AI Meets Climate Project Finance Expertise

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 expert knowledge combined with the latest technology. SPONSOR offers a collaborative, scalable solution .

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 & 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.

Involvement as Roles and Renewable Energy Projects

  • 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 M 120MW On-Shore Wind farm in Vietnam

  • 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.

  • Seun Oloruntimehin

    Chief Legal Officer

    •16+ years Global Experience in Legal, Finance and Compliance

    •14+ years as Legal Executive, Corporate Secretary and Arbitrator

    •Board Member and Strategic Advisor to SMEs

    •MIPAD Top 100 in support of the United Nations

    •Chair, UN Working Group on SGDs and Sustainability, UNGCN

    •Advisory Board Member, Axiom Law

    •Faculty Member and Fellow, Chartered institute of Arbitrators

    •University College London | New York Bar

  • Ugochukwu Ihejirika

    Ugochukwu Ihejirika

    Chief Risk Officer

    •17-years in banking;  audit, compliance and risk 

    •Climate finance

    •KYC / EDD expert

    •CFT / AML investigation

    • 5 years on NGO advisory boards

    •Fraud investigation | Sanctions screening | Regulatory reporting

    •Compliance risk assessment and monitoring

    •Project monitoring and evaluation

    •Imo State University (B.S., Economics); Benue State University M.S., International Relations and Strategic Studies; M.S., Development Studies); Dong-A University PhD, (ABD) Philosophy in Public Policy

  • Goran Mickovski

    Chief Advisor

    •20 years in finance and law

    •5 years with fintech/banking/tech start-ups as director 

    •4 years in government as minister for FDI

    •Expertise in sourcing finance/fundraising

    •Policy development

    •Business development

    •Risk and regulatory compliance management

    •University of Melbourne

  • Tracey Boiler-Timberlake

    Tracey Boiler-Timberlake

    Managing Director, Project Finance

    •30-years in global project finance advisory

    •Renewable energy focus, and sustainability finance

    •$38 billion of infrastructure projects closed

    •Limited-recourse & cross-border solutions

    •Contract risk mitigation & financing development

    •MBA (Finance) - Thunderbird, BA Intl Studies - UWF

  • Catarina Milagre

    Catarina Milagre

    Head of Europe

    •10 years in International Consulting and Legal Advisory

    •Energy, Sustainability, ESG, and Real Estate

    •10 years advisory, structuring, implementing clean energy projects

    •Expert in solutions that balance growth, sustainability, and environmental preservation

    •Masters in Law

    •Postgraduate in Energy Law

    •Harvard University

    •University of Lisbon

    •Catolica School of Law

  • Doddy Astra

    Head of Indonesia

    •30+ years in renewable energy (geothermal)

    •5+ years in field operation and maintenance steam power plant

    •3+ years in health, environment and safety

    •Geothermal resources exploration, reservoir management and surveillance

    M.Sc ITB Bandung, Indonesia, MBA VUT Melbourne, Australia

  • Mahfuzur Rahman

    Head of Bangladesh

    •15 years in Urban Planning & Architecture

    •Business development, marketing, advertising for corporations, innovative startups, and global brands

    •Investment structuring and financial planning

    •Investment advisor on trade finance, project funding, and corporate investment solutions 

  • 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

  • Armando Sultan

    Armando Sultan

    Senior Graphic Designer

    •15+ years in Graphic Design

    •5+ years in Finance Design

    •3+ years in Energy

    •4+ years in Commercial Real Estate

    •JLL | Bank of America | UBS | PSE&G

    •BA in Design from New Jersey City University

  • 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

  • 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 

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Kelechi Uzoma

    Kelechi Uzoma

    Product Manager


    18+ years in Financial Services, FinTech & SaaS

    15+ years in Digital Product & Program Management

    Product Strategy & Delivery | Digital Experience & Transformation | Product-Led Growth

    Regulatory Technology | Data Governance | Developer Experience

    Business Architecture | GTM Strategy | UX Research 

    Smith MSc (Queen’s University), Digital Product Management

    MBA, University of Leicester

  • Lateef Yang GQ Engineer

    Lateef Yang

    QA Engineer

    •5+ years in QA Engineering

    •15+ years in Software Engineering

    •Test automation specialist

    •BS Math in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo

  • 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

  • Peter Attanasio

    KYC Advisor

    49 years of experience in the banking industry

    10 years AML | KYC | Regulatory Operations | Client Onboarding

    25 years sales middle market relationship management, 8 years domestic & international correspondent banking, U.S. regulatory consent JPMorgan Chase | Intesa Sanpaolo S.p.A. | Apple Bank | Ridgewood Savings Bank

    St. John's University MBA & BS

    Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist 

  • 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