Maria van Veldhuizen is an associate partner at Millwater Partners. She is a sustainable development and communications consultant based in Los Angeles, California. Though her core expertise lies in off-grid renewable energy, she also works on climate-smart agriculture and climate change adaptation.
Until December 2019, Maria was Senior Communications and Outreach Manager at the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP) in Vienna, Austria. She significantly expanded REEEP’s communications capacity and designed and implemented all communications activities of the organisation and its programmes, including the Private Financing Advisory Network (PFAN) and the Beyond the Grid Fund for Africa (BGFA). Her new communications initiatives led to the Beyond the Grid Fund winning two prestigious awards in 2019: an Ashden Award and a UN Global Climate Action Award.
Maria also worked as one of two managers of the Climate Knowledge Brokers Group, a global community of knowledge professionals committed to making climate change information more accessible and useful to decision makers.
Maria speaks six languages and is currently learning a seventh. Prior to her time at REEEP, she worked for a number of years as a freelance translator. She completed an Erasmus Mundus master’s degree in environmental science, policy and management jointly awarded by Central European University, Budapest, Hungary; the University of Lund, Sweden; and the University of Manchester, United Kingdom.