About the event
10 inventive women pitched their innovative tech solutions to a panel of mayors and city officials in an online Tech Challenge.
Selected at the Women4Climate Tech Challenge on 5 March 2020, the ten finalists presented their pitches on Wednesday, 23 September.
The Women4Climate Tech Challenge is an international contest open to women pioneering innovative tech solutions to the climate crisis in cities across the globe and is joint initiative VELUX Group and C40, alongside four C40 host cities. The Tech Challenge encourages and promotes women leading the world towards a sustainable and greener future and supports and promotes diversity and inclusion in technology, innovation and the built environment sectors.
The finalists were due to pitch their solutions live in Lisbon, Portugal during Entrepreneurship Week in May this year but unfortunately the COVID-19 pandemic meant this could not take place. The event is now taking place virtually, where up to 4 winners will be named, receiving financial and technical support to implement their projects.
The winning initiatives will see their ideas brought to life in one of the host cities; Lisbon, Los Angeles, Stockholm or Tel Aviv-Yafo. Alongside the mayor’s offices in these cities, city partners; City Zone in Tel Aviv-Yafo, Stockholm Business Region in Stockholm, LACI in Los Angeles and Lisboa e-Nova in Lisbon will support in the experimentation phase of these projects.
Who Pitched?
The finalists and their projects were:
- Johana Sanabria (Bogota, Colombia) – Agua Urbana
- Meiling Gao & Vivian Bi (California, USA) – Clarity
- Elizabeth Ledesma & Monica Pulido (Barcelona, Spain) – Ecolocal Market
- Cristina Mota Capitao & Rosário Sommer (Lisbon, Portugal) – Generosa
- Doris Sung & Karen Sabath (Los Angeles, USA) – InVert™ Self-Shading Windows
- Anai Green, (Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel) Lumiweave
- Lorena Gordillo Dagallier (Cambridge, UK) – Open-seneca
- Yael Arbel (Tel Aviv-Yafo) – ReTake
- Marquidia Pacheco (Mexico City, Mexico) – The Fourth State of Matter
- Natalia Mykhaylova (Toronto, Canada) – WeavAir
Women4Climate Tech Challenge 2020 Winners Announced
During the Live Pitch session three winners were announced and will pilot their climate solutions in four C40 cities. The winners are:
Lorena Gordillo Dagallier from Cambridge (UK) who successfully pitched her initiative “open-seneca”- a mobile air quality sensor network that will be installed throughout the city alongside educational workshops. “open-seneca” was chosen as the winning project by officials in both Stockholm and Lisbon. Therefore, “open-seneca” will be implemented in both of these cities.
Anai Green from Tel Aviv-Yafo who impressed the judging panel with her innovative fabric “Lumiweave” which offers a shade function at the same time as permitting light. Anai Green, will see her solution come to life in her home city.
Meiling Gao and Vivian Bi from California, who jointly won with their initiative “Clarity”, a smart, indoor-outdoor low cost air monitoring system that provides real-time air quality data. The winners will be able to witness their initiative “Clarity – Smarter Buildings for Healthier Communities” being implemented in Los Angeles.
If you missed the Live Pitch session, you can now watch the action-packed event on the C40 YouTube channel.
