Our board of directors.

Sophie is the Founder and CEO of Kite Insights, as well as the Curator of the New York Times Climate Forward Conversations and the Editorial Advisor of the Women’s Forum for the Economy & Society.

Sophie has two decades of professional services and consulting experience and is a globally-recognised thought leader on gender and climate action. Over the years, she has developed global content strategies, produced high-profile strategic content, and led the development of research-based insights for leaders across different industry sectors and geographies. At Kite Insights, Sophie and her team help organisations navigate, communicate and positively impact issue areas relevant to their business as well as our economies and societies at large, focusing on gender, climate and the ethical application of technology. Most recently, she has founded The Kite Academy, recognising the urgent need for companies to accelerate solutions to address climate change and its impact, through tools and resources to unlock climate-focused innovations at every level of the organisation.

Before founding Kite Insights, Sophie was the head of Global Thought Leadership and External Affairs for PwC. Before this, Sophie initiated, established, and led European Business Forum Ltd (EBF) as Executive Director, Member of the Board and Publisher.

In her work at Kite, she facilitates leaders’ reflections on how to incorporate social and environmental considerations in their strategies. She enjoys working at the intersection of planetary and human issues which tends to reveal the most promising opportunities for action and inclusion.

Sophie is originally from Belgium and lives in London with her husband and two children.

Laurence is a pioneer of French Tech. A graduate of Dauphine, her career took her to the United States, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom where she led the marketing teams of big names in Tech such as LinkedIn, which she launched in France, AOL, Orange and Pipedrive, the new European unicorn.

For two years, Laurence has been supporting startups and scale-ups on the path to operational excellence and hypergrowth. She is also a member of various supervisory boards and strategic committees and represents the OneRagtime fund in the United Kingdom.

Ela leads the team that builds and cultivates Kite’s strategic partnerships which cut across content, research and curation. Ela has been at Kite since the early days of the organisation, having joined back in 2016, and so her experience spans the range of Kite’s offerings including research and insight building, managing complex coalitions, and programme curation.

Ela led Kite’s engagement with the Gender & Climate Finance Working Group of GenderSmart, and still today co-leads Kite’s work building the editorial programme for The New York Times at major international events. The programmes she has curated have spanned countries, from Egypt to New York and Korea, as well a breadth of topics, from geopolitics to exploring the implications of the climate crisis on economic and social systems. In addition to working behind the scenes on curation, Ela is a seasoned moderator and has hosted numerous panels and debates in recent years.

Ela studied History at Oxford University and completed the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership course focused on Business and Climate Change in 2020. She lives in the vibrant city of London but spends her time dreaming of being under the sea or on top of a mountain.