Wal is an award-winning venture capitalist, business leader and visionary in innovation, sustainability and cleantech, with unique industry insights gained through deep operational experience as a venture capitalist, corporate executive, international consultant and university professor. Wal founded Chrysalix in 2001, and shaped it into one of the most respected venture capital firms globally for cleantech and industrial innovation. During this time, he helped raise more than $350M for Chrysalix and participated in more than $3.5B in venture capital funding. Wal built the strong foundation of large international corporations and financial institutions that form Chrysalix’s traditional LP support base. He has sourced, invested in and advised numerous companies, assisting them from the start-up phase to scaling up their breakthrough solutions for the new “post-fossil fuels” economy, while engaging them with large multinational companies for their innovation strategies. Currently, Wal is a member of the Boards of Chrysalix portfolio companies GaN Systems, General Fusion, Svante, and Axine Water Technologies, while also assisting various other Chrysalix companies. Wal is an Advisory Board member of the Cleantech Group, a judge of the Cleantech 100 Awards, a Canadian Clean50 and Clean16 award winner for outstanding contribution to Clean Capitalism, a regular contributor to Forbes, and a frequent speaker at events like the GLOBE Series, Oil & Money, the BCTECH Summit, Energy for Tomorrow and the Cleantech Forum. Wal has been a longstanding contributor to the tech community in British Columbia and abroad as the founder and Chairman of New Ventures BC, co-founder of SET-ventures in Amsterdam and Evok ventures in BC/Alberta, a founding member of the BC CEO Alliance, contributor to various Vancouver greenest city projects and advisor to the BC Cleantech Cluster initiative CORE amongst others. Prior to Chrysalix, Wal was the VP of Strategy at Westcoast Energy, at the time one of Canada’s largest energy companies. Earlier, he advised energy, chemicals and financial services blue-chip companies on strategy, innovation and change management while working with McKinsey & Company for more than seven years. Prior to this, Wal was an Associate Professor in environmental economics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and consultant to the World Bank and European Union. He has also been an adjunct professor at Vancouver’s SFU Beedie School, teaching Change Management and International Business, and at UBC’s Sauder School of Business teaching Entrepreneurial Finance and Venture Capital. Wal holds a PhD in Economics from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and has completed courses at MIT in probability modeling and Change Management.