> Arian Nooren
> Armin Mayer
> Daniel Mittler
> Dinko Draganov
> Dries Acke
> Francesca Scassellati-Sforzolini
> Francisco Zuloaga
> Gabriela Teran
> Jaap Strengers
> Jörg Haas
> Jules Kortenhorst
> Laurentien van Oranje-Nassau
> Martin Rocholl
> Matt Phillips
> Michael Hogan
> Nicole Smit
> Patty Fong
> Ramzi Elias
> Rebecca Collyer
> Rebecca Ehn
> Robin Millington
> Stephen Boucher
> Tim Nuthall
> Tom Brookes
> Tomasz Terlecki
> William Carlson

Arian Nooren, Executive Assistant

Arian Nooren is Executive Assistant to Jules Kortenhorst. Arian has spent many years as an executive secretary and management assistant in multinationals such as Panta, Texaco (U.S. headquarters), Nedlloyd and Experian. She is excited about helping to establish the European Climate Foundation and the opportunity to make a contribution to creating a sustainable earth.

Armin Mayer, Associate for EU Climate Policies

Armin Mayer brings 5 years of experience in EU affairs and an extensive Brussels network to the foundation. As EurActiv's former energy and climate change journalist, Armin followed closely the negotiations on the EU's climate and energy package from the setting of the 20-20-20 targets in March 2007 to the conclusion of talks in December 2008. Previously, Armin worked as a consultant in European public affairs and as an independent entrepreneur in support of the green building sector. A graduate of the College of Europe in Bruges, he has completed internships in the European Commission and in the United States Congress. Armin was raised and educated on both sides of the Atlantic and speaks French, English and German.

Daniel Mittler, Senior Associate and Head of the Germany Program

Daniel Mittler manages the ECF program in Germany and lives in Berlin. Prior to joining ECF, he led the work of Greenpeace International on trade, the G8 and international financial institutions as well as being an advocate at the international climate negotiations.

From 2000 to 2004, Daniel was Head of International Campaigns at BUND – Friends of the Earth Germany – and between 2000 and 2002 was also the Johannesburg Earth Summit coordinator for Friends of the Earth International. Daniel Mittler has initiated many collective efforts and coalitions of NGOs. For example, he is one of the founders of the McPlanet.com conferences, the biggest event in Germany dealing with globalization and environment issues. Daniel is a member of the Sustainable Europe Research Institute and has published widely. He studied politics, African studies and urban planning in Edinburgh, Kingston, Ontario and London.

Dinko Draganov, Grants Manager

Dinko Draganov worked with UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) for several years before joining ECF, dealing primarily with budgets, finances and operational issues. He also engaged with programme management and fundraising. Prior to his work with UNICEF, DInko worked for various international organisations, such as the American University in Bulgaria and a Canadian industrial production company.

Dinko holds a Masters in Economics and is currently completing his post-graduate study in Financial management with ACCA. He is married with two children. Apart from his work he likes learning new languages and sees learning Dutch as a personal challenge.

Dries Acke, Public Affairs Associate

Dries works with the ESC team and focuses on the Public Affairs outreach. Previously, Dries worked at Apple, Inc. where for five years he took care of the Public Affairs department for EMEA, both at the Brussels level as well as in the EU member states. He has a Master's degree (M.A.) in Contemporary History from the Catholic University of Brussels and Leuven, and achieved a post-graduate in International Relations at the Karl-Rueprecht University in Heidelberg, Germany. A native Dutch speaker, Dries also masters English and French and has a good level in German and Italian. Dries is thrilled to have joined the European Climate Foundation and to take part in what is the biggest challenge of the 21st century.

Francesca Scassellati-Sforzolini, Operations Director ESC

Francesca is Operations Director at the ECF's Energy Strategy Center (ESC). Francesca joined from Mars, Inc., where during two years she was head of Corporate Communications for one of its business units, Mars Nutrition Health and Wellbeing. Prior to that she served for seven years as Director of the Healthcare Team at Burson-Marsteller (B-M). Before joining B-M, Francesca was a practitioner of European law with the Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer law firm in Brussels. Past experiences also include working for the International Foundation for Election Systems in Washington, D.C., the European Commission’s Humanitarian Office and the European Parliament, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the French Chamber of Commerce in the Maldive Islands and Sri-Lanka.

Francesca has a Master's degree (M.A.) in International Relations and Economics from the Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C., and a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and European Law from the University of Bologna (Italy) and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Strasbourg. In addition to her Italian mother tongue, Francesca is fluent in English and French, has a good knowledge of Spanish, and speaks some Norwegian.

Francisco Zuloaga, Associate, Energy Efficiency

Francisco grew up in Spain and in 2005 graduated with honours from the University of Madrid (UPM). He undertook part of his studies at Imperial College London, where his interest in environmental topics grew. Francisco then obtained a grant to undertake graduate studies at University of Toronto (Canada), where he completed a Masters in Environmental Engineering. This enabled him to gain a position working in Brussels for the Union of the European Electricity Industry - EURELECTRIC, in the Environment and Sustainable Development Unit. Francisco is passionate about environmental protection, having volunteered as environment manager for several small co-operatives and NGOs. He speaks Spanish, English and French and is now excited about making a positive impact on the environment through his work at the European Climate Foundation.

Gabriela Teran, Administrative Assistant

Gabriela was born and raised in Mexico City. After finishing her degree in Industrial Design, she moved to Vienna where she studied German and arts. Today, nine years later, she lives in The Hague with her Scottish partner, his Dutch daughter and their two cats.

Gabriela has worked as administrative assistant since 2003 for various institutions: governments, private companies and international organizations. This is her first assignment at an NGO. Gabriela is aware of the challenges we face to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save the planet, and is very excited to be a part of this quest.

Jaap Strengers, Programme Associate

Jaap Strengers spent two and a half years as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company. During this time, he worked in various industries including petroleum, insurance, finance and transportation, and was mainly located in Amsterdam, London and Johannesburg focussing on strategic and operational improvements. After this, Jaap studied for an MBA at INSEAD in both France and Singapore, from which he graduated just before joining ECF as a Programme Associate.

Jaap holds a Masters degree in Physics from Utrecht University (2005) and a Masters degree in Econometrics from the University of Amsterdam (2006). During these studies he became interested in climate change and more specifically renewable energy through his graduate research: on solar cell physics at the Debye Institute and on energy storage in hydrogen during an internship at Royal Dutch Shell.

Jörg Haas, Programme Director for EU Climate Diplomacy

Jörg Haas is Program Director for Climate Diplomacy at the European Climate Foundation. Until joining ECF, Jörg headed the Department of Ecology and Sustainable Development at the Heinrich Böll Foundation, a political foundation with offices in 26 countries. As head of the Heinrich Böll Foundations' Latin America Department until 1997, Jörg coordinated its measures on environment and sustainable development for 10 years. He was in charge of the Foundations' activities prior to and at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development as well as at numerous other climate and WTO conferences.

Jörg is a widely respected analyst of international climate and energy issues and has been attending climate negotiations since 1999. He studied Geography at the University of Trier and Rural Development at the Centre for Advanced Training in Rural Development, Berlin. He started his career in Ecuador, working for German Development Cooperation in rainforest conservation. Jörg is a co-founder the NGO-network on renewable energies CURES.

Jules Kortenhorst, Chief Executive Officer

Jules Kortenhorst is the Chief Executive Officer of the European Climate Foundation. Before joining the ECF, he served as a member of the Dutch parliament for the Christian Democratic Party, CDA. In parliament, he was his party’s spokesman on matters relating to taxation and innovation. He also served on parliament’s Foreign Affairs and European Affairs committees.

Earlier, Kortenhorst was the CEO for International Operations of ClientLogic Corporation, a global leader in outsourced Customer Relationship Management solutions. He assumed this role following the consolidation of ClientLogic and CORDENA Call Management. He previously served as President and Chief Executive Officer at CORDENA, a European-wide organization offering integrated customer-contact services. Earlier in his career, Kortenhorst worked for eight years at Royal Dutch/Shell in several roles and countries, and in his last position was the Managing Director of Shell Bulgaria. Graduating a Baker Scholar from Harvard Business School and holding a master's degree in economics from Erasmus University in The Netherlands, Kortenhorst began his career as an analyst at McKinsey & Co. in Amsterdam.  He is married and has four children.

Laurentien van Oranje-Nassau, Fellow

Laurentien is a Fellow at the ECF, focusing in particular on communications and strategy. She works both within the European Climate Foundation as well as the Energy Strategy Center. She has extensive expertise in communications, combining experience in the media, public affairs and strategic communications. She has worked within the private sector as well as NGOs and has worked on sustainability and environmental issues for several years (e.g., Senior Advisor with WWF, Vice President of Fauna & Flora International, former Strategy Director Europe for African Parks, a private sector initiative for conservation management in Africa).

Laurentien holds a Bachelor’s degree in Politics from the University of London (Queen Mary College) a Master’s Degree in Journalism from the University of California at Berkeley, USA and a ‘Propaedeuse’ History from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. She is of Dutch nationality and is fluent in English, Dutch and French; has an advanced knowledge of German and some knowledge of Spanish.

Martin Rocholl, Policy Director & Programme Director for Transport

Martin Rocholl has over 30 years experience as a volunteer and professional in environmental NGOs, working on a broad spectrum of issues, such as sustainable city planning, EU structural and agricultural policies, transport and climate change. He previously worked as a consultant on environmental and European policies and campaign strategies in Berlin, with a specialisation in energy efficiency legislation in the EU. Rocholl has founded and served on the board of several local, national and international NGOs.

From 1998 to 2005 Rocholl worked in Brussels as the director of Friends of the Earth Europe, a network of environmental organisations in 30 European countries with more than 2000 local groups. He was the coordinator of the successful Ecological Tax Reform Campaign in Germany in 1996-1997 (with 'Deutscher Naturschutzring'). Rocholl has also worked as a journalist and scientist and holds a PhD in Biology.

Matt Phillips, Senior Associate

Matt Phillips has held senior positions in environmental and international development and children's rights organizations for over a decade. Following a short career as an award-winning journalist he secured an MSc in Ecology and Conservation at University College London before working for the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature in Jordan. Later at Friends of the Earth he led the biodiversity and economic globalization programmes involving work that transformed UK biodiversity legislation, reduced the UK's impact on tropical forests and coordinated Friends of the Earth International work on globalization towards the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

Subsequently, Matt oversaw all the campaigning and advocacy for Save the Children, and was one of the founders and coordinators of the Make Poverty History campaign that pressed rich countries to deliver on aid, trade justice and debt cancellation in 2005. Matt then oversaw the development of a strong advocacy and campaigning brief for the organization covering UK child poverty as well as successful campaigning for free basic healthcare for the world's poorest children. He now wants to tackle climate change in order to ensure children and biodiversity have a future.

Michael Hogan, Programme Director for Power

Michael Hogan is a long-time energy industry professional. He started his career in 1980 with General Electric in the marketing of large power systems.  After graduating from Harvard Business School’s MBA program in 1988, he embarked on a career in the development and operation of large private sector power and gas businesses.  Michael helped to build the J. Makowski Company in Boston into a leading U.S. private power and natural gas company, and helped lead the sale of the company in 1994. He and other Makowski executives were then backed by Bechtel and, eventually, Royal Dutch/Shell in the start-up of InterGen, and he spent the next seven years in London leading the growth of InterGen’s Europe/Africa/Middle East/South Asia business unit, a business that in that time grew to eight greenfield power plants across the U.K., the Netherlands, Egypt and Turkey with a capacity of 7,890 megawatts and an asset value of five billion dollars.

After overseeing the restructuring of InterGen’s North American business unit in 2001 and 2002, Michael joined Centrica’s North American subsidiary in charge of its upstream gas and power businesses.  He left Centrica/Direct Energy in 2006 with the intention of playing a much different role in energy, and after earning a Master of Science degree in September 2008 in Urban Studies & Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a concentration in sustainable energy policy, he joined ECF in his current role. In addition to his masters’ degrees from Harvard and MIT, Michael holds a B.A. in Philosophy and a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Notre Dame.


Nicole Smit, Brussels Office Manager & Human Resources Manager

Nicole is based in the Brussels office. She was born in The Netherlands where she started her working career in the pharmaceutical industry and publishing sector in media marketing. Since 1992 she has been living in the Brussels area where she worked more than 16 years in the HR department of a global clinical research office. Nicole joined the ECF team in May 2009 when the ECF Brussels office was setup. The organization of the office was a big challenge for her. Since September 2009 she has also covered all HR tasks for ECF's network of offices. Nicole speaks fluent Dutch, English, French and German, and has also a basic knowledge of Greek, the third language spoken at home with her husband and two kids.


Patty Fong, Chief Operating Officer & Programme Director for Energy Efficiency

Patty Fong is Chief Operating Officer of the European Climate Foundation. She was first recruited in 2007 to help manage the foundation’s establishment, including the organizational structure and early program strategies, and has been active in developing the initial portfolio on energy efficiency. From 1998 to 2005, Patty helped launch and manage the Energy Foundation’s China Sustainable Energy Program and the Beijing office. She has also worked for the World Bank in Buenos Aires on the Argentina Energy Efficiency Project and the rural electrification program. Early on in her career, Patty spent two years in China as an English teacher and volunteered for several environmental NGOs including Redefining Progress, the Center for Marine Conservation and the California Public Interest Group. Patty holds a Master in Public Affairs with a specialisation in energy and climate policy from the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and Bachelor degrees in both Environmental Studies and Economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz. She speaks English, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.


Ramzi Elias, Associate ESC

Ramzi works at the Energy Strategy Center (ESC) of ECF, based in Brussels. He focuses primarily on public affairs and business outreach specifically around the international climate change negotiations and the Project Catalyst initiative. Ramzi previously worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company in London where he worked for clients in many industries including the banking, climate change and mining sectors. Ramzi holds a BSc in Economics from the University of Bristol in the UK.


Rebecca Collyer, Senior Associate for Power

Rebecca Collyer joins ECF from the British Government where she worked in Energy Group, in the Department for Business (BERR).  She has over two years of direct policy experience working with the energy sector on Climate Change issues and is also an experienced EU policy maker having worked in the European Commission in Peter Mandelson’s Cabinet. From 2002 until 2005 Rebecca worked on a variety of economic portfolios within the British Government, including a period in the Cabinet Office, Economic and Domestic Affairs Secretariat where she led on Cabinet coordination of business, trade and energy issues.  Rebecca has lived and worked in both the US and China and studied Human Sciences at the University of Oxford.


Rebecca Ehn, Office Manager

Rebecca was born in Sweden and after spending years abroad (Quito, Toronto, Mexico City and Paris) finally settled in The Hague where she now is immensely proud to be part of the ECF team.  She studied Linguistics (French, Spanish and Russian) at Uppsala University followed by international advertising & media studies in Stockholm and New York City. Rebecca’s previous work experience includes advertising, public relations and customer services for various organizations such as ICA Handlarnas, O.M.A., NEC Computers and Bentley Systems. She speaks Swedish, Dutch, English, French and Spanish.


Robin Millington, Director for External Relations

Robin Millington has held senior management roles in both the private sector and in non-profit organizations across the globe. Just prior to joining ECF, Robin was Director of Development for INSEAD. Earlier she served as the first International Director for Wetlands International, a global organization dedicated to sustaining and restoring wetlands. She was responsible for shaping a global organization from three regional groups. She has also served as Managing Director of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels and was a consultant to a number of organizations (including the American Embassy in the Netherlands, and board-level corporate clients) on diversity issues. After receiving her MBA from INSEAD, Robin continued her career in the IT sector, including as Global Business Development Manager for ICL and as lead negotiator on the largest computer technology transfer into the former-Soviet Union during perestroika.

Robin obtained her Bachelor’s degree from Stanford University in International Relations and is a dual national (American/Dutch). She is deeply committed to making a difference to her daughter’s generation and its climate future.


Stephen Boucher, Programme Director for EU Climate Policies

Stephen is ECF program director for EU climate policies, in Brussels. Before joining the foundation, Stephen spent four years as co-manager of Notre Europe, a Paris-based think tank dedicated to European unity, which was founded by former European Commission president Jacques Delors. His focus there was on energy policy, deliberative democracy, and think tanks. He has published several books and studies on these issues and organised the first-ever pan-European deliberative poll.

Stephen was previously a consultant in the energy policy field, and in lobbying and EU affairs in Brussels and London. He was adviser on European and international affairs for the Belgian Deputy-Prime Minister and Minister for Transport for three years. He has taught lobbying in Europe as Adjunct Professor at Sciences Po in Paris. French and American, and a father of two, Stephen holds a mid-career Master in Public Administration from Harvard University and a post-graduate degree in comparative politics from Sciences Po.


Tim Nuthall, Media Manager ESC

Tim is Media Manager at the ECF's Energy Strategy Center (ESC). He is responsible for devising and executing the ECF’s press strategy as well as running press campaigns day to day. Tim joined from Fleishman-Hillard in Brussels where he had worked for the previous year and a half as an Account Director. In this role he worked across all sectors offering strategic media advice to a range of clients across sectors including Aviva, Symantec, AT&T, InBev, Standard and Poors and various European Trade Associations. Prior to moving to Brussels, Tim spent seven years working for the British Labour Party in London where he end his run as Director of the press office prior to his departure in 2008. Tim studied at the Universities of Edinburgh and Vienna and has a Masters Degree in Politics and German.


Tom Brookes, Head of the ESC

Tom is the Head of Energy Strategy Center (ESC), the communications unit of the European Climate Foundation. He has held senior corporate and consultancy posts in government relations and communications.


Tomasz Terlecki, Senior Associate for Central and Eastern Europe

Tomasz Terlecki is founder and former Executive Director of the CEE Bankwatch Network, one of the largest advocacy NGOs from the new EU member states and a member of the Green 10. Over two decades of work for environmental NGOs, Tomasz has been with a number of groups - from local think tanks through to international networks. This includes organizations such as the Global Greengrants Fund, the Institute for Environmental Economics, the Polish Ecological Club, the Environment Liaison Centre, and the Foundation for the Support of Ecological Initiatives.

Tomasz is a multilingual professional with over a decade of senior level management experience in fundraising, financial management, capacity building and organizational development. He has extensive first hand experience in international advocacy activities promoting sustainable development and social justice, and holds a degree in Physics at the Pedagogical University in Kraków.