What happens when the world’s largest mining company meets the world’s boldest start-ups? That’s the question Melissa Bergin works on every day.

As Head of Portfolio Strategy for BHP Ventures, Melissa is building bridges between deep tech founders and one of the most influential corporates on the planet. Her mission: help CleanTech, AI, and advanced materials innovators scale faster by opening the doors to BHP’s global operations. For start-ups, that means going beyond the pilot stage to prove technologies in real-world, industrial environments, where the stakes, and the impact, couldn’t be higher.

Melissa brings a perspective forged across continents and sectors. In San Francisco, she cut her teeth as a start-up operator at Affirm, helping drive the fintech’s meteoric rise to a NASDAQ listing in 2021. Earlier in her career at Credit Suisse in Sydney, she advised on technology and resources deals before earning her MBA at Harvard Business School. Today, she combines those experiences, finance, start-up grit, and corporate strategy, to shape the future of venture-backed innovation in Australia and New Zealand.

At Impactful Innovation, Melissa will reveal what it really takes for start-ups and corporates to work together on climate solutions at scale, and why collaboration, not competition, is the key to tackling the challenges ahead.