Who We Are

PROJECT:MOONSHOT was founded during lockdown in 2020 by Juhi Shareef and Priti Ambani. Since then the team has grown to a diverse group of passionate minds,

leveraging a plethora of combined experience and expertise.

Together, we form the Project Moonshot Collective.

The Founders

Juhi Shareef

Juhi is passionate about accelerating a systems-shift to a regenerative future.

She wants to move beyond incremental sustainability, and views collaboration, systems thinking, indigenous wisdom and a revival of community as key enablers in this shift. Exponential technologies and data play an important role, but require good governance, reflect sound ethics and diversity, and work in service of society and the planet.

As Chief Responsibility Officer at Tourism Holdings Limited (thl) Juhi oversees risk and sustainability for the business globally. thl champions the Future-Fit Business Benchmark, the only framework Juhi has come across that supports businesses to go beyond 'sustainable' to regenerative.

Juhi has held a number of roles in the circular economy and product stewardship space. In 2021-22 she sat on the Ministry for the Environment Advisory Group for the new NZ National Waste Strategy and the WasteMINZ Product Stewardship Steering Committee, and the Usedfully Textile Reuse Programme Advisory Group. From 2018-2020 Juhi chaired the SBN Circular Economy Accelerator Advisory Board.

Previously as the sustainability lead at energy company Vector, Juhi authored a paper on Batteries and the Circular Economy and Chaired the Battery Industry Group (B.I.G.), a cross-industry group of over 200 businesses which created a proposal to Government for a circular product stewardship scheme for large batteries. B.I.G. also delivered a proof-of-concept for a blockchain digital battery passport with Everledger and Audi.

Juhi was Global Strategic Advisor to Eco-Age; previously at Eco-Age Juhi delivered sustainability strategies and supply chain projects for clients including the Kering group, Stella McCartney, Wembley Stadium, Marks & Spencer and the British Film Institute.

Trained in sustainability and systems thinking at design-engineering firm Arup, in a previous life, Juhi worked at the New York Film Academy in New York, London and L.A.

Juhi has one Bryn, two kids and a kitten.

The Founders

Priti Ambani

Priti is driven by the potential of emerging technologies and digital collaboration to create meaningful outcomes. As an environmental engineer, technologist, educator and systems thinker, she thrives in cross-industry contexts and sectors, joyfully joining the dots. Her Masters degree in Biological Resources Engineering and thesis on environmental accounting was the starting point of her research and practice on environmental systems and economics.

After 6 years in engineering, designing civil and environmental systems for mega corporates in the US. (read Walmart, Costco, PNC Bank etc), she has spent the last 11 years, in Asia, North America and Europe, leading initiatives and ventures that leverage the dynamics of digital collaboration, platform businesses and emerging disruptive technologies to create thriving societies.

The obvious disconnect between business, planet and people focussed outcomes has led to a life-long journey of exploring, testing and launching initiatives that leverage new business models - networks, platforms and collective intelligence.

Priti is the New Zealand Country Head of Tata Consultancy Services, the world's leading technology services company. Prior to that she established and grew the Corporate Innovation Practice at Tech Futures Lab as the Director of Innovation, helping businesses in NZ build innovation capability in the digital economy. She is part of the faculty on the Masters of Technological Futures programme teaching platform economics and digital collaboration and has advised 20+ Masters students.

She was an instrumental part of the team that launched and grew Upsouth, a unique people-centred platform that was springboard to under-realised communities in S. Auckland.

Priti sits on the boards of Auckland Chamber of Commerce and Superdiversity Council and the Advisory Board of Tech Futures Lab. She is also part of the Strategic CIO Advisory Group at the University of Auckland.

Priti is married to Nikhil and is mom to two boys.

The PROJECT:MOONSHOT Collective

The PROJECT:MOONSHOT Collective is comprised of a number of change agents and international thought leaders,

all helping to navigate the journey to a regenerative Aotearoa.

PROJECT:MOONSHOT Advisors

Dr. Teina Boasa - Dean

Dr Teina Boasa-Dean, Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa is scientist and Executive Manager of the BHW Lands Trust and Education Manager for Pāhauwera Iwi Development Trust. Teina was a collaborative partner in the development of the Te Reo Māori doughnut, "Te Takarangi" and carried the worldview of the importance of the indigenous connection.

Dr. Michael Lakeman

Dr Michael Lakeman is an industrial ecologist - he works on how energy and matter flow across the landscape and through the economy, and how building connections between disparate players and processes can lead to greater efficiency, resilience, and regenerative outcomes. He believes there are too many difficult challenges facing humanity to try to tackle them one-by-one, and so practices multi-solving, where partnering to create a single course of action brings benefits across multiple impact areas.

Currently Michael is working on two thorny, difficult to decarbonise industries: aviation and agriculture. For these, pre-commercial innovation is needed where no existing solutions are available, and Dr Lakeman is right in the thick of bringing such solutions to market. Michael is on the CH4 Global management team, driving zero methane agriculture

Debbie O'Byrne

Debbie O'Byrne is a circular economy thought leader and practitioner. Since her Master's thesis which focussed on the circular economy, she has worked with a range of government organisations, crown research institutes and Iwi, and large corporates in New Zealand to integrate circular economy principles into the redesign of their business strategies. Currently, Debbie is a circular economy lead at Lake Macquarie Council in Australia. She's working on projects relating to policy material flows, and post coal economic development.

Joanne Sawicki

Joanne Sawicki is a digital-health, media and circular economy entrepreneur with a passion to invest in and promote businesses that are profitable whilst “doing good”. An award-winning journalist and television producer, Joanne founded Channel Health – Europe’s first health website and interactive television channel. She is an ambassador to TBLI Group.com, founded Enso Tyres. Joanne leads Family Office networks worldwide and Planet Positive, is a Board Advisor to Ace & Company as well as numerous philanthropic advisory roles.

Nikhil Ambani

Nikhil Ambani is an engineer, commercial / project management leader and technologist. He is the founder of Ambquad Solutions & Ambquad Maps. As an operations, commercial advisor and director, he has extensive experience in leading teams on $B+ worth of projects and programmes; He specialises in Enterprise Program & Portfolio Management and Project Controls on mega projects and programmes.

PROJECT:MOONSHOT Thought Leaders

Dr Teina Boasa-Dean

See Advisors above

Leanne Kemp

Leanne is Founder and CEO of Everledger where she inspires and steers the team of Everlegends to increase transparency and trust with technology, in close collaboration with industry partners.
She is a prominent figure in the technology sector. Leanne co-chairs the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Manufacturing and takes part in the Global Future Council on Blockchain. She also leads workstreams at the Global Blockchain Business Council, co-chairs the World Trade Board’s Sustainable Trade Action Group, and is on the IBM Blockchain Platform Board of Advisors.
Leanne’s entrepreneurial success saw her appointed as the Queensland Chief Entrepreneur in Australia, to develop the state’s startup ecosystem, attract investment and support job creation. She was the first female entrepreneur to hold this position. Her tenure ended in December 2020.
More recently, Leanne has been appointed to the Global Blockchain Business Council as a Regional Ambassador of Australia, an Adjunct Professor in the Institute for Future Environment at the Queensland University of Technology and Blockchain Advisory Board Member of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Katja Hansen

Katja Hansen is a leading practitioner, executive trainer, mentor and author in product & process innovation and infrastructure development using the Cradle to Cradle (C2C) Design framework that forms the basis for the Circular Economy. She has organized innovation projects with companies, NGOs, and international agencies since 1992.

She is the chief scientific advisor to the Cradle to Cradle e.V. (c2c-ev.de) and a member of its advisory board. She is also a research fellow at Technische Universität München and has given many lectures including participation at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation/Bradford CE executive masterclass course over several years. Currently she is a lecturer on the EMF/ Exeter University CE masterclass courses.

She is Director of the Healthy Printing Alliance, a network supported by the Dutch DOEN Foundation, aiming to optimize print products so they can be recycled safely and returned to the environment as resources www.healthyprinting.eu.

She is the conceptual founder and co-author of the published Nutrient Certificate concept, also known as Material Passports, which is key for material flows in the circular economy. This was the basis for a Horizon 2020 project, Buildings as Material Banks BAMB2020.eu, which she co-initiated.

She was a senior advisor to the 2011 Dutch Government’s comparison of Life Cycle Assessment and Cradle to Cradle, which evaluated the capacities of LCA to measure the positive impacts of circularity.

She holds a degree in environmental engineering and has specialised expertise in for example bio-based materials, wastewater re-use and soil quality in urban environments, as well as how to improve indoor environmental quality.

In the early 1990s, as a researcher with EPEA Internationale Umweltforschung and Hamburger Umweltinstitut e.V., she co-authored formative studies in Latin America, Africa, and Europe on “Intelligent Product System” (IPS) methods for agrochemicals, nutrient recycling and natural and synthetic fibers that set the groundwork for Cradle to Cradle® products.

Sir Jonathon Porritt

Sir Jonathon Porritt, Co-Founder of Forum for the Future, is a ‘veteran campaigner’ and eminent writer, broadcaster and commentator on sustainable development.
He was formerly Director of Friends of the Earth (1984-90); co-chair of the Green Party (1980-83) of which he is still a member; a Trustee of WWF-UK (1991-2005) and a member of the Board of the South West Regional Development Agency (1999-2008).
Jonathon received a CBE in January 2000 for services to environmental protection.
From 2000-1009 he was Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, providing high-level advice to Government Ministers.
His new book, ‘Hope in Hell’, was published in June 2020. His recent books are ‘The World We Made’ (2013), ‘Capitalism As If The World Matters’ (Earthscan, revised 2007), ‘Globalism & Regionalism’ (Black Dog 2008) and ‘Living Within Our Means’ (Forum for the Future 2009).

Moonshot Map Activators

Our Activators have played a key role in helping with the Moonshot Map, one of our MOONSHOT:CITY place-based initiatives.

Dalong Ye-Lee

Dalong Ye-Lee is a mechanical engineer and creative freelancer deeply immersed within the sustainability space, fascinated by sustainable design and shifting change in sustainability through innovation. He was a co-founder of the student-lead organisation, The Sustainable Future Collective in 2016, which has grown into one of the largest tertiary student-lead clubs representing sustainability in New Zealand. He sits on the Committees of the Sustainability Society (Engineering NZ Technical Interest Group) and Downer NZ Sustainability Governance Group, leading the Young Professionals Sustainability Governance Group (YPSGG) offshoot within the business; operating in initiatives spanning across waste management, employee carbon footprinting and sustainable events. He has taken role of technical sustainability evaluator of mechanical and rails systems tender packages on City Rail Link's Link Alliance.

Olya Tolpyhina

With a background in technology project/program management, Olya Tolyphina feels the urgent need to restore our connection to nature, and a strong motivation to contribute her skills to reverse climate change and restore biodiversity. She is currently exploring sustainability leadership, innovation for regeneration and uncovering value where our economic activity enriches natural and social environments. Olya is a keen gardener, surfer and a volunteer for a native bush restoration project in Ngunguru, Northland.

Stella Lee

Stella Lee is a student currently studying at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland in the USA. Formerly a University of Auckland student, Stella founded the local chapter of Rethinking Economics in Aotearoa NZ to promote economic pluralism and accessibility. Stella is passionate about climate actions, sustainable design, biomimicry, regenerative systems and many other ideas born out of the rethinking process.

Moonshot Map Founding Curators

Before launching the Moonshot Map, a team of Curators, experts in their fields, recommended regenerative and circular projects that have populated the first 100 projects on the map.

Dr. Florian Graichen

As General Manager 'Forests to Biobased Products', Florian is responsible for Scion’s projects, programs and impact delivery around replacing petrochemicals and non-sustainable materials with products from trees and other biomaterials. These activities are aiming at the design of biomaterials to create products for the rapidly growing sustainability conscious market enabled through distributed manufacturing and biorefineries across New Zealand. Florian holds a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Regensburg, Germany.

Georgia Cameron

A new economy practitioner in the making. Systems thinking and human design-obsessed. Eternal student. Currently studying a Masters in Regenerative Economics at Schumacher College in Devon, United Kingdom. Georgia previously practiced as an environment, planning and resource management lawyer at a top four law firm in Auckland, New Zealand.

She plays in the intersection between public policy, regenerative economics and culture change. Georgia is working towards a world which is regenerative by design, where compassion and generosity are prized commodities, and the wealth of our communities and country is primarily assessed by the health of our people and quality of our resources.

Through this, Georgia has been involved in culture change (including establishment of organisation-wide vision and values), community building, people development, environment litigation on major infrastructure projects and retail developments, policy advice on climate change, energy and land use, and contributed to a leading New Zealand environmental law textbook.

Lucie Greenwood

Lucie was Lead Researcher and writer for The Ākina Foundation report "Transforming Our Economy" examining the potential of social enterprise and impact investment to shift the economy to one that prioritises human wellbeing and the environment.

She researched Chinese aid projects and influence in the Pacific Islands at the Lowy Institute and achieved distinction in two dissertations at the University of Cambridge: (i) examining indigenous solutions to food insecurity; (ii) focusing on political philosophy in China. Lucie worked as a Junior Barrister at Stout Street Chambers, focusing on energy law, equity and trusts, as Senior Advisor, Sustainable Value at KPMG and most recently at The Connectives.

Rohan MacMahon

Rohan MacMahon has spent over 25 years in commercial and Not For Profit fields with deep expertise in strategy, technology, reputation and sustainability.

His experience includes management consulting at Accenture, executive roles at Telstra Australia and running an ICT start-up. More recently in Aotearoa he was strategy director at Crown Fibre Holdings, the New Zealand Government’s broadband investment agency (now Crown Infrastructure Partners). In 2017 he formed Wollemi Consulting which provides strategic planning, commercial due diligence, digital technology and sustainability advice to a variety of clients.

In 2020 he took up a role as a founding partner at the Climate Venture Capital Fund, a new fund aiming to provide capital towards firms which are developing low emissions technologies, to accelerate emissions reductions and help mitigate climate change.

Rohan has a longstanding interest in conservation, works on several projects to manage mammalian predators such as rats and stoats which are damaging New Zealand’s native species, and likes planting a tree or twenty in his spare time. He also chairs the Auckland social services agency Lifewise, and is director of the Auckland Street Choir.

James Griffin

James is General Manager Projects and Advisory at the Sustainable Business Network (SBN), helping organisations to accelerate the circular economy in NZ. James is a judge on the The Circle Awards Aus & NZ 2021. He has extensive commercial experience, having worked in large corporates and owned his own business. His business sustainability journey started many years ago via the coffee industry where he was involved in Fair Trade. James is a Board member of the Northern Football Federation.

Pip Newland

Pip Newland leads sustainability initiatives at Orion, the central Canterbury electricity distribution business. With a background in resource management law and agriculture in the UK and New Zealand, she has a passion for finding ways to build the resilience of natural and human systems together.

Kate Hall

Kate Hall, known as Ethically Kate, is an educator, activist, and blogger who advocates for all people to live in a way that respects and protects people and the planet. She works as a brand ambassador for sustainability focused companies, and hosts events to encourage people (from kindergarteners to corporates) to think more sustainably.

Joseph Cederwall

Joseph is an editor, writer, and founder of the Regenerative Media Network - a startup pioneering the concept of ‘regenerative media’. Regenerative Media leverages the power of decentralised and citizen-powered media to accelerate community and ecosystem regeneration.

He is editor of TheDig.nz - a regenerative media community co-creating innovative media explorations of complex systems issues and regenerative solutions.

Dr. Michael Lakeman

See Advisors above