As part of our series on women in cleantech innovation, the Grantham Institute’s Linsey Wynton meets Serena Oppenheim, co-founder of Fin-Erth.
Fin-Erth hosts invite-only in-person global events, connecting climate professionals in fields including finance, law, innovation, operations and policy to encourage collaboration. Their focus is ‘low-ego doer, not talkers’ and they avoid panels and keynote speakers in favour of just discussing solutions.
Serena began her career developing some of Scotland’s first windfarms. She founded her own company while battling two chronic health conditions, and now campaigns to ensure women in the climate space get the profile they deserve. For the past two years, Fin-Erth has hosted the Women in Climate Awards. Last year, 101 women were honoured – this year 101 more will be.
Find out more about her journey so far.
Would you describe yourself as an innovator?
An innovator can be an entrepreneur or someone working for a large organisation and trying to innovate from within – and this can be in any area, from accountancy to human resources. You see a problem and want to fix it.
When I left university almost 20 years ago, one of my first jobs was in developing wind farms in northwest Scotland. This energy infrastructure project may not sound like innovation, but it’s innovation to put a green energy resource in a place that doesn’t already have one.
I then went into healthcare, setting up a health and wellbeing platform called Good Zing. At the time, one in 20 Google searches was health related, yet most people were not necessarily aware that an article they read may be sponsored by a particular company. I’d been very ill from the age of 23 to 36 with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. I was looking for something to provide trusted information, rated and reviewed, all in one place – which is how Good Zing was born.
So yes – I am an innovator.
For women at an early stage of their career in innovation, what tips would you offer them?
Building trust with your fellow entrepreneurs who might be a step ahead on the journey is vital. The key is finding your communities. There’s an amazing community of founders, investors and leaders called Foundrs, and a community for tech founders called Ice Network, both of which I have found extremely helpful
Go out, meet people and find the right advocates. For example, I have seen fantastic lawyers who, when they’ve seen a term sheet, have said: ‘You’re being taken for a ride. So, push back on this and this.’ You must make sure you have that crack team around you.
What’s your advice to female founders seeking Venture Capital investment?
Again, it comes to trust. I’d advise entrepreneurs to take the time to get to know VCs and do your due diligence on them as much as they would do for you.
You need to find investors, Family Offices or individuals who really have your back and avoid those who are in it for the good times. A good VC can really help, and a bad VC can break you, even if your company is doing great.
“I wanted to put humanity back in the room and connect people so they could build trust, because when you are innovating as an entrepreneur, or trying to get more budget to innovate, it comes down to trust and communications.”
Tell me how you developed the concept for Fin-Erth?
I set up Fin-Erth by accident, from a need. I dread conferences – you look at the audience, and most people are on their phones or laptops and not engaged. They’re waiting for that network point. But when it comes, you stand awkwardly around a buffet table making small talk.
I wanted to put humanity back in the room and connect people so they could build trust, because when you are innovating as an entrepreneur, or trying to get more budget to innovate, it comes down to trust and communications, not standing by that buffet making awkward small talk and handing someone a business card. Trust takes time.
At the time I was working in Scotland trying to navigate a large natural capital project. No one could work out legally or financially how to structure it. There were not any insurance policies in place for this kind of project, which meant the capital expenditure was going to be higher and it would be hard to get finance.
I decided to host a dinner around my kitchen table with nine friends to see what ideas they had. They all happened to be women, and they all worked in climate at the intersection of business and finance including private equity, asset management, VC and high-scale conservation. We went round the table and, although no one knew much about natural capital, at the end two of the women asked when I was hosting the next dinner because they wanted to bring a colleague and a potential collaborator.
I decided I would do one more dinner. We moved to a bigger room that could fit 12 to 14 people. After that we had another dinner, and another! We never had speakers; we just went round the table. Putting people in a room who are from many different backgrounds in climate was a great way to exchange ideas, impart knowledge and pose potential solutions.
So how did these dinners trigger the setting up of Fin-Erth?
The dinners did not have a theme, with the goal to break down silos and create a bit of a ‘mess’, after being inspired by the book Messy by Tim Harford. The book is about how to be creative and resilient in a tidy-minded world. Patrick Keogh, one of my oldest friends who I went on to co-found Fin-Erth with, has a background in events, plastic innovation and the arts.
We’d both read this book and, when we did our first Fin-Erth Forum for 50 women at Jesus College, Cambridge, we gave everyone this book because the premise of it is that for true innovation or art or magic to happen, you need messiness. You can’t sit around the table with everyone with the same backgrounds and come up with innovative solutions.
Then some of the women who had been attending the dinners suggested I ran a scaled-up dinner at COP28. I went to New York Climate Week and talked this through with one of the women who came to an early dinner, Dr Vian Sharif, founder and President of NatureAlpha, who put me in touch with Naomi English at MSCI (formerly Morgan Stanley Capital International), and they loved the idea. We ended up partnering with them, hosting 150 women from 25 countries and receiving a phenomenal Net Promoter Score of 95.
We focused on people working professionally in this sphere: asset managers, VC private equity, bankers, lawyers, and government officials working at the intersection of unlocking capital for climate innovation. The energy in the room was extraordinary.
“We need a messy solution to a messy problem, which means we need different experience, thought processes and conditioning to solve these increasingly complex issues.”
Tell me how significant the Women in Climate Awards are?
At COP28 in the United Arab Emirates, with an estimated 100,000 attendees, it shouldn’t have been that hard to identify 150 women working at the intersection of business, finance and climate. But it was. We were advised to focus on Non-Governmental Organisations and activists, but that was not our target audience – and it was surprisingly hard to find it.
After COP28, we were invited to convene dinners in Singapore, Dubai and Chicago the following year, and it was a challenge to find the leading women in finance, business and climate in these different cities as well. A lot of the data showcased men in business and climate, and women as activists and in Non-Governmental Organisations.
One of the reasons we started the awards was to create better data that reflects the reality for women. And finally, it was quite simply to shine a spotlight on their solutions and work, showcasing the optimism that we can feel when focusing on solutions, and to offer them a community to move solutions forward, faster.
Why are women vital in climate innovation?
Everyone is important and plays a role in pushing forward innovation in this space. That means ensuring that women also receive funding to innovate. We need a messy solution to a messy problem, which means we need different experience, thought processes and conditioning to solve these increasingly complex issues. It’s not one or the other. We must find solutions and work collaboratively to move forward to a better planet.
Read more about women leading the field in cleantech innovation.
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