01 / Gwynne Shotwell, Starlink / SpaceX

After making her debut in this list in 2024, Gwynne Shotwell retains her place thanks to the continued impact her company has had on the shipping industry in an incredibly short space of time.

In just three years, Starlink has dominated the maritime connectivity market, rendering backups of alternative systems — such as geostationary orbit satellites or VSAT — redundant almost overnight.

It is true those other systems will have a role to play in vessel operations, especially when speed is not as important as reliability. But some connectivity providers (who are at least ostensibly agnostic about which systems they fit to your cargoship) admit that almost every suite will likely have Starlink somewhere in it very soon.

Crew now consider whether a vessel has Starlink as one of the key criteria before choosing whether to work on board — and why wouldn’t they? Video calls with family and even live-streaming of sports fixtures are now possible, hundreds of miles from shore.

There are some concerns that with more connectivity comes more entry points to bad actors seeking to take advantage of ship systems or data, but that’s not the fault of Starlink.

Shotwell, who joined SpaceX in 2002, has overseen its growth into a world-leading company.

Maritime is by no means its primary focus, yet its dominance within this particular niche is difficult to argue.

02 / Dominik Schneiter, WinGD

WinGD’s Dominik Schneiter retains his place in the Top 10 technology leaders for 2025, as the engine manufacturer continues to push boundaries in dual-fuel power supply.

The Swiss company fitted the first model of its X52DF-A ammonia-fuelled engine to an Exmar liquefied petroleum gas carrier earlier in 2025, following several years of development.

DNV’s Alternative Fuel Insight data shows that 40 dual-fuel ammonia vessels have been ordered, including 10 newcastlemax bulk carriers for CMB.Tech. The delivery of WinGD’s engine will be encouraging to those eagerly awaiting arrival of those new vessels.

There are still lingering and valid doubts about the availability of ammonia fuel. Schneiter’s company has perhaps allayed any fears surrounding the availability of an engine to suit.

03 / Uwe Lauber, Everllence

Aside from changing its name from MAN Energy Solutions, Everllence had recorded a fairly quiet 2025 — or at least until November.

With the year almost at an end, the Uwe Lauber-led company announced the launch of its new dual-fuel ammonia engine.

This sees Everllence offer a dual-fuel variant that can accommodate every alternative fuel on the table, including liquefied natural gas and methanol, and joins competitor WinGD at the ammonia table.

At the launch event in Copenhagen, Lauber said the development of the engine was “not just a technical achievement; it is another concrete step towards a climate-neutral future where the time to act is now”.

Like WinGD, Lauber’s Everllence is proving that the technology won’t be the limiting factor when it comes to future fuel adoption.

One of the biggest counterarguments thrown at those who advocate for LNG as a key fuel for decarbonisation can be boiled down to two words: methane slip.

This describes methane that is not burned by the engine and therefore is emitted into the atmosphere. Methane is around 30 times more potent as a greenhouse gas over 100 years than carbon dioxide.

So the news that Mitsui OSK Lines, together with engineering company Kanadevia Corp and engine maker Yanmar, had achieved a methane slip reduction by 98% in sea trials was very well received in October 2025.

As MOL’s chief technical officer, Koichi Kawanaka’s influence in the project will have been considerable, but it’s not the only steps MOL has taken in 2025 to drive uptake of alternative fuels.

The company signed an MOU with NH3 Clean Energy and Oceania Marine Energy to develop clean ammonia bunkering in the iron-ore rich Pilbara region of Western Australia, and successfully bunkered one of its capesize bulkers with a biodiesel blend in September 2025.

05 / Håkan Agnevall, Wärtsilä 

Now a mainstay of these rankings, Håkan Agnevall continues to lead Finnish engine manufacturer Wärtsilä to successful results in spite of what it has called “challenging headwinds”.

The company boasted a record orderbook in its 2024 results to achieve an operating result of $745.4m, up 78% on the same figure the previous year.

Agnevall has always said that for his company, decarbonisation is not simply a bolt-on or a side quest, but rather integral to Wärtsilä’s success.

The fact that 65% of its orderbook is contracted for alternative fuel-ready engines only adds further weight to Agnevall’s claims.

Aside from impressive numbers, the Finnish company launched its onboard carbon capture solution in May 2025, which it says can reduce emissions by 70%.

It has also installed the world’s largest marine battery hybrid system into ro-pax vessel Aurora Botnia (IMO: 9878319), increasing the ship’s battery capacity from 2.2 MWh to 12.6 MWh.

06 / Daniel Ng, CyberOwl; Annika Nevaste, DNV Cyber; and Nir Ayalon, Cydome

For a long time, the shipping industry has been so stuck in its ways with regards to technology that it wasn’t even on the radar for would-be cyber criminals.

That illusion was shattered when the NotPetya attack struck Maersk in 2017. More attackers have stumbled across shipping since then, rather than targeted it, but shipping is beginning to emerge as a juicy and vulnerable target.

Its tendency to use disparate and often outdated operating systems makes shipping a soft target in many respects, especially as the industry connects more parts of a vessel to the outside world in the quest to digitalise.

Our three cyber security leaders — Daniel Ng of CyberOwl, Annika Nevaste of DNV Cyber and Nir Ayalon of Cydome — have sought to both defend and educate the industry at all levels, perhaps most obviously illustrated by Ng’s campaign with the International Group of P&I clubs to highlight the “Seven Deadly Sins of cyber insecure behaviour” on board ships.

07 / Heikki Pöntynen, Norsepower; Clare Urmston, Anemoi Marine Technologies; and John Cooper, BAR Technologies

Forget your ammonia, your methanol and your LNG. Many shipowners are going back to the future in their bid to cut emissions, and returning to good, old-fashioned wind power.

Retrofits of wind-assist systems — such as the windwings from John Cooper’s BAR Technologies, or rotor sails from Anemoi Marine Technologies, headed up by Clare Urmston — are booming.

Classification society DNV has estimated that wind-assisted propulsion can cut fuel use by as much as 20% in the right conditions. That’s a significant emissions saving without the need for any nascent molecules or adapted engine.

These kinds of savings could be crucial for segments such as dry bulk, whose vessels call at remote ports where conventional bunker supply is far from guaranteed, let alone ammonia or methanol.

It has been said the best fuel is the one you don’t use. Heikki Pöntynen of Norsepower, Urmston and Cooper continue to lead wind’s unlikely comeback in the shipping industry.

08 / Marlon Grech, RightShip

Making his first appearance in this list, Marlon Grech joined RightShip in 2022 following its acquisition of Thynk Software, which he founded in 2013.

Since then, Grech has overseen a huge overhaul of the RightShip Platform, enabling true transparency for the vessels the organisation vets.

Under his leadership, the platform not only displays what a vessel has done but uses historical data to predict what it might do next. Safety scores and greenhouse gas ratings are just two ways the tool assists both shipowners and charterers alike in taking decisions on vessels.

As Grech said in his company biography, “the maritime industry is going through a technology and data revolution”.

“There is no better place to be for those that want to leverage technology to contribute to a better tomorrow for safety, sustainability and crew welfare.”

With his guidance, RightShip is transitioning from a due diligence tool to an essential component of any maritime professional’s toolkit, all thanks to the effective harness of data and analytics.

09 / Soren Meyer, ZeroNorth

2025 has represented somewhat of a breakout year for Copenhagen-based emissions analytics platform ZeroNorth.

At the very beginning of the year, the Soren Meyer-led company reported its first operating profit five years after its foundation.

This milestone was followed by a landmark deal with Trafigura that saw the ZeroNorth platform rolled out across the commodities giant’s fleet and the Swiss company join ZeroNorth’s group of “strategic partners”.

The deal follows its work with Vitol at the port of Rotterdam at the end of 2024, where its electronic bunker delivery note system was deployed to demonstrate the benefits of this over its manual counterpart. 

There are plenty of start-ups out there that have brilliant ideas yet fail to deliver anything tangible. ZeroNorth isn’t one of them.

10 / Noah Silberschmidt, Silverstream

Silverstream, led by Noah Silberschmidt, has transitioned from a new kid on the block to an established innovator in the shipping industry.

Its air lubrication technology has been proven to save between 5%-10% net fuel savings per year. Across the entire fleet that has Silverstream’s technology installed, that translates to $5bn-worth of fuel saved every year.

Silberschmidt’s company has gone from strength to strength in 2025, a year in which it passed the 200-order mark and Silberschmidt himself received regal approval in the UK after King Charles III presented him with the King’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation at Windsor Castle.

It also launched Silverstream Service, a lifecycle support programme that gives vessels access to Silverstream maintenance throughout their lifetime, as well as optimisation of the technology through data collection and analysis.

In a year when the funding for future fuels took a significant setback at the International Maritime Organization, technology such as Silverstream’s, which can provide genuine emissions savings now, looks to be even more crucial.

This list is part of the Lloyd’s List One Hundred People 2025 (Edition 16)

The Top 10 technology leaders ranking is compiled by the Lloyd’s List editorial team and considers people and companies that are driving real digital change across the maritime industries