Zurich, Switzerland – Emerald Technology Ventures, a global climate-tech venture capital firm, is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Franziska Meinzinger to its Advisory Council. A senior utility leader with more than 20 years of experience in wastewater, stormwater and urban water infrastructure, Dr. Meinzinger will bring a practical operator’s perspective to Emerald’s growing activities across the water sector.
Dr. Meinzinger is Head of Infrastructure Development and Management Systems & Technology at HAMBURG WASSER, Hamburg’s public water and wastewater utility. She is responsible for strategic infrastructure and technology development at a utility that maintains around 11,000 kilometers of pipe and sewer networks. Her work spans climate adaptation, long-term asset resilience and new approaches to urban water management, including water reuse and source-separating sanitation.
She also leads HAMBURG WASSER’s international Water Operator Partnerships in Jordan, Tanzania, South Africa and Ukraine, supporting peer-to-peer knowledge exchange between public utilities. In June 2026, she was elected to the Board of German Water Partnership, a network of around 300 companies, utilities and research institutions working to advance German water expertise internationally.
“Water technologies only create impact when they can perform inside real utilities – under the constraints of legacy assets, regulation and public service,” said Dr. Helge Daebel, Partner and Head of Water Practice at Emerald. “Franziska brings exactly that operator perspective, along with rare international breadth. Her counsel will sharpen how we assess scale-up risk and help founders build solutions utilities can adopt with confidence.”
Dr. Meinzinger’s appointment comes as Emerald expands its specialist water-investment platform. The firm’s Global Water Fund II reached €100 million in March 2026 and invests across infrastructure resilience, advanced treatment and reuse, digital monitoring, prediction and automation. Her experience will strengthen Emerald’s ability to evaluate emerging technologies and support their adoption in real-world water systems.
More on water at Emerald:
Emerald Global Water Fund II reaches €100 million with addition of Temasek and Grundfos Foundation
Words of Wisdom: Water Innovation, Corporate Partnerships, and Emerging Technologies