
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
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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
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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
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•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
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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
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300+80MW solar farm in Argentina bidding under RenovAr
30MW solar farm in India
USD $200 M 120MW On-Shore Wind farm in Vietnam
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1 GW Solar, On-shore Wind, and Energy Storage Hybrid Project in the Caribbean
Meet the Team
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Hamish Anderson
Software Engineer
•10 years in Software Engineering
•2 years Engineering Manager
•0-1 Specialist
•Cloud Architect
•University of Sydney
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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
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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
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Kelechi Uzoma
Product Manager
18+ years in Financial Services, FinTech & SaaS15+ 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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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