12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
About the Panelists
Panel 1: Rethinking Finance for the Climate and For All
Professor of Practice, Sustainability Management at Columbia University
Associate Director, Research Program in Sustainability Management
Satyajit Bose
Moderator
Satyajit Bose is Professor of Practice at Columbia University, where he teaches sustainable investing, climate finance and cost benefit analysis. His research interests include the value of sustainability metrics, carbon pricing, adaptation finance and the link between investment and sustainable development in emerging markets. He is co-author (with Dong Guo and Anne Simpson) of The Financial Ecosystem: The Role of Finance in Achieving Sustainability. He oversees the Sustainable Finance certificate and a number of research projects at Columbia’s Earth Institute Research Program on Sustainability Policy and Management.
Satyajit has experience in investment banking, asset management, financial restructuring and automated weather risk management. He was a mergers & acquisitions banker, directed quantitative trading strategies at a convertible arbitrage hedge fund and developed machine learning algorithms to optimize weather-based decision tools. Satyajit Bose holds a B.A. and a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University.
CEO of the Climate Investment Funds
Malfada Duarte
Panelist
Mafalda Duarte is CEO of the $10.5 billion Climate Investment Funds (CIF), one of the world’s largest multilateral funds for climate action in developing countries. Since her appointment in 2014, Mafalda has overseen hundreds of investments at the cutting edge of clean energy and resilience across 72 low and middle-income countries, including the largest solar park in the world and South America’s first geothermal plant.
Under Mafalda’s leadership, CIF’s mandate has expanded to include areas like coal phase-out and just transition. Prior to CIF, Mafalda held senior positions at the African Development Bank and the World Bank. She has been quoted in Reuters, BBC World Service, the Economist, and the Financial Times.
Sustainability Manager Private Assets at Lombard Odier
Adriana Becerra-Cid
Panelist
Adriana is part of the Sustainable Investment team at Lombard Odier, where she is focused on Private Assets. Adriana led the development of Lombard Odier’s sustainability assessment methodology for private assets, and is in charge of the sustainability and impact strategy for the Sustainable Private Credit strategy.
Adriana’s professional experience includes working in the Debt Capital Markets at Santander Bank, where she issued the first green and sustainable bonds in Latin America. Adriana also worked in management consulting at McKinsey & Co., and in the Global Climate Finance team at Rocky Mountain Institute.
On the academic side, Adriana holds a Master of Science in Sustainability Management from Columbia University, a B.A. in Financial Management from Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), and has passed the CFA level I.
Communications Manager at Capitals Coalition
David Thomas
Panelist
David Thomas is a Manager at the Capitals Coalition specializing in communications. He leads on communication for Coalition projects and supports media outreach, Coalition publications, advocacy efforts and Capitals Hubs worldwide.
Previously, David has worked for Social Value UK and Social Value International, leading global communications, press engagement, international events and policy change campaigns. David focused on reforming UK company law to enforce better protection for people and the planet, achieving political recognition.
David works as a creative copywriter, photographer and arts and culture journalist focusing on emerging musicians, the UK live music scene, television and the interlinks between climate and social justice. David has hosted his own online platforms and championed others to give online creators a voice and provide space for global collaboration.
Sales Development Representative at Moody’s ESG Solutions
Alejandra Alonso
Panelist
Alejandra Alonso is a Columbia University Alumni from Mexico City. She graduated from the Sustainability Master’s program in 2019. She has an outstanding professional and academic background with more than 7 years of international experience in the ESG sector.
Alejandra resides in London, UK where she works for renowned financial services company Moody’s Corporation under their ESG entity. In her role Alejandra helps organizations to better understand their Environmental Social and Governance performance and provide data-driven tools to enable them to assess climate and environmental risk exposure, strengthen sustainability action plans, and communicate with key stakeholders.
Previous to her role at Moody’s Alejandra has also been a key part of sustainability teams at global organizations including Greenstone and the United Nations Development Programme. Alejandra is also the founder of ISOMA Children Charity, which aims to bring education and aid the sustainable development of the Orkisima Maasai community in Tanzania.
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