Accelerate Impact GroupAccelerate is a leading, fully impact-dedicated multi-asset fund manager, seeking to promote change and innovation with impact investing in its DNA. Jennifer Minerva ’24, Matthew Shulman ’24, and Hannah Gropper ’24 worked with Accelerate to develop impact investing strategies for emerging climate solution themes. The goal of this project was to explore areas including the competitive landscape, technological feasibility, economic viability, and level of impact in order to assess potential investments in climate-related companies from their first fund. |
BlackRockBlackRock Climate Infrastructure (BCI) manages ~$10B in assets across six funds, and the Climate Finance Partnership (CFP) is BCI’s newest fund — the first to be dedicated to non-OECD (emerging markets) countries. CFP is a blended finance equity fund with $673M AUM from government sources (France, Germany, and Japan), foundation, and traditional institutional capital. Jack Chabolla ’24, Harsha Mohan ’24, Jonah Silverman ’24, and Marc Weisglass ’24 conducted research and analysis to develop a framework and model for CFP to assess key country-level risks across politics, macro (e.g., interest rates and inflation), power market fundamentals, country-specific cost of capital, and more.  |
BNP ParibasBNP Paribas is committed to sustainable finance — consistently leading in green bond placement, decreasing fossil fuels as a share of energy financing, and managing several climate-focused investment facilities. Its Low Carbon Transition Advisory Group has increasingly focused on providing advisory services to climate and cleantech businesses. Drew DiPrinzio ’25, Kristine Liao ’25, Amit Pasupathy ’25, and Isabella Todaro ’25 conducted a mapping of the Americas climate tech ecosystem in order to identify financial advisory and co-investment opportunities, identified potential partners in the VC and infrastructure space, and developed climate investment overviews for eight focus countries.  |
Closed Loop Partners (CLP)Closed Loop Partners is an investment firm active across the capital structure, including venture capital, growth equity, and credit. CLP’s Venture Group provides pre-seed and seed investment to companies in the circular economy across a range of climate tech verticals, including water. Kyra Gray ’25, Lucy Hanaway ’25, Sam Praveen ’25, and Jack Saltzman ’25 worked to build out a mapping of all relevant stakeholders for water reuse across a broad range of sectors. The team also conducted a deeper dive into five high potential startups that are candidates for further investment by CLP.  |
DeloitteOperational costs for businesses are impacted by biodiversity and ecosystem degradation, which includes clean air and water, fertile soil for agriculture, and other nature-based resources that affect supply chain and resource scarcity. Daniel Bowman ’24, Juan Nicklaus ’24, and Shashank Satyanand ’24 focused on the impact of nature and biodiversity and potential pathways for transformation for three major industries: finance, mining, and agriculture. The team also examined the role of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), which provides a framework for businesses and financial institutions to assess, manage, and report on their nature-related risks and opportunities. This framework aims to provide insights and help prioritize actions so that companies can become leaders in responsible and sustainable business practices.  |
Energize CapitalFormerly known as Energize Ventures, this leading software investor aims to accelerate digital innovation in climate and sustainability, with $1.4B+ AUM within venture and growth funds across more than 25 active investments in the United States and Europe. Nicholas Bilcheck ’25, Abby Trusler ’25, Celeste Young ’25, and Lucas De Caboteau ’25 sourced early-stage fintech startups that align with their fintech and climate investment thesis. They explored fintech and climate markets from investing and banking to insurance and risk, researched previously unexplored seed to series A startups, and led exploratory interviews with founders to identify five high potential startups.  |
GrowNYC WholesaleGrowNYC is a leading environmental nonprofit with a mission to empower all New Yorkers with equitable access to fresh, locally-grown food, neighborhood green spaces, opportunities to reduce waste, and care for the environment. GrowNYC Wholesale focuses on food distribution with small and mid-sized regional farmers by connecting them to wholesale buyers in NYC. Its NYS Regional Food Hub provides critical infrastructure needed to grow the amount of produce that GrowNYC Wholesale can process. Lewis Clement ’25, Rohit Datta ’25, Daniela Georg ’25, Dara Kotek ’25, and Lizzie Noonan ’24 provided strategic recommendations to help the program position themselves to aggressively grow their food distribution sales by a factor of four. The team conducted research to identify strengths and opportunity areas and defined a target audience for growth.  |
HasiHasi is a leading climate positive investment firm that actively partners with clients to deploy real assets that facilitate the energy transition and decarbonization, with more than $10B in managed assets. Matthew Hobbs ’25, Glenn Jo ’25, Hassan Riaz ’25, and Peter Schwartz ’25 screened the universe of industrial materials for green decarbonization investment potential and short-listed the plastics, steel, and cement sectors for further market and investment research. The fellows primarily focused on technological maturity of different decarbonization technologies, market dynamics supporting different sub-verticals and technology, and investment risks and headwinds/tailwinds to justify the case for Hasi to invest, or not invest.  |
New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA)NYCHA is the largest public housing authority in North America, serving over 400K residents with more than 2.6K buildings spread across 326 developments in five boroughs. The authority is exploring innovative financing solutions, including Energy Performance Contracts (EPCs) and partnerships under the Rental Assistance Demonstration PACT program, to address its capital needs and enhance energy efficiency and sustainability across its portfolio. Kathryn Obisesan ’25, Ellis Palmieri ’25, Andreas Tonckens ’25, and Chelsea Zhang ’25 supported the newly formed NYCHA Sustainability Council in rolling out initiatives focused on alternative green financing for NYCHA properties to address its near-term and future capital needs. Their research focused on alternative financing options available for both section eight and nine developments, and demand response use cases and battery storage development as a potential new revenue generation opportunity.  |
TECABFA Global is an impact innovation firm that works in underserved regions in areas such as digital commerce and climate resilience. Triggering Exponential Climate Action (TECA), a program run by BFA Global, aims to launch 100 startups working at the intersection of fintech and climate resilience for vulnerable communities, with seed funding and early-stage venture building support. Seon Augusto de Souza Ferreira ’25, Apurv Gupta ’25, Aditya Khandelwal ’25, and Yiming Shi ’25 provided portfolio support to TECA’s Regen Wave cohort of 12 fellows building the regenerative economy in East Africa. The team explored opportunities in regenerative economy through research and case studies, assisted GenAI toolkit development by analyzing TECA’s AMINA GPT, and provided recommendations for improvement and input into Regennie GPT that aims to provide longer term support for startups.  |
TomorrowNowThis nonprofit provides weather forecasts and intelligence to smallholder farmers in East Africa, through a weekly localized agri-weather SMS service in partnership with the Kenyan government. TomorrowNow aims to scale from 1M farmers to 100M by 2030, by creating a sustainable market for this information in the region. JJ Kaufman ’25, Sarah Mottram ’25, Shivani Pandya ’25, and Matthew Seifu ’25 explored organizational and financial sustainability factors needed to achieve this scale; conducted advisor, nonprofit experts, and TomorrowNow team interviews; and identified grant funding, service fees, and partnerships opportunities. The team also created a prioritization scoring matrix, identified fundraising approaches and revenue generation models, and co-designed a funding strategy with the organization to grow sustainably.  |
World Economic Forum (WEF)WEF convenes international political, business, and cultural leaders to shape global, regional, and industry systemic change by leveraging human ingenuity, innovation, and cooperation. Manon Audebert ’25, Jordyne Prussak ’25, and Willa Wang ’25 researched the use of generative AI in addressing climate-related challenges. They produced a comprehensive workbook outlining current companies and projects employing generative AI within three major environmental risks projected for the next decade: failure to mitigate climate change, natural resource crisis, and loss of biodiversity and ecosystem change. They identified potential environmental concerns associated with the use of generative AI and proposed strategies to mitigate its impact on the environment. Additionally, they evaluated how generative AI could aid in combating the spread of climate misinformation by surveying employees at WEF.  |