CEO, Clean Cooking Alliance
Dymphna van der Lans is the Chief Executive Officer of the Clean Cooking Alliance. Dymphna brings more than 25 years of experience managing and leading global development, energy, and climate initiatives in the nonprofit and private sectors. Most recently, she led international corporate engagement with the World Wildlife Fund’s Climate & Energy team. Previously, she worked with the Clinton Foundation as CEO of the Clinton Climate Initiative and has served as the senior director for public policy programs at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Dymphna has also served as the director of global renewables, infrastructure, and energy efficiency at a specialist investment banking firm in London, and for seven years at BP, where her last appointment was as BP Alternative Energy’s director of distributed energy markets.
Dymphna has worked and lived in China, India, and Kenya and engaged with island nations in the Caribbean and the Indian and Pacific Oceans to support their transition away from polluting diesel fuels to renewable sources of energy. Her native language is Dutch, and in addition, she speaks English and Chinese fluently and has conversation ability in both French and German. She holds advanced degrees from both Leiden University and the University of Beijing, and has earned a Master’s in Business Administration from Rice University. She lives with her family and two dogs in Washington, DC, where she enjoys long walks in Rock Creek Park.