Blue Ventures welcomes, Jean-Noel Poirier

Jean-Noel is joining our Blue Ventures team as an Executive in Residence. He will be managing our One Ocean Accelerator this fall and supporting the first cohort for the Seattle Maritime Blue Incubator at Fishermen's Terminal.

"Jean-Noel has been an advisor and mentor to our Accelerator for a number of years and we are thrilled to have his expertise and experience add so much more to our program," says Joshua Berger, Maritime Blue's President and CEO. "His passion for the ocean, innovation, and sustainability will add so much to our founders, our organization, and the whole ecosystem".

Jean-Noel Poirier is a co-founder and managing director of E8 Ventures, an early-stage climate technology venture fund. Before this, Jean-Noel served as Executive Managing Director of the Clean Energy Venture Group (CEVG), a leading investment group that provides seed capital and management expertise to early-stage clean energy companies. Jean-Noel is also a venture partner at Clean Energy Ventures (CEV), a $110M venture capital fund.

Prior to joining CEVG, Jean-Noel built extensive business leadership experience in the US, Europe, and Asia. He was co-founder and CEO of Inventec Performance Chemicals USA, now integrated in the Dehon Group. He was an officer of Global Solar Energy, a leading flexible solar technology company where he led a pivot and global scale up before the company was acquired by Hanergy. Additionally, Jean-Noel was a vice president at First Solar, and at Honeywell International where he spent 7 years in global leadership roles including Vice President of Global Marketing of the Security Group, a business unit with $3B in revenues and 10,000 employees, and director in the corporate strategy group, working across a $50B business portfolio.

Jean-Noel has been actively involved in the Climate Technology ecosystem for many years, as an Entrepreneur In Residence for the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA), a judge and mentor at the Cleantech Open, and a member of the Sustainability & Innovation Committee of the Franco-American Chamber of Commerce (FACC).

Jean-Noel holds an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, a Bachelor in Applied Economics, and a Bachelor in Management Sciences from Dauphine University in Paris.

Jean-Noel has had a life-long passion for oceans and sailing. In addition to racing competitively at an early age, and cruising in multiple locations globally, he sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in 1999 on Region Picardie, a world record-breaking racing catamaran with 5 crew members. He currently lives in Seattle with his wife and two children.