Council, and serves as a board member of the Prairie Research Institute. She is a member of the Economic Club of Chicago, a Crain’s Notable Leader in Sustainability (2024), and a 2014 fellow of Leadership Greater Chicago.
Toya is the senior ESG associate at William Blair. She is a member of the team responsible for firmwide strategy around the firm’s business-driven environmental, social, and governance initiatives and commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion through its external engagements and partnerships. Toya is the firm’s Pride Alliance Business Resource Group co-chair. In that capacity, she also serves on the firm’s Alliance Board. Before joining William Blair, she worked for the executive team at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. In that role, she helped coordinate strategy efforts among the Policy, Communications, Ethics, and Prosecutorial teams. She is a current member of the Associated Colleges of Illinois’s (ACI) Corporate Trustee Board and serves as the vice-chair of ACI’s Communications Committee.
Dr. Garry Cooper is the Co-founder and CEO of Rheaply, a Chicago-based climate tech, which scales reuse programs for large organizations, by helping them better utilize physical resources. He also serves as vice chair on P33 Chicago’s board as well as a board member of 1871 and Northwestern's Master of Product Design and Management program. He is a founding partner at LongJump Ventures. Previously, Dr. Cooper served on the faculty of Northwestern University and facilitated supply chain improvements for enterprise businesses at Ernst & Young. He holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Northwestern University, a certificate in management from the Kellogg School of Management, and a BS & BA in mathematics and chemistry from Indiana University. He also has a 7 year old rescue dog named Sasha that takes up most of his free time, in the best way possible.