Our Story | Arctic Basecamp Arctic Experts and Scientists (2025)

Vanessa Grant practises business law in Toronto. Her practice focuses on mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance and corporate governance for public and private corporations, including private equity and venture capital. She also provides ongoing general corporate and commercial legal advice to a number of clients.She has worked with several national and international clients in various industries, with a particular focus on technology companies, life sciences companies, and REITs.

Mrs Stephanie de Heer is Vice President (VP) and a member of the Senior Management Team (SMT) at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).Together with her team, Stephanie shapes WBCSD’s brand positioning whilst increasing and strengthening engagement and relevance with members, the broader business community and WBCSD’s diverse stakeholder audience.

Bianca Nijhof is Global Lead for Nature Growth at Anthesis, a pure play sustainability consultancy.She is educated as a landscape ecologist and has extensive experience working on nature, biodiversity, water, natural capital, climate adaptation, nature-based solutions, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and awareness raising and education. She worked across a variety of sectors and excels in integrated approaches working towards systems change, contributing to high value outcomes across sustainability, business transformation, capacity building, program management and stakeholder engagement..

Professor Gail Whiteman is an expert on global risk arising from the systemic changes occurring in the natural environment, the founder of Arctic Basecamp and Professor of Sustainability at the University of Exeter’s Business School (UK).Since 2012, she is the Professor-in-Residence at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.She is a past member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Frontier Risk and was a scientific keynote speaker at WEF’s 2020 session at Davos “What’s at Stake: The Arctic” alongside panellists including Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin and Former US Vice President, Al Gore. In 2023 she was also a panellist and speaker at the 2023 WEF session in Davos –Unpacking the Polar Crisis.Professor Whiteman is an experienced moderator at events including Reuters Impact in 2022 and the World Economic Forum in Davos.She is actively involved in building science-based targets collective business action,including those for a future low-carbon economy. Her research utilises organisationtheory on information flows to analyse how a range of actors (companies, civil society,and local communities) make sense of ecological risk, and how these actors transformand build resilience across scales given environmental pressures and social inequities.She has over 60 peer-reviewed scientific papers, including in prestigious journals Nature, Nature Communication, and the Academy of Management Journal. Her PhD is from Queen’s University and her field work was conducted in the subarctic region of Canada. She is regularly interviewed by the press and in 2023 launched a new Reuters series – Arctic Warning alongside Reuters Editor-at-Large, Axel Threlfall. You can follow her@GenerationCO2

Julienne C. Stroeve received a PhD in geography from the University of Colorado Boulder, in 1996, for her work in understanding Greenland climate variability.Afterwards she became a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) within the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at CU-Boulder. More recently she was a Professor at University College London and recently was awarded a Canada 150 Excellence Research Chair at the University of Manitoba.Her Arctic research interests are wide-ranging, and include sea ice forecasting at seasonal, decadal and longer term time-scales, climate change and impacts on native communities. She has participated in several field campaigns in Greenland and the Arctic Ocean, including the year-long German-led Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) expedition from 2019/2010.Efforts over the past decade have increasingly focused on trying to make sense of the rapid environmental changes being observed in the Arctic and what these changes will mean for the rest of the planet. She is part of Arctic Basecamp, an annual event during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Dr. Stroeve’s work has been featured in numerous magazines and news reports, radio talk shows, and TV documentaries. She has given keynote addresses around the world on Arctic climate issues and briefed former Vice President Al Gore and Congressional Staff. Dr. Stroeve has published more than 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals and contributed to several national and international reports on climate change. Stroeve has been named by Clarivate Analytics as one of the most highly cited researchers several years in a row.

Dr. Lovro Valcic is a builder of Polar bear toys as the founder and former CEO of Bruncin Ltd, an agile and dynamic team of outstanding R&D experts, working closely with scientists from across the world to develop custom solutions, systems, and sensors to facilitate fieldwork and research in the Polar regions.Lovro currently serves as the Director of Operations and heads the Data & Development Team at Arctic Basecamp Foundation. His work is mostly focused on the sustainable scale-up of the foundation and on the development of impactful digital tools in the global climate risks space, aiming to inspire and accelerate global climate action.

Helen has wide-ranging experience in non-profit and public services sectors including health, arts, culture, and climate change communications.As well as attending the World Economic Forum at Davos three times with Arctic Basecamp a career highlight was shipping a Greenlandic iceberg to the heart of COP 26 in Glasgow.

Dr. Jennifer Francis is a Senior Scientist atWoodwell Climate Research Center. She has studied the Arctic climate system and how rapid Arctic change is affecting areas beyond the Arctic, particularly extreme weather in the northern hemisphere. She is regularly interviewed for radio and TV news programs, and is often quoted in major media outlets.

Alun is a glaciologist/climate scientist who’s passionate about icy environments. Over 30 years, he’s worked across the planet – Antarctica to Greenland, often off his sailboat – to understand how the cryosphere is melting, flowing and shrinking faster, thereby raising global sea levels. He has also popularised science in BBC’s “Frozen Planet“, Netflix’s “Our Planet“, “Chasing Ice” and other gong-winning documentaries on TV, internet and radio.

Dr. Mark Parrington is a senior scientist in the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) Development Section at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). He specialises in the application of Earth observation data, in situ measurements with numerical modelling to monitor global atmospheric composition and air quality. In recent years he has closely been monitoring, and working on science communication for, wildfires in the Arctic region and the impacts of smoke and other atmospheric pollution on the Arctic atmosphere.

Prof. Mariana Rufino is a professor of Livestock Systems at Technical University of Munich. She has technical expertise in modelling farming systems, impacts of climate change, mitigation and adaptation, food security and land use change. Currently, she is conducting research on reducing GHG emissions from the livestock sector by modifying grazing, adopting alternative feeds and harnessing the power of biodiversity.Her ultimate goal is to offer science-based solutions to the challenges countries face to plan for territorial development and sustainable management of natural resources.

Emerita Professor Lora E Flemingis a physician and epidemiologist with expertise in the environment and human health; she is based at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health (University of Exeter Medical School). Professor Fleming is involved in research, training and policy activities in the new transdisciplinary area within Planetary Health ofOcean and Human Health. She has received the Ocean and Human Awards from the Edouard Delcroix Foundation (2014) andtheIOC Bruun Award (2015). She is currently collaborating to establish Healthcare Ocean.

Prof. Karyn Morrissey is a Professor in Applied Economics within the Sustainability Division at the Technical University of Denmark. She adopts an interdisciplinary approach and is a method-driven scientist focusing on human health and the environment. Notably, prof. Morrissey is a co-author for Working Group 2 on adaptation, planning, and resilience for health in the Lancet Commission’s ‘The Lancet Countdown: tracking progress on health and climate change,’ where she developed the cities indicator. Her impressive career includes becoming a fellow of the prestigious Turing Institute and contributing to 90+ publications in renowned journals, attracting over £20 million in external funding.

Dr. Simon Driscoll is a climate modeller currently working in the Schmidt Futures funded Scale-Aware Sea Ice Project, where he uses machine learning to learn and emulate physical processes related to sea ice thermodynamics.He has extensive experience in researching volcanic eruptions and their effect on climate, both their observed impacts on the climate and in the ability of many of the world’s climate models to reproduce these observed responses (such as a strengthening of the Arctic polar vortex). Formerly part of the UK’s SPICE project, his research has helped question the accuracy of geoengineering modeling studies.

For the past 37 years, David’s research interests have focused on the ecology and ecosystem dynamics of Arctic, mountain and arid environments; impacts of climate variability and change on biodiversity and Earth system processes; determinants of social-ecological resilience; and the interface between science and policy. He is currently conducting research in northern Canada and Iceland.

Johan Rockström is Director ofPotsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. He is an internationally recognised scientist for his work on global sustainability issues. He helped lead the internationally renowned team of scientists that presented the planetary boundaries frameworkas fundamental in maintaining a “safe operating space for humanity.”

Dr. Eddy Carmack, O.C. is an Emeritus Senior Scientist, Fisheries and Oceans Canada. He has conducted pioneering science around icebreakers and led on international oceanographic work.

Professor Bruce Forbes is based at theArctic Centre| Arktinen keskus, University of Lapland, and has conducted fieldwork in the Arctic for 33 years. His research is interdisciplinary and his participatory approach aims for co-production of knowledge with regional stakeholders.

Dr Jennifer Watts is an Assistant Scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center.Her experience is in using satellite remote sensing to inform climate and land use impacts on terrestrial vegetation, carbon cycling, and hydrology. She is especially interested in global wetlands and high latitude ecosystems.

Dr. Jan-Gunnar Winther, is Director of the Centre for the Ocean and the Arctic,Nofima, and Specialist Director,Norwegian Polar Institute. He is an experienced polar researcher and expedition leader, and serves on a large number of national and international committees.

Professor Craig Lee is a physical oceanographer atUniversity of Washington.He specialises in observations for ocean research. Part of this work involves identifying advances that could be achieved through novel measurements and developing instruments to meet these needs.

Professor Konrad Steffen was Director of theSwiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research. He researched processes related to climate, cryospheric interaction, and sea level rise in Polar Regions based on in-situ and satellite observations. Konrad passed away in August 2020 whilst conducting fieldwork in Greenland. We will be forever grateful for his passion and research.

Dr. Susana Hancock is a transdisciplinary Arctic climate researcher working at the nexus of science and politics surrounding the climate crisis in the polar regions. She is an expert reviewer with the IPCC, has been part of the Arctic working group for the UN Decade of Ocean Science, is Vice President for the Association for Polar Early Career Scientists and is an advisor to the B2BI North Atlantic-Arctic Ocean Strategic Framework.

Netra is a climate change researcher, architect and an environmental planner. She holds a Master’s degree in Environmental planning from Dr. B.N. College of Architecture and Design, University of Pune, India. She is interested in how cities adapt to deal with urban heat and flooding. Her specialist areas and research focus are climate responsive building design and sustainable urban planning. She is an ex-International Climate Protection Humboldt Fellow from the 2021 cohort. She is also activaly involved in communicating climate science and environmental projects through her association with CIPSEM, TU Dresden as a research assistant and author at ClimateScorecard.

Frederik has a passion for the Arctic. He holds a BSc in Economics & Management and an MSc in Business Psychology. Additionally, he has completed a postgraduate diploma in Arctic Studies at the University of Iceland.Before joining Arctic Basecamp, Frederik worked at Deloitte Germany as a Business Consultant within Deloitte’s Human Capital practice.As the Platform Manager for the Global Climate Risks Platform he is dedicated to further developing the platform to reach its full potential in curating global climate risks and making polar science accessible to business leaders, policymakers, and everyone involved in managing climate risks.

Karol is a research scientist currently supporting project development at the Arctic Basecamp Foundation, contributing to research on the effects of climate change tipping points on health outcomes. Karol holds a BSc in Civil Engineering, an MSc in Energy Engineering, a PhD in Energy Systems, and an MBA focused on Information Systems. She is interested in physics-based, statistical, and machine learning modeling applied to climate change, energy transition, decarbonization and resilience of critical infrastructure, extreme events, and disaster response.

Josip Kalebić is a senior software developer focused on autonomous sensors and observation systems in the Polar regions. This includes working on the server infrastructure facilitating data acquisition, processing and visualization from the deployed sensors and systems. Josip volunteers as a secretary for the “Zadar Developers Hub” association and is an active member of the Community of Technical Culture of Zadar County association. Josip also develops and delivers various STEM workshops and lectures and runs the YouTube channel “Josip Retro Bits” dedicated to 8-bit computers and programming.

Tammie holds a BSc in Liberal Arts & Sciences with a major in Philosophy, Politics & Economics and a minor in Sustainability at Erasmus University of Rotterdam. She has been the president of a volunteer organisation in Paris that aided in providing food, clothing and other necessities for refugees.

Jayden holds two degrees, a Bachelor’s of Science in Technology and a Bachelor’s of Business Administration. She also played volleyball for Pittsburg State University and has experience working for a variety of businesses in the digital marketing realm, including an insurance agency and the NBA team, The Sacramento Kings. Jayden will be pursuing her Master’s degree in Business Administration commencing fall 2024.

Gwen is a leader in sustainable finance. Until recently she was Head of Sustainable Business Strategy and Innovation at BNP Paribas where she set the bank’s global sustainable finance strategy, oversaw R&D projects in sustainable finance including the creation of a natural capital & local development impact fund, and built programmes to upskill all 200,000 BNP Paribas employees on sustainability. She represented BNP Paribas as a member of the European Commission’s Platform on Sustainable Finance on the data and usability subgroup and served as an alternate in the informal workgroup that helped set up the Taskforce on Nature Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD).

Simon van Wyk is a Director/Partner at Deloitte based in the Risk Advisory Team in Cape Town, South Africa. Simon has a highly diversified background in EHS and Risk Advisory consulting. He is a Certified Risk Management Professional (CRMP) and Professional Natural Scientist (Pr.Sci.Nat.) and an active member of the National Risk Intelligence Committee, IRMSA. He has a Master’s degree (Cum Laude) in Environmental Management with over 20 years of inter-continental expertise spanning Africa, Middle-East, Europe, Far East and Australasia. Simon’s focus is on Sustainability and ESG with a focus on low carbon economy transition helping clients to decarbonise, achieve netzero (netpositive) and sustainable development across the supply chain.

Michael is a Non-Executive Director at Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust. He is the Senior Independent Director and a Committee Chair.He has two Board Advisor roles: as a member of the International Advisory Board for Exeter Business School and previously Chair of the Corporate Advisory Board for the Exeter MBA; he is also a Board Advisor to MeetToo Education, who provide a mental health app for young people.Previously, he worked for many years at IBM, where his last role was Chief Marketing Officer for IBM Hardware in Europe.

Tom is currently a management consultant for Capgemini Invent, sitting within the Intelligent Industry capability team, using technology to deliver large scale transformational programmes across a multitude of Industries. Tom also works in a freelance capacity within the travel Industry to help operators achieve their sustainability ambitions and embed sustainability by default within business operations.He is a firm believer of change through education, having attended the University of Exeter Sustainability Management Programme early in 2022 through Capgemini.

LeighArbon is a Strategy Director at Clemenger BBDO.Being an experienced advertising and brand strategist with a background in software development, Leightackles problems with a lens which blends both creativity and scale to deliver unique business and communications solutions. Having worked in Melbourne, New York and Singapore while delivering communications for all major markets, Leigh is globally minded.He has been the catalyst for numerous for good campaigns and sustainable business shifts within organisations taking his counsel.