A producer and media strategist from Northern California, Cynthia La Grou is managing director of Films for the Planet and founding director of the Compathos Foundation. Cynthia La Grou has also been a fellow with the Edmund Hillary Fellowship (EHF) since 2018.

A mentorship and investment organization that supports ambitious and innovative business leaders, the EHF looks for projects that can be launched in New Zealand and then scaled up to make a global impact. Two agricultural biology entrepreneurs, Matthew Jackson and Harmaan Madon, connected through the EHF before going on to create Alimentary.

Alimentary is a sustainable bioenergy startup in New Zealand that has developed a system to transform industrial organic waste such as wastewater sludge, food waste, and crop residue into a source of clean energy. Specifically, it converts these waste materials into a biogas that can power its own conversion process and contribute electricity to the public power grid.