Expertise Meets Innovation in Climate Action

About Us

SPONSOR’s team of project finance experts, AI engineers, and data scientists, are committed to streamline climate deal structuring to enable the industry to scale.

Mobilizing capital to meet the climate funding gap at the pace needed requires combining expert knowledge with the latest technology in a scalable, streamlined solution accessible to all.

Meet Our Co-Founders

  • Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

    •17-years in Finance

    •12-years in Project Finance

    •7-year Entrepreneur

    •~$30bn in Project Finance deals

    •Experience in 20+ countries & on 80+ deals

    • SMBC, Nomura, US DOE, ADB, Lehman

    •Stanford, Thunderbird, Western Michigan University

    •World Bank Report: Enabling Institutional Investment In Climate-Smart Infrastructure

  • Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer

    •21-years in Software Engineering

    •17-year startup veteran

    •10-year CTO/Head of Engineering

    •Cross platform development

    •Process automation and pipelines

    •Analytics and data visualization

    •Rights management

    •Expert in bringing technology from 0-1

    •University of Manitoba

  • Co-Founder & Chief AI Officer

    •Research Scientist Brain & AI | Certified System Thinker

    •Top 20 Women in AI-Industry in North America 2023

    •12-years in tech and research

    •10-years in AI

    •Author of 30+ articles

    •Dynamic Scientist and Leader

    •Expert in designing AI features

    •University of North Texas

  • •Co-Founder & Head of Business Development and Investor Relations

    •Ambassador for Peace & Tolerance: International Royal Diplomatic Club for United Nations

    •11-years in Garments industries, Shipbreaking, commodities trading

    •6-years in Finance| Project & Trade

    • USD$900+ Million annually in trade finance for south Asian countries

    •12+ countries - project & trade finance deals

Our team experience includes past involvement often as financial advisor, lender or deal lead in dozens of deals.

  • USD 2.8 BN 804MW Vineyard Wind Off-Shore Wind Project

    USD $12BN 3.5-gigawatt Sunzia onshore Wind Farm and 550-mile Transmission

    USD 150 MM 69MW Kawailoa Wind On-Shore Wind Project

    USD $5.9BN Champlain Hudson Power Express 339 miles Transmission Line

    USD 150 MM 120MW AES DE Distributed Solar Portfolio

    USD $300 million green loan for 44MW Vantage 13 Data Center Construction

    USD $1.3BN financing for 100MW Edged / Koch Data Center Construction

    USD $572 million 468MW Orsted / Energy Capital Partners Wind and Solar Equity Sale

    USD $410 million 862MW Orsted / Energy Capital Partners Wind and Solar Equity Sale

    USD 167 MM 222MW Invenergy On-Shore Wind (Japan) Project

    USD 1.8 BN 725MW Calpine Geysers Geothermal Project

    USD 1.6 BN 330MW Sarulla Geothermal Project

    USD $9.5BN JFK Airport New Terminal One Redevelopment Project

    USD $29.4BN financing for Intel / Brookfield Semiconductor Manufacturing Facility

    USD $4.2BN JFK Airport Terminal 6&7 Redevelopment Project

    450MW solar + BESS project in Puerto Rico under Tranche I

    100MW solar + BESS project in Puerto Rico under Tranche II

  • 300+80MW solar farm in Argentina bidding under RenovAr

    30MW solar farm in India

    USD 200 MM 120MW On-Shore Wind farm in Vietnam

    Sumitomo Corporation for the USD 3.0 BN Van Phong I Coal-Fired Project

    Marubeni & KEPCO for the USD 2.3 BN Nghi Son 2 Coal-Fired Project

    EGCO and Diamond Generation for the 800MW & 400MW Sumsel 9 & 10 Coal-Fired Project competitive tender

  • 1 GW Solar, On-shore Wind, and Energy Storage Hybrid Project in the Caribbean

Meet the Team

  • Stacy Charles

    Chief Marketing Officer

    •20+ years in Integrated Go-to-Market Strategy 

    •14+ years in Tech, Media & Telecom 

    •Enterprise SaaS | Digital Media Platform as a Service

    •Strategic, Brand & Product Marketing | Sales Enablement, PR, AR, SEO / SEM 

    •Caribbean Climate Resilience

    •Verizon | Financial Times | ATN | Viya | Fazer

    •Thunderbird MBA | HEC Paris | Rutgers

  • Dana MacKinnon

    Head of Financial Institutions & Lending

    •20 years in Banking

    •10 years in Project Finance and Aviation

    •Group Head and Team Leader

    •Relationship Management and Originations

    •Project finance lender for various asset  types: Renewable Energy | Critical Infrastructure| Data Centers

    •Thunderbird, MBA | Saint Michael’s College, MA | UMASS, Amherst, BA.

  • Katheryne Brokate SPONSOR Designer

    Katheryne Brokate

    Designer

    •17+ years in Design and User Experience

    •7+ years as Lead Product Designer

    •Strategic design execution for B2B and B2C

    •Designed solutions for streaming media, e-commerce, and digital publishing

    •8+ years in Senior Design roles

    •Ringling College of Art and Design, Minneapolis College of Art and Design

  • Jaleel McDowell

    Software Engineer

    •12 years in Game & Software Engineering

    •5 years in multiple start-up environments

    •2 years as Lead Software Engineering Manager

    •Expert in full-stack development

    •Experienced in mobile development

    •Experienced in developing 0-1 scalable software.

    •Experienced in DevOps and server architecture

  • Hamish Anderson Software Engineer

    Hamish Anderson

    Software Engineer

    •10 years in Software Engineering

    •2 years Engineering Manager

    •0-1 Specialist

    •Cloud Architect

    •University of Sydney

  • Farnoosh Khodakami

    Farnoosh Khodakami

    Senior AI Engineer

    •15+ years in Software Engineering

    •8+ years in Machine Learning & AI

    •Generative AI, MLOps, Graph Analytics, Biotech & Enterprise AI applications

    •Computer Vision, NLP, and Multimodal AI, Scalable AI infrastructure and high-performance computing

    •Ph.D. in Computer Science , Amir Kabir University

  • Nipunika Kabadi

    Product Manager

    •12 years in financial technology global product management

    •10 years in technology development

    •5 year Entrepreneur

    •MBA certification, Rutgers University

    •BA Computer Science, Rutgers University

  • Zahra Sarayloo

    Senior AI Engineer

    •10+ years in AI, machine learning & deep learning

    •3+ years leading AI-driven product development

    •Expert in LLMs, retrieval–augmented generation, natural language processing, Generative AI

    •Expert in transformers, reinforcement learning, diffusion models, graph neural networks, computer vision and agentic AI systems

    •Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering 

  • Nick Jang

    Nick Jang

    Software Engineer

    •10+ years in SaaS Engineering & Development

    •5+ years in Healthcare & Fintech Enterprise Solutions

    •5+ years in Geospatial & Cloud Innovation Development

    •3+ years in Technology & Engineering Leadership

    •BS in Computer Science from Simon Fraser University

  • Haylemicheal Mekonnen

    Software Engineer

    •5 years in Software Engineering

    •Expert in coding and developing AI applications

    •Completed 10 Academy’s Data Engineering, Machine Learning, and Web 3 program.

    •BA Computer Engineering, Addis Ababa Science & Technology University

  • Misganaw Mekennen

    Software Engineer

    •3 years in Software Engineering

    •Good at both front-end and back-end development.

    •Completed 10 Academy's Data Enginering,

    •Machine learning and Generative AI program.

    •BA in Electrical and computer engineering

Meet Our Advisors

  • Mike Barrow

    Senior Advisor

    •38+ years in project finance, corporate finance, development finance

    •18 years at the Asian Development Bank (ADB)

    •PF advisory, PF sponsor, capital markets, & restructuring

    •Infrastructure, energy, financial institutions, & climate finance

    •Regional expertise in Asia-Pacific, Europe, MENA

    •Morgan Grenfell | Deutsche Bank | Asian Development Bank| Itochu Corporation  | SMBC 

    •Asia Climate Partners Fund – Board member

    •InfraBlocks Capital – Advisory Board member

    •Seraya Partners – Senior Advisor

  • Takamitsu Ito

    Senior Advisor, Japan

    •20 years in Information Technology

    •14 years as C-level executive – COO, CFO, Country Manager both in the US and Japan

    •7 years in Corporate Finance – in Start-ups and Public Companies.

    •Ex-Investment Banker – M&A

    •MBA from Thunderbirds, Global School of Management

    •BS in Finance and Information System from New York University

  • Ryan Galloway

    VC Advisor

    •17 years in Financial Services

    •Country Director Funding Societies Vietnam

    •Serial start-up veteran

    •CFO, Board Member, or Advisor to many start-ups

    •Multiple successful IPOs and exits

    •MBA & JD Law & Finance

  • Hemali Shah

    Data and Analytics Advisor

    •14 years of Financial Industry

    •8 years of leadership in Digital, Data & Analytics

    •6 years in Software Development & Innovation

    •MBA (Finance) University of Alabama, Birmingham

    •B.E. Electronics Engineering,  PUNE University

SPONSOR is being built by experts in finance, renewable energy, machine learning and technology.

Discover opportunities to join our team