Jochen Wermuth studied mathematics and economics at Brown University and finished all but his thesis toward his D.Phil. in economics at Balliol College, Oxford. He is fluent in German, English, French, and Russian. He likes to run, swim, cycle, dance, sing, and listen to music.
He has an interest in the future, as his family has a multi-generational investment approach and Germany’s SWF KENFO needs to earn money to pay for the long-term storage of nuclear waste.
Understanding and shaping a sustainable future is his mission for both moral and financial reasons.
He has thus been actively involved in trying to understand and shape the global “Green Industrial Revolution,” which he sees as the intersection of several dramatic transitions – re-enforcing each other in the move towards a circular economy – in energy, transport, fintech, agroforestry, and AI.
He has helped to build www.divestinvest.org
with commitments of over €30 trillion of asset owners to divest from fossil fuels and into climate solutions. He has been a member of the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), the family office network TONIIC’s 100%ers, and the Institutional Investor Group on Climate Change (IGCC), has served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Growth Company Advisory board and has been Chair of Young President Organization (YPO) Gold Berlin.
He sees both the severe threats to humanity – with ex-NASA scientist Hansen warning that at least 10° of global warming have potentially been “locked-in” already – and opportunities: “If we provide the right incentives to embrace those technologies emerging today, we can reach climate neutrality by 2030, be highly competitive and defend our values of democracy, rule of law and of leaving no one behind.”