Climate Tech and Earth Sciences Visionary Roxane Bandini-Maeder Receives Tasmania Pearcey Award

The Pearcey Foundation today announced Roxane Bandini-Maeder, CEO and co-founder of climate tech startup Geoneon, as the 2025 Tasmania Pearcey Entrepreneur of the Year. The award presentation was made at the Enterprize Tasmania Demo Day in Hobart last night by the Hon. Jane Howlett, Tasmania's Minister for Tourism, Hospitality and Events, Minister for Racing and Minister for Women and the Prevention of Family Violence.

The Pearcey Foundation award recognises Tasmanian entrepreneurs who have taken risks, made a difference, and inspired others. Roxane and the team at Geoneon have positioned themselves as world leaders in technology for managing climate risk and disaster preparedness. From its base in Tasmania, Geoneon is delivering a substantial positive impact internationally, with the team regularly travelling to areas that are prone to climate impacts and supporting governments and organisations in those areas to plan and adapt.

"Within the local startup community, Roxy, Alex and the rest of the Geoneon team have a reputation as a very 'Tasmanian' startup. They are creating positive international impact from our island state, travelling widely to bring Tasmanian expertise to governments, organisations and regions all over the planet, and building capability that is grounded in environmental science and a deep understanding of the world we live in. That Roxy and Alex have developed this local reputation as relative newcomers to Tasmania, from their original home in the Swiss Alps, is testament to their visible dedication to their mission of making the world a better place through science and technology," said James Riggall, chair of Pearcey Tasmania and 2015 Tasmanian Pearcey Award recipient.

About Roxane Bandini-Maeder

Roxane was born in Switzerland and grew up around the Alps; an area prone to natural disasters and the impact of climate change. While living in Switzerland, Roxane met her future husband and Geoneon co-founder Alex. After graduation, Alex had an offer of a postdoctoral placement in Perth, and the couple decided to make the shift from the cool climate of the Swiss Alps to the scorching heat of Western Australia.

Both Roxane and Alex had studied in the geosciences, with Roxane specialising in geography and Alex focusing on geology. These complementary skillsets sparked many conversations about how science could be used to make the world a better place and, in particular, how science could play a role - not just in calculating climate risk and aiding with disaster recovery, but, most importantly, in helping governments and other organisations build resilience to climate-related shocks through preparedness measures.

They asked themselves, "what if we were able to create a company that used geoscience to build planetary resilience to climate change and natural disasters?" The idea proved to have a resilience of its own. After some time in Perth, Roxane and Alex decided to relocate to Tasmania. While driving and working their way south-east, the essence of what would later be Geoneon was born. They would use their geoscience skills and a range of data as the underlying foundation to help make the world safer.

By aggregating data from a range of sources (vegetation, topography, climate, weather, etc.), using AI to develop insights into climate and disaster risks, and overlaying that with scientific expertise, Geoneon develops and proposes preparedness measures that could reduce risks or ameliorate disaster impacts.

Roxane talks about Geoneon's key points of difference as being the quality and efficiency of its AI model, the team's deep expertise in the science around climate risks and natural disasters and, importantly, the team's steadfast focus on preparedness as the primary objective. Where many competitors focus on calculating risk, rapid response and disaster recovery, Geoneon focuses on supporting its clients to take meaningful steps to reduce risk in the first instance.

As the Tasmania Pearcey Award recipient, Roxane will represent the State in the Pearcey National Awards to be held in November.

For more information about previous Tasmania Pearcey Entrepreneur Award recipients, go to https://pearcey.org.au/tas.

Other State Awards

ACT Awards: Professor Lachlan Blackhall, Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research and Innovation) at the Australian National University, was the recipient of the 2025 ACT Chief Minister's Pearcey Award. More details on PRWire here.

NSW Awards: Rory San Miguel, co-founder and CEO at Propeller, was the recipient of the 2025 NSW Pearcey Entrepreneur of the Year Award. More details on PRWire here.

Queensland Awards: Dr Clarissa Yates, co-founder and CEO of Ketim Technologies, received this year's 2025 Queensland Pearcey ICT Entrepreneur Award. More details on PRWire here.

South Australian Awards: nominations can be submitted at https://www.pearcey.org.au/awards/nominations/state-nomination-form. 

Victorian Awards: this year's award was presented to Sam Kroonenberg, the co-founder and co-CEO of Cuttable, founding partner of Glitch Capital and co-founder and CEO of A Cloud Guru. More details on PRWire here.

Western Australian Awards: Chris Morrissey, founder and CEO of Ever Nimble, was the recipient of the 2025 Western Australian Pearcey Entrepreneur of the Year Award. The award was presented as part of the 34th annual WAITTA INCITE Awards, Western Australia's longest running tech awards program. More details on PRWire here.

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About the Pearcey Foundation
The Pearcey Foundation Inc. is a non-profit organisation established in 1998 to raise the profile of the Australian Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry and profession. It was created in the memory of one of the greatest pioneers of the Australian ICT industry, Dr Trevor Pearcey. By celebrating the heroes in our industry, past present and future, the Foundation is looking to attract and encourage young Australians into this most exciting of global high technology sectors of our nation.

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