Six Emerging Environmental Entrepreneurs Selected for National Fellowship

E2 & 1 Hotels award six young business leaders $10,000 each to execute projects that advance sustainability, clean energy, & environmental policies in America.

WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES, April 1, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- National non-partisan business group E2 (Economy +Environment) and sustainability-driven luxury hotel brand 1 Hotels announced today the 2026 E2 1 Hotels Fellows. This is the eighth year of the annual fellowship, which awards six young business leaders $10,000 each to execute projects that advance sustainability, clean energy, and environmental policies in America.

This year’s projects span a wide array of timely topics, including urban solar, community microgrids, K-12 career development, data centers, and AI.

“Clean energy is a solution for the planet, the community, and our pocketbooks,” said Bob Keefe, E2 Executive Director. “Young entrepreneurs like our six fellows are making the economic case for ideas to help achieve a clean economy future.”

Started in 2017 with a generous donation from 1 Hotels founder Barry Sternlicht and the Sternlicht Sustainability Fund, the fellowship program is designed to help early career environmentally-minded entrepreneurs and community leaders to create and implement unique projects at the intersection of the economy and environment.

"The clean energy transition is one of the defining economic opportunities of our time — but capturing it requires building the next generation of leaders who can execute on the ground," said Sternlicht. "That's been my belief since founding 1 Hotels: sustainability and strong returns aren't competing priorities — they're the same priority. The E2 Fellows prove it. From building clean energy workforce pipelines in New Mexico and New York, to advancing smarter grid integration in California, these are entrepreneurs solving real infrastructure problems with real market implications. I'm proud to back them, and I'm excited to see what the 2026 class builds next."

In addition to support for their projects, fellows also receive mentorship from E2 members across the country and membership into E2’s Emerging Leaders program. For information on past E2 1 Hotels fellows and their projects, visit https://www.e2.org/fellows.

2026 E2 1 Hotels Fellows & Their Projects

• Alex Hill (Detroit, MI) will focus on an impact assessment of urban solar arrays, providing critical data and analysis to inform more equitable deployment of clean energy.

• Alexis Cureton (Oakland, CA) is developing a project to provide critical community microgrid industry mentorship and a peer community to leverage the business and economic case for equitable energy policies.

• Danielle Lee (San Francisco, CA) is spearheading an initiative of conversations to surface the overlooked environmental and social impacts of AI, and equip a community of technologists to advocate for cleaner, more just alternatives within their networks.

• Jolie Villegas (Chicago, IL) is conducting a series of comprehensive stakeholder interviews to illuminate the environmental, economic, and equity considerations of data center siting in the Midwest region.

• Nathaniel Burola (Washington, DC) is developing a toolkit for the business community to assess policy implications for developing data centers.

• Sonali Anderson (Boston, MA) is launching The Climate Club, an early climate and clean energy workforce development program for high school students in underserved neighborhoods to explore career pathways across the climate space. 

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E2 members have founded or funded more than 2,500 companies, created more than 600,000 jobs, and managed more than $100 billion in venture and private equity capital.

As a mission-driven luxury lifestyle hotel brand inspired by nature, 1 Hotels cultivates the best of sustainable design and architecture, together with extraordinary comfort and an unrivaled level of service. With properties among some of the first to receive the prestigious MICHELIN Key distinction, 1 Hotels is inspired by a simple idea: those who travel the world should also care about it. It is, after all, 1 world. 1 Hotels launched in 2015 with the opening of exclusive properties in Miami's South Beach and Manhattan's Central Park, followed by Brooklyn, located on the East River in February 2017; West Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard in June 2019; Toronto in 2021; San Francisco and Nashville in 2022; in 2023, the Hanalei Bay (Kauai) flagship property and Mayfair (London), the brand’s first European property; Seattle, Melbourne (Australia) and Copenhagen in 2025; and Tokyo in 2026. The brand is expanding with properties under development in Cabo San Lucas (Mexico), Paris, Elounda Hills (Crete), Austin (Texas), Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), San Miguel de Allende (Mexico) and Hudson Valley (NY). Additional information can be found at 1hotels.com.

Daniel Baker
E2
+1 202-836-9390
dbaker@e2.org
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