HONOLULU (HI Now) - Dawn Lippert has spent her life turning ideas into action for the planet. As CEO of Elemental Impact and Earthshot Ventures, she raises and invests millions of dollars in entrepreneurs building a cleaner, more sustainable future. That passion for the environment started early.
“When I about six, I used to charge my family a quarter when they left the light on and they left a room,” she laughs. “And no one else in my family was particularly interested in the environment and waste like this. But I had this sort of sense of efficiency from early on that kind of channeled that way.”
She grew up in rural Washington State — exploring the outdoors and launching her own small ventures. “I always had a business going or a project going and making money, selling things, starting different companies when I was little,” she recalls. “In some ways, Elemental is this sort of marriage of working on environment, working on companies with impact, and backing entrepreneurs… building the next generation of infrastructure.”
That curiosity and drive carried her from conservation work to clean energy — and eventually to Hawai‘i. “One of the projects I was first staffed on was the Hawai‘i Clean Energy Initiative,” she says. “It was unprecedented in terms of the federal-state partnership to completely transition a place from fossil fuels to clean energy.”
The effort inspired what would become Elemental Impact. “Technology has half the solutions,” she says. “The community brings half the solution. Unless you’re actually really working both, it’s a pretty incomplete picture. And that’s what living in Hawai‘i has taught me.”
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Building on that vision, Lippert also founded Earthshot Ventures — an early-stage climate tech firm backing entrepreneurs who are reimagining energy, industry, and infrastructure.
Along the way, Lippert is raising two young children with her husband — grounding her global work in the daily rhythms of family life.
Failure, for Lippert, isn’t something to avoid — it’s part of how she builds. “Someone will tell me, oh, remember that person that we pitched for our fund and they said no? And I’m like, oh, I didn’t remember,” she says. “I just immediately drop it and move on to the next one… momentum is somethingthat’s so hard to get and once you get it, you just like hang on for dear life. Like you wrangle that, like don’t let it go.”
That drive gives her energy. “If you could say yes to like almost everything, you don’t know the things that are going to be high impact in the long term,” she says. “But the more you can say yes to, then doors start opening.”
Her leadership values are clear. “It’s unbelievably important to have humility as a leader and just always be in learning mode,” she says. “And if we can make it enjoyable for those around us, we’re much more likely to have success.”
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Lippert believes progress begins with courage. “People often don’t do things because they don’t know how they will turn out,” she says. “But not doing something is also a decision. You’re making a decision to stay tied to the dock.”
This episode of A Leader’s Journey follows Dawn Lippert’s evolution — from a curious kid determined to save energy to a visionary investor building a cleaner, more resilient future.
A Leader’s Journey airs Mondays at 7pm on K5, with encores on KHNL, KGMB, and streaming anytime on all HNN digital platforms.
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