Become an Expert
Volunteering for a nonprofit: Join our team of international experts
1000 solutions
Help us make sure they are the right ones
The Solar Impulse Foundation has committed to identify 1000 Solutions that can protect the environment in a profitable way, demonstrating to decision-makers that such solutions exist and that they can adopt more ambitious targets, policies and regulations to help bring them to market.
We focus our efforts on five of the Sustainable Development Goals, namely water, energy, industry, sustainable cities, and responsible consumption/production.
To do this, we need business, technology and sustainability experts with more than five years of experience that assess these solutions according to their technological feasibility, environmental and socio-economic benefits, and potential or realized profitability. Those solutions that meet this criteria will be labelled as Solar Impulse Efficient Solutions, lending them credibility.
That’s why we need you!
How it Works
Interested? Here’s how to get started
Sign up to become an expert!
By signing in, you agree with our Terms of Services
2
Create a profile
Create your account and complete your profile, indicating your areas of expertise. Once validated, we can begin assigning solutions to you for assessment. You will only be assigned solutions if you have the necessary expertise. During registration you will be asked to sign a Voluntary Commitment which is linked to the Roles & Conditions document providing all rules of your contribution in detail.
3
Assignments
Once a solution is assigned to you for assessment, you will be given the opportunity to read a short description of it and then accept or decline the assignment accordingly. Once accepted, you will gain access to the full solution submission, which will serve as the basis for your assessment.
4
Assessment
You will assess the submission against three criteria - technological feasibility, environmental and socio-economic benefits, and potential or realized profitability - and in accordance with our Certified Methodology, using your own experiences and competencies. The assessment will take place online, with your feedback collected in the form of ratings and comments. Your completed assessment will be sent to the World Alliance team who will then decide as to whether a submission is labelled as an Efficient Solution.
FAQs
Your involvement as an Expert will allow you to get direct insight into recent innovations and the landscape of Solutions that exist in your thematic area of interest. If an Expert finds a Solution of interest, the World Alliance will try to enable an introduction to the Solution’s provider. Being part of the Experts community will also allow you to:
Receive invitations to attend high level events;
Join an exclusive Community of Experts from all over the world;
Participate to Experts’ Challenge and assess Solutions in teams;
Access and evaluate exciting technologies in the cleantech sector;
Tailor your voluntary contribution and receive feedback;
Meet Innovators and their Solutions;
Lastly, you would be contributing to the achievement of the Solar Impulse Foundation’s ambitious challenge to select 1000 Efficient Solutions to protect the environment and shape a cleaner future.
A number of prerequisites are requested to join the Expert Programme, in particular:
- Technical or Academic profile;
- Minimum 5 years of experience;
- Fluency in English;
- Enthusiasm, flexibility and interest in the SDGs;
The involvement of each Expert may vary over time depending on the possible tasks, personal fit to available Solutions and very importantly the availability of the Expert. Assessing one Solution should take an Expert between 120 and 180 minutes in total (while it is not the norm - this time might exceed depending on the complexity of the Solution). With this in mind, the Expert can accept or decline assignment depending on their current availability.
To register, you will need to create your account on the Solar Impulse’s Website. You then need to complete your profile, indicating your areas and years of expertise. Once you finalize this information you can submit your profile. The application will be then reviewed by the SIF’s team (approx. 1 week) and once your profile is validated, you will need to follow the mandatory e-training (available on your Expert's Dashboard). In this interactive training (approx. 20 min) you will learn essential information on our Solution Assessment Guidelines.
Please note that you will not be assigned to a new Solution until you follow this training, and your Expert's profile will be erased from our database after 3 months passed without completing the training.
The role of an Expert is to assess the Solutions which have submitted their application to obtain the Solar Impulse Efficient Solution label. An Expert receives a Solution proposal tailored to his/her Expert profile. The Expert can then access the Solution Submission Form (10-20 pages file) which contains all the information regarding the Solution, and he/she is expected to accept or decline within 5 days. If the Expert accept the Solution he/she is then expected to:
evaluate all the five criteria,
ask questions to the Innovator in the chatbox (if needed/relevant),
complete and submit the assessment within 15 days.
The Expert will then receive the outcome of the Solution he/she has assessed, and, on a case-by-case scenario a feedback from the SIF’s team.
We are not able to financially remunerate Experts for their time and effort in support of our challenge. The World Alliance for Efficient Solutions provides all its services free of charge to its members, including the Solutions assessment, thanks to the partners of the Solar Impulse Foundation. However, we are happy to announce that we were recently able to secure some funding to cover for the travel expenses for Experts attending events such as the Experts Challenge, please get in touch at expert@solarimpulse.com for more information.
Still have questions about the label?
Here are just a few of the things people frequently ask about being an Expert. If you don't see your question here, get in touch with us.
