Our Team

Melissa Uhl

Chief Growth Officer

"Climate change is not only the greatest challenge of our times, it's also the greatest opportunity to demonstrate our ability to make lemonade out of lemons."

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Melissa is Chief Growth Officer at Elemental, a global climate innovation investor and non-profit impact organization. Melissa leads Elemental’s growth strategy – developing and launching new initiatives and partnerships that further Elemental’s mission to redesign the systems at the root of climate change. She has helped guide and build the organization since 2015 incubating and launching Elemental’s 5 Year Strategy, Equity & Access track, Earthshot Ventures, and Policy Lab.

In addition to Elemental

Melissa is part of Emerson Collective and a founding board member of Earthshot Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund that she helped develop under Elemental’s family of funds. Melissa also serves as an advisor to a number of extraordinary start-ups and non-profits including enVerid and the Maui Council for the Hawaii Land Trust, which helps her stay rooted in her home community.

Prior to Elemental

Melissa practiced commercial litigation, real estate, and municipal project finance law at Alston Hunt Floyd & Ing in Honolulu, Hawaii. She has worked for the Environmental Working Group in Washington D.C. on environmental health policy and for the United Nations Development Program on community and individual land rights issues. Melissa was also The Nature Conservancy Science fellow at the Natural Capital Project at Stanford University where she focused on international ecosystem service valuation mechanisms. Melissa has a J.D. from the William S. Richardson School of Law with an additional certificate in environmental law and a B.S. from Santa Clara University.

Outside of the office

You can find Melissa longboarding (or dreaming about it) and going on rambling walks in nature or through neighborhoods and cities. She’s also learning Swedish, crossed the aisle to adopt two cats, and loves a good sci-fi or fantasy series.