George Polk has been applying his skills as an institution builder, investor, and philanthropist to the challenge of creating a viable and vibrant low carbon society since 2007, when he stepped out of a successful career as a technology entrepreneur to focus on tackling climate change.
 
George’s first work on climate was philanthropic.  He founded and was Chairman of the European Climate Foundation (the largest funder of initiatives to change European policy on climate), was a Senior Advisor to the ClimateWorks Foundation (globally the largest philanthropic funder of work on climate), and founded Project Catalyst (the most significant effort to jumpstart low carbon growth plans for countries).  George also worked with Richard Branson and his team to help found the Carbon War Room (where he is a Director), and with a number of other very high net worth individuals to design and implement major philanthropic strategies related to climate.  

In 2008, George began to focus on how to deploy more capital into the low carbon economy.   He first acted as Senior Advisor on Climate Change to McKinsey, where he advised policy makers on how to create economically credible climate policy and with the Cleantech practice advising technology businesses on how to grow their businesses more rapidly.  In 2009 and 2010, George worked closely with George Soros to plan the allocation of $1 billion to climate related private equity investments and served as the Soros representative on the board of the Powerspan Corporation, a carbon capture technology company which was one of Soros’ personal investments.   In late 2010, started working with a wider range of high net worth families and in 2011, George founded the Tulum Trust, which invests on behalf of family offices tin deals wich deliver high returns while building the new low carbon economy, with a principal focus on industrial energy efficiency projects and businesses.   Crowley Carbon and Recycled Energy Development are the first two portfolio companies under this umbrella. 

Before his work on climate change George was an entrepreneur, having founded, run, or bought a number of technology and telecommunications companies.   He was most recently founder and CEO of The Cloud, the leading broadband wireless network operator in Europe which was sold to Sky/News Corporation.

George was recognized as Global Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, a Pioneer of the City of London, and has been ranked several times in the top 25 global technology agenda setters by Silicon.com.  He is a graduate of Harvard University and is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and of the Royal Institute of International Affairs.