Jen Ballen

Jen Ballen is the CEO and Co-Founder of Otherworld, a plant-based consumer packaged goods company addressing planetary and human health through nutritious and climate-conscious food products. Her professional background spans entrepreneurship, corporate sustainability, lean operations, and investment management. Ballen is the Co-Founder and Chairwoman of the Board of Before It's Too Late, a nonprofits arts organization whose mission is to use virtual reality and augmented reality to ignite urgency and collaboration toward addressing climate change. Ballen is also the Founder of The Sustainable Investor, an editorial blog demonstrating through data-driven research that profitability and environmental/social impact need not be mutually exclusive. In 2014, Ballen became a trained Climate Leader with Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership Corps in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is the co-author of the 2017 MIT published case study "First Solar," which received EMFD's Best Bringing Technology to Market Case Study award. In 2020, Ballen was named on GreenBiz’s 30 under 30 list of leaders in sustainability. She holds a B.S. in Finance and Marketing from Lehigh University (summa cum laude honors), and an M.B.A. and Sustainability Certificate from MIT Sloan School of Management.