ISUW 2025 Speaker

After completing a finance degree in Australia, Jemma joined J.P. Morgan in London, focusing on sustainability in financial markets. Her role involved assessing clients' environmental impact while maintaining profitability. At the time financial markets were just starting to take sustainability seriously and had begun interrogating major projects on their triple bottom line. Driven by a thirst for new challenges, Jemma pursued a PhD in electricity market disruption focusing on shared solar power in an ecovillage—a precursor to Powerledger's peer-to-peer sharing energy concept. During her PhD, she co-founded Powerledger, with John Bulich, leveraging blockchain tech for energy tracking and trading solutions for utilities and large corporations. Beyond its core business, Powerledger also invests in other blockchain companies, furthering its commitment to innovation in the sector. Jemma and Powerledger’s work spans transactive energy, energy provenance tracking, and energy and carbon certificate marketplaces, collaborating with clients like Tata Power, Shell, energy suppliers in Europe, and M-RETs environmental commodity registry in the US. Under her leadership, Powerledger became one of the top 50 companies in the Crypto Valley, Zug. Jemma is a contributor to Forbes on energy and blockchain and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. In addition to her industry work, she co-authored the best-selling book 'Empathy and Understanding in Business' with Chris Voss, the author of 'Never Split the Difference.' She also launched the Unblock'd podcast on entrepreneurship and VC insights. She lives in Switzerland with her 3 children and dog, called Dexter.