Decoupling greenhouse gas emissions from economic growth is the greatest investing opportunity of our lifetimes. Exceptional teams applying emerging technologies to traditional industries are supporting a new type of green growth across sectors. This started with clean energy, and has expanded to include climate-tech across transportation, food & agriculture, manufacturing & industrials, retail, and much more to come.

When the internet was first invented, there was a small subset of internet companies and internet investors, separate from much of the rest of the economy. Today the internet permeates everything we do, and touches on every sector and almost every business. A similar transition is happening and will continue to happen with climate-tech, because everything we do impacts and is impacted by climate. In order to be successful in an enduring way, the future of climate-tech must involve both everything, and everyone. Valerie Shen is Partner and Chief Operating Officer at G2 Venture Partners. She oversees all operational aspects of the firm and fund including fundraising / LP relations, recruiting / HR, fund administration, impact reporting, legal, compliance, and marketing.

Prior to business school, Valerie was an analyst at Kleiner Perkins’ $1B Green Growth Fund, where she helped the team found G2. Before that Valerie was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, where she worked across four continents, primarily on energy projects. She has also held positions at the U.S. Senate, X (Google’s “moonshot factory”), Goldman Sachs, Jane Street Capital, and The Wilderness Society.

Valerie holds a B.A. degree summa cum laude in Environmental Science & Public Policy and Earth & Planetary Sciences from Harvard University. She holds an M.B.A. and M.S. in Environment and Resources from Stanford University, where she was a Siebel Scholar and an Arjay Miller Scholar. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx