In his leadership role at Fluence, Marek leads the global strategy, partnerships and mergers & acquisition team and oversees the commercial function of the company. He provides in-depth industry and market insights to Fluence and its customers and partners while driving growth and enhancing the efficiency of Fluence’s commercial operations.

Prior to joining Fluence, Marek was a managing director of strategic partnerships, energy storage at The AES Corporation, where he was instrumental in the development of key storage projects worldwide, as well as the transition of the storage business from AES to Fluence.

Previously, Marek was part of the infrastructure investment arm of Partners Group, a global private equity firm, and part of the valuation and strategy team at PricewaterhouseCoopers. He also founded several technology startups.

Marek holds an Master’s of Business Administration with Honors from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Diplom-Kaufmann degree from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main.

Kanchana Suresh is a senior vice president and regional senior investment officer at Northern Trust. In her current capacity, she leads a team of portfolio advisors within the Northern Trust Wealth Management Business. During her 20 plus years at Northern Trust, Kanchana has advised ultra-high net worth individuals and families by creating and implementing customized investment solutions built to achieve their financial goals. She also has worked with nonprofit institutions and helped them to manage their investment portfolios.

Kanchana has a master’s degree in financial markets and trading from the Illinois Institute of Technology. She is a chartered financial analyst and a certified private wealth advisor.

While growing up in India, Kanchana helped many families struggling to put food on the table. After moving to the U.S., she continued to work with Child Relief and You, an organization working to improve the health, education and safety of children. In the last few years, she has continued to spend time with Feed My Starving Children. She is currently a board member of Nourishing Hope Chicago.

Kanchana lives in the Lakeshore East area of Chicago. Her interests include running, hiking and yoga.

Debbie Simpson’s career has been marked by her passions for diversity, change and growth. Winner of Consulting Magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award for 2018 Women Leaders in Consulting, Debbie has been recognized for her role in Boston Consulting Group’s continued excellence, as well as prior contributions to PwC, also known as PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Her experience as a global financial and operations leader began first as a partner at PwC, and then at BCG, a $10 billion business, where she worked for 20 years before retiring in June 2021. Debbie was a member of the BCG executive committee for 12 years, serving as chief financial officer and as the head of global functions. She was a critical leader in driving BCG’s continued growth and development as a leading management consultancy and its evolution into a digital leader in the marketplace.

Debbie helped BCG grow tenfold over her career and deepen its global footprint, now with more than 20,000 partners and staff located in over 90 cities and more than 50 countries. She received the President’s Award at BCG in 2016 for her instrumental role in building the digital ventures unit, and continues to support the digital ventures and green ventures teams as an advisor.

Debbie also brings experience on for profit and not-for-profit boards, where she has assumed leadership roles on audit and finance committees as well as supporting compensation, strategy and development efforts.

Debbie received her bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from Duke University and her master’s degree in business from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management.

Maham began working with Plan International in 2021 as part of the Youth Advisory Board. Over the past four years she has spearheaded Plan’s Youth Leadership Academy, heading the workshop design subcommittee and serving as the 2021 coordinator. She has represented Plan at the White House Gender Policy Council and at the United Nations’ Commission on the Status of Women youth forum, advocating for online protections in the face of technology-facilitated gender-based violence. Her passion lies at the intersection of health care and social issues, and she hopes to work with Plan and other organizations to combat issues regarding women’s health and equitable health care access.

Maham graduates from Rice University where she received a Bachelor of Science degree in biosciences, with a cell biology and genetics concentration, and a Bachelor of Arts in social policy analysis on a pre-med track. At Rice, she was an emergency medical technician with Rice Emergency Medical Services and an executive board member for the university’s Planned Parenthood chapter. She was a research assistant at McGovern Medical School’s Wang Lab, studying the pathology of atrial fibrillation. Maham also has extensive experience in health equity research through Smith Research and Consulting and Stanford School of Medicine’s California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative.

Currently, Maham is spending her gap year before medical school leading maternal health research at Zayed University in Dubai as a Wagoner Foreign Study grant recipient.

Fran Priddy, M.D., M.P.H., is an infectious disease physician and global health leader with more than two decades of experience in vaccine development, maternal and child health, and international health research implementation. She has led health research across Africa, India, the United States and Europe, focusing on developing novel prevention products, improving access to care, and addressing global health issues that disproportionately affect women and girls.

For more than 20 years, Priddy has sponsored girls through Plan International, witnessing firsthand the transformative impact of education and opportunity on their lives. She has combined clinical expertise with strategic leadership to advance women’s health, health equity and community-based solutions.

Priddy began her career taking care of women with HIV in Atlanta and families with complex health issues in the U.S. Indian Health Service, where she saw the far-reaching effects of women’s reproductive rights, financial status and access to health care on families and communities. She holds a Doctor of Medicine degree and a Master of Public Health and currently leads clinical development of vaccines at Moderna.

Ann C. O’Brien is an executive-level business professional with more than 30 years of experience in strategic planning, execution and financial management in the health care, higher education and nonprofit fields. She is also involved in numerous philanthropic endeavors serving girls, children and people living in poverty.

For more than 15 years, Ann was an executive in the health care management advisory practice of a Big Four accounting and consulting firm. In that role, she led strategic and business planning engagements for large academic medical centers, hospitals and physician practices involving integrated health system development, financial management and physician practice management.

Most recently, Ann was the vice president at Grants Plus, a fundraising and grant-seeking firm serving the nonprofit community. In her role, she was responsible for all business operations including human resources, budgeting and financial management, information technology and business planning. Prior to her time at Grants Plus, she served as a program director for the Center for Innovation and Growth at Baldwin Wallace University, the president and a board member of the Rainbow Babies & Children’s Foundation and the finance director for the eastern region of the Cleveland Clinic Health System.

Ann has served on the boards of numerous nonprofit organizations and is currently on the board of directors for both the Saint Luke’s Foundation as well as the Deaconess Foundation. She holds a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a bachelor’s degree in international politics and economics from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service.

Ann lives in Cleveland with her husband, Robert, and has three adult children.