Lina Rhmari Tlemcani and Naman Sharma, current undergraduate students at Imperial’s Departments of Bioengineering and Computing, are this year’s Co-Chairs of the Climate Entrepreneurs Club (CEC). Founded and led by students, the CEC work to unite and inspire fellow students across Imperial and beyond who are motivated to take their studies, skills and ideas into the world of entrepreneurship and cleantech. Protecting the planet, tackling climate change and positively impacting global society is at the core of their ethos. In this blog Lina tells us more about the team’s work, and highlights a great way to get involved with this year’s programme if you’re a student with a cleantech or climate-conscious business idea!
The Climate Entrepreneurs Club (CEC) is a student-led society originating at Imperial College London. Our mission is to inspire, empower and enable entrepreneurial students to apply their skills by building innovative start-ups that address the climate crisis. The CEC community now extends to over 300 students and 500 weekly newsletter readers including industry experts, professors and startup founders. The team is supported by Undaunted, the Imperial Enterprise Lab, and the Grantham Institute.
The CEC’s Climate Pre-Accelerator Programme – and its flagship ‘Pitch Day‘ event – gathers the most passionate and hardworking students from over ten unique universities (RCA, UCL, King’s College London, UAL, Cambridge, Oxford, Roehampton, Royal Holloway, City, and more). Together, they form diverse teams and create their own climate tech startups from scratch. Teams are supported by workshops led by professionals in the climate tech space across various industries, as well as each being paired with a personal mentor to guide them with one-to-one feedback and advice.
Images in slideshow show teams and winners from Pitch Day for the CEC Pre-Accelerator’s 2023 cohort.
CEC’s first Pre-Accelerator cohort (2023) empowered 102 students – most strangers to each other and with approximately a 1:1 undergrad to postgrad ratio – to find their co-founders and build a pitch-ready startup by the end of the programme. This achievement gave the Climate Pre-Accelerator a lot of traction, leading to a feature on Forbes, and UNICEF’s Innovation30 – “Young Climate Innovators Shaping the Future”. The winning team at CEC’s Pitch Day – Cyanoskin – has also now progressed onto Undaunted’s accelerator programme, The Greenhouse, for the next stage of their startup journey!
Looking forward
Looking forward to next year, the team have been refining the programme to best adapt to the cohort’s needs. One of the main goals is to expand the community by organising events with new student societies in London and across the UK, while always keeping their motto: “Inspire, Empower, Enable”!
The plan for cohort #2 is to make the Pre-Accelerator even more inclusive by introducing two streams: the first is ideators (no need for a team or idea!) and the second, builders (slightly more advanced). The support community has grown tremendously, and the workshops will be more tailored to the teams’ experience level to help prepare them more for the final Pitch Day. The team is also aiming higher and dreaming bigger, with the goal of becoming the UK’s number one platform for all students who want to use their hard skills to fight the climate crisis!
Images in slideshow show various CEC events that took place last year.
Get involved – meet the team in person on 25 October 2023!
If you are searching for ways to get involved and want to meet inspiring like-minded individuals, or are looking for support to bring your ideas to life, join the society and subscribe to our CEC mailing list (our weekly newsletters contain concise articles about climate tech news and insights).
Plus – get your ticket to our first event of this academic year, the ImpactTech Kickoff on 25 October at the Royal Institution! This event is an opportunity to meet our lovely team and also hear from exceptional founders who have made progress on their journeys to build high-impact startups that tackle big, unprecedented issues faced by humanity.
The CEC team is always eager to connect with more like-minded people as we go on this journey. For those who want to join our community or support us, feel free to reach out by email (climate2@ic.ac.uk), follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram @ClimateEntrepreneurs. Find out more on our Climate Entrepreneurs website. We look forward to hearing from you!
Thanks to our funders and supporters
The CEC team is supported by Undaunted, the Imperial Enterprise Lab, and the Grantham Institute.
