Speakers

Christian Kroll is the founder and CEO of Ecosia, the green search engine that uses its profits to plant trees. Christian came up with the idea for Ecosia while traveling in Nepal and South America, where he witnessed first-hand the devastating effects of social inequality and massive deforestation. He was shocked to find himself driving for miles through vast soy plantations where rainforests once existed and returned to Berlin to start an ethical business focused on reforestation, knowing that trees could tackle not only the climate crisis, but also social inequality. Ecosia has gone on to become a world leading tree-planting organization, planting over 160 million trees in biodiversity hotspots across more than 30 countries. With over 20 million users it is also one of the world’s largest environmental movements and one of Europe’s fastest growing tech companies. Christian is a vocal critic of unregulated capitalism and wants to see the model changed for the better. He also doesn’t believe wealth is the key to happiness, nor that overconsumption is appropriate in a world where we need to tackle the climate crisis. In 2014 Ecosia became Germany’s first certified B Corporation, and in 2018 Christian gave away his right to ever sell Ecosia or take dividends out of the company.