Science World, Falls Creek, Vancouver is a unique venue unlike any other in the city. Science World is a science centre run by a not-for-profit organization of the same name in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is located at the end of False Creek and features many permanent interactive exhibits and displays, as well as areas with varying topics throughout the years.

For the past 18 months, BlueTech and Luminus have been hosting virtual roundtables exploring topics such as Storytelling, SDG 6, Radical Decentralisation, Circular Economy, Net Zero and the common theme was radical collaboration – corporations and governments need to work together to effect meaningful change.

Together, we crafted a formula that has participants engaging again and again, sharing with their colleagues and peers and offering this feedback.

We will bring the spirit of these sessions to Vancouver and look forward to developing and cultivating these relationships in the meeting facilitated by Annyse Balkwill and supported by Du Pont Water Solutions.

Start the day by connecting with peers in the award-winning Vancouver Convention Centre which is located on Vancouver’s downtown waterfront with a dramatic mountain backdrop, which offers one of the most beautiful settings in the world.

The centre runs a ‘scratch’ kitchen using primarily fresh, local and seasonal ingredients. Promoting and using locally-grown products means less energy consumption for transporting products to our door.

BlueTech’s team will be ready to welcome you and assist you in making those valuable business connections.

Introduction Menno Holterman, CEO Nijhuis Saur Industries
Current positions:
̴ CEO Nijhuis Industries Holding BV
̴ CEO and Founder of Naesta Holding
̴ Board Member Netherlands Water Partnership
̴ Member Advisory Board World Waternet
̴ Management Board Amsterdam International Water Week
View Menno Holterman full profile

Facilitated by renowned industry experts, BlueTech Research Analysts, Technology Assessment Group (TAG) and industry experts, moderators will provide brief introductory primers on their topic followed by a facilitated discussion. ‘Conversation Starters’ positioned at each table are placed to ensure a lively debate and generative discussion.

Each topic will have 4 rotations, allowing you to join the 4 most relevant discussions to you.

Jon Liberzon, Vice President, Tomorrow Water

Jon Liberzon is Vice President at Tomorrow Water (BKT), a California-based technology developer. He spearheads commercialization and business development for a portfolio of new, paradigm-shifting treatment technologies ranging from high-rate bio-filtration and advanced primary treatment, to THP and deammonification. He also serves on the California Water Environment Association’s DEI task force and SYP committee. Before joining Tomorrow Water, Jon consulted for a range of industrial and multinational clients including the World Bank, Technoserve and DFAT. From 2012-2017, he was director of water technologies at Algal Scientific, which developed high-rate nutrient recovery processes. Jon also helped develop algae-based photosynthetic aeration systems and worked on drinking water and agricultural projects in developing countries such as Haiti and Vanuatu. Jon holds a Masters from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and a Bachelors degree from the University of Michigan.

Wade Davis is an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. Named by the NGS as one of the Explorers for the Millennium, he has been described as “a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet and passionate defender of all of life’s diversity.” In recent years his work has taken him to East Africa, Borneo, Nepal, Peru, Polynesia, Tibet, Mali, Benin, Togo, New Guinea, Australia, Colombia, Vanuatu, Mongolia and the high Arctic of Nunuvut and Greenland.

An ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker, Davis holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. Mostly through the Harvard Botanical Museum, he spent over three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer, living among fifteen indigenous groups in eight Latin American nations while making some 6000 botanical collections. His work later took him to Haiti to investigate folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies, an assignment that led to his writing Passage of Darkness (1988) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1986), an international best seller later released by Universal as a motion picture.

Sarah Mineko Ichioka is an urbanist, strategist, curator and writer. She leads Desire Lines, a strategic consultancy for environmental, cultural, and social-impact initiatives and organizations. Her latest book, Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency, co-authored with Michael Pawlyn, proposes a bold set of regenerative design principles for addressing compound environmental and social crises.

She has been recognized as a World Cities Summit Young Leader, one of the Global Public Interest Design 100, a British Council / Clore Duffield Cultural Leadership International Fellow, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

In previous roles Sarah has explored the intersections of cities, society and ecology within leading international institutions of culture, policy and research. From 2008-2014 she served as Director of The Architecture Foundation (UK) and Co-Director of the London Festival of Architecture. She led the significant expansion of the Foundation’s international profile, earning acclaim for a multi-faceted program of public space activations, exhibitions, international exchanges, design competitions, lectures, symposia, films, and youth education. Sarah’s leadership was underpinned by the cultivation of strategic partnerships with stakeholders such as embassies, cultural institutes, galleries, awards, and business improvement districts; and her initiation of robust revisions of governance, management and communication systems.

View Sarah’s speaker profile here

Dr Adriana Marais has a background in research, her PhD and postdoctoral work in quantum biology focused on photosynthesis and the origins of the building blocks of life in space. She is currently developing a blockchain-based economic system for extreme and resource-constrained environments towards a second PhD.

View Adriana Marais full profile here

Inspired and supported by Kemira’s Future Scenarios Report this workshop will give you the opportunity to explore the future state that you desire regarding the water industry and its role in the bigger picture of sustainable water. Radical collaboration and regeneration will require new thinking, new actions and new forms of partnerships that will bring us forward to overcome the challenges we are facing from population growth, climate change, and social and political changes.

What is the role that the water industry professionals from supply chain to end users have in co-creating the future of water? What can be done e.g. in terms of procurement practices, digital water and public-private partnerships? Who is leading the way?

In this session we will co-create a shared ambition statement for the water industry which we will commit to and bring forward to shape the industry’s united approach to water resources moving forward.

• 121 Networking Meetings – Access will be provided to 121 networking app in advance to enable introductions

Join Foresight Canada and waterNEXT for the Canadian Water Technology Spotlight at BlueTech Forum, supported in part by funding from the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP) and the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Vancouver. Learn about Canada’s water innovation ecosystem, hear from 20 leading water ventures, and enjoy curated introductions between water technology innovators and end users, investors, and engineering firms.

Learn more about the 20 pitching companies

Start the day by connecting with peers in the award-winning Vancouver Convention Centre which is located on Vancouver’s downtown waterfront with a dramatic mountain backdrop, which offers one of the most beautiful settings in the world.

The centre runs a ‘scratch’ kitchen using primarily fresh, local and seasonal ingredients. Promoting and using locally-grown products means less energy consumption for transporting products to our door.

BlueTech’s team will be ready to welcome you and assist you in making those valuable business connections.

Ralph Exton, Chief Marketing Officer at SUEZ – Water Technologies & Solutions, is responsible for providing leadership and program direction for the strategic marketing activities, communications, business development, digital marketing and business strategy.

Prior to his current role, Ralph served for six years as CMO of GE’s Water & Process Technologies business. Ralph joined the business in 1994 and held numerous roles with increased responsibility for product management, commercial operations, business development, channel strategy, digital marketing, global sales management, global key accounts, and M&A projects. During his time with GE, he was also the business program manager for the leadership development programs, which were designed to recruit, develop and grow future commercial leaders.
View Ralph Exton full profile

Introduced by Kimberly Kupiecki, Sustainability, Advocacy and Communications, Dupont Water Solutions.

Kimberly Kupiecki is the Global Leader, Sustainability, Advocacy and Communications for Dupont Water Solutions. In this role, she is responsible for all business communications, developing and implementing sustainability programs and advocacy programs to drive business growth. She is also responsible for developing and achieving sustainability goals for DuPont Water Solutions. Kimberly serves as the Minneapolis Chapter President for The CMO Club and serves on the Advisory Board to the Brave Blue World Foundation.
View Kimberly full profile

Paul Hawken, one of the most important environmental authors, activists, thinkers and entrepreneurs of our era, has dedicated his life to sustainability and changing the relationship between business and the environment. His many bestselling books include such massively influential texts as: The Next Economy; The Ecology of Commerce; Blessed Unrest;, Drawdown, The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming and most recently Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation. Paul is the founder of Project Drawdown and most recently Project Regeneration, which will soon be the most complete database of challenges and solutions to ending the climate crisis.

Erica Gies is an award-winning independent journalist who writes about water, climate change, plants and critters for Scientific American, The New York Times, Nature, The Atlantic, The Guardian, National Geographic, The Economist, Washington Post, bioGraphic, Wired, and more.

Her stories hail from North America, especially California and British Columbia, and the wider world. In a quest for commonalities that bind us and innovations that inspire, she has reported from many intriguing places: Iraq, Peru, Cambodia, India, Syria, Kenya, China, Qatar, Laos, the United Kingdom, Guyana, Vietnam, France, and Indigenous nations and territories, including those belonging to Navajo (Diné), Kwiakah, Makushi, Kitasoo/Xai’xai, ‘Namgis, Heiltsuk, and Native Hawaiian peoples.

Her book, Water Always Wins: Thriving in an age of drought and deluge, is about what she calls “Slow Water” innovations that are helping us adapt to the increasing floods and droughts brought by climate change.The book will be published in May 2022 by the University of Chicago Press in North America and by Head of Zeus/Bloomsbury in the United Kingdom and beyond.

View Erica Gies’s speaker profile here

Mark Nelson, ‘Biospherian’ and Chairman, Institute of Ecotechnics

Ecologist and author, Mark Nelson was one of the original ‘biospherians’ and we’re honoured that he will be joining us to share his fascinating story. A renowned international speaker, Mark is also a founding director of the Institute of Ecotechnics and has worked with water, wastewater and natural systems for several decades.

Mark will share lessons he learned from his time in Biosphere II around closed loops, connectivity, conservation, isolation and the need to tackle global problems with global cooperation. His research focuses on closed ecological system research, ecological engineering, restoration of damaged ecosystems, and wastewater recycling.

Mark is the author of numerous papers and books, including the excellent ‘Wastewater Gardener: Preserving the Planet One Flush at a Time’, co-author of a newly published 2nd edition of “Life Under Glass: Crucial Lessons in Planetary Stewardship from 2 years inside Biosphere 2” (Synergetic Press, 2020) and is featured in the new documentary exploring the Biosphere II journey, Spaceship Earth.

View Mark’s speaker profile here

Christopher Angell has been working as a Director, Strategy and Business Development for Xylem Inc. He lives in Washington, District of Columbia, United States. He studied at Columbia Law School. He also studied at The Johns Hopkins University, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and he have studied in Energy, Resources and Environment; International Economics also he have studied at Harvard University A.B. magna cum laude, Social Studies. In his life he have worked with so many companies. Before working with Xylem he have worked as a Director at Alliances & Channels and Growth Strategy, Oracle Utilities at Oracle from February 2018 to Apr 2021, worked as Senior Manager, Product Partnerships at Oracle from August 2016 to February 2018.

Paul O’Callaghan, Sivan Zamir, VP of Xylem, Dirk Brusis, Investment Manager at SKion, Dr. Andrew Benedek, CEO Anaergia and moderated by Antoine Walter, Host of the “(don’t) Waste Water podcast

Snehal Desai, Chief Growth Officer, Evoqua Water Technologies

As Executive Vice President and Chief Growth & Sustainability Officer, Snehal Desai is responsible for driving strategic and operational initiatives to accelerate Evoqua’s growth. Snehal oversees Corporate Strategy, M&A, Technology & Innovation, Digital Business, IT, Strategic Marketing, Sustainability, and Corporate & Marketing Communications.

View Snehal Desai profile here

Up to 40 end users will outline the water challenges they are facing in an interactive roundtable format.

You will hear from fortune 500 companies from food & beverage, oil & gas, cosmetic, textile, pulp & paper, technology, pharma, mining and consumer goods plus a global mix of water utilities.

During the session, end-users will be invited to identify key innovation challenges in their business, opportunities and required solutions.

After a full day of intensive networking and insightful discussions this closing food & drinks reception in the beautiful Vancouver Convention centre gives you the perfect chance to unwind with a drink, or two, and connect with your peers in an unmatched setting.