Terra Global Capital, LLC.

Team

Leslie L. Durschinger, Founder, Managing Director – Over 20 years of experience and a proven track record in the financial services industry with senior management positions in the areas of derivative trading, investment advisory, algorithmic trading, risk management, and securities lending. She founded Terra Global Capital in 2006 to facilitate the market for land-based carbon offsets. Terra is now the leader in land-use carbon analytics, finance and advisory providing carbon development expertise to their global client base in a collaborative and innovative manner. She is a member of the VCS AFOLU Steering Committee, REDD+ Social & Environmental Standards Committee, Coalition for Agricultural Greenhouse Gases, and Panda Standards. Her prior firms have included JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Barclays Global Investors and Charles Schwab.

Investment Team

Kevin Brennan, CFA, Portfolio Manager, Managing Director – 10 years of experience in investment management, carbon and project finance. Most recently, Kevin co-managed the €130m Natsource Carbon Asset Pool, a compliance carbon fund whose buyers included leading European utilities and an EU government. In addition to project due diligence and negotiating emissions reduction purchase agreements, Kevin developed the fund's delivery accounting, operational procedures and investor reporting functions. Kevin's experience across finance and alternative investment management disciplines includes training as an analyst in equity research and then project finance, and business development at a leading European fund of hedge funds. Kevin is a Chartered Financial Analyst, Master of Environmental Management (University of New South Wales) and Bachelor of Commerce (Economics and Business Joint Honours, Edinburgh University).

Terry Vogt, Managing Director – Extensive and wide-ranging international business and development experience, including international investment banking and private equity investments; managing a complex multi-lateral organization dealing with rural sustainable development and agriculture; and directing a program on conservation finance at The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. During a decade with Wells Fargo Bank he was director of global funding and then head of international investment banking. Founder and CEO of a boutique investment bank focused on Latin America. Served as COO at IICA, an international organization within the Organization of American States network. Vogt has an undergraduate degree in Latin American History from Harvard, an MBA in Operations Research from the University of Colorado, and in 1996 was awarded the Order of Rio Branco by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil.

Pipeline and Origination

Sierra Chappell, Office Manager and Project Manager – Joined Terra Global Capital in May 2009. Sierra assists in managing the execution of project objectives. She oversees completion of tasks while maintaining consistency with the scope, budget and timeline of each unique project plan. She also provides administrative support to Terra Global Capital's team in San Francisco and Washington DC. She brings to Terra Global a strong background in administrative and financial workflow, data research and analysis and business development. Prior to her work with Terra Global Capital she was in consulting and worked on business cases for communities and hospitals implementing health information systems. She earned an undergraduate degree from The George Washington University in International Affairs and Contemporary Cultures and Societies .

Michael Cullen, D.Phil., Managing Director – Over 20 years as a development and agricultural economist with experience in economic policy, markets, agricultural production and trade, and sustainable development research. Positions held at USDA's Economic Research Service, OECD and Assistant Professor at Mills College, and University of the Pacific. Over six years private sector experience with Merrill Lynch, and experience with start-ups, in business development, strategic partnering, and financing.

Mark Lambert, Principal – Joined Terra Global Capital in mid-2008, and assists with the development of new projects, management of the project pipeline, creation of project feasibility studies, and analysis of emerging market standards and policies. Prior to joining Terra Global Capital, he was employed in Hong Kong as an analyst for a private equity fund investing in emerging environmental technologies, where he analyzed over 100 potential investment targets throughout Southeast Asia. He has a strong understanding and experience with business development, investment analysis, carbon markets, and environmental policy. He earned an undergraduate degree from the University of California-Berkeley in 2007, focusing on Environmental Science, Policy and Management, and Business Administration.

John Lewis, Ph.D., Managing Director – 29 years of experience combining his discipline in ecological anthropology, with international development management experience, 22-year career with US AID, retiring after six years as the Agency Senior Agriculturalist and Director of its central Office of Agriculture and Food Security. Serving in Senegal, Mali, Cameroon, Egypt, Tunisia, and then Haiti, he was able to design and implement path-breaking new approaches to community-driven sustainable development in rural settings.

Cheri Sugal, Director – 15 years of experience in creating and financing rainforest protected areas world-wide in more than 25 countries. MA from Stanford University, Food Research Institute in agriculture and development economics. Extensive experience in project management, fundraising, marketing and organizational management. Prior to joining Terra Global Capital, she served as Senior Director of Conservation International’s Global Conservation Fund and Executive Director of World Parks and Rainforest2Reef. Joined Terra Global Capital in early 2010 and focuses on development of new projects and managing the carbon development process.

Lucy Edgerton, Principal – Extensive international business and development experience in natural resource management, sustainable tourism, strategic planning, and community development, with nine years managing teams and projects in 20 countries. Prior to joining Terra Global Capital, she helped launch three successful companies spanning economic development, tourism, and strategy and risk consulting in Jordan, Brazil, and the USA, and served as the National Geographic Society's Geotourism Ambassador to Brazil. She has undergraduate degrees from Miami University in Economics, Spanish, and International Studies and an MBA in Business Intelligence from the Thunderbird School for Global Management.

Carbon Analytics

Steven De Gryze Ph.D., Managing Director – Ecosystem scientist, focusing on carbon and nitrogen cycling and greenhouse gas emissions from terrestrial systems at a regional scale. He has developed and used advanced ecosystem models to forecast carbon changes for the past 7 years. He completed his B.Sc. majoring in Bio-engineering Sciences, his M.Sc. in Environmental Technology (in collaboration with the Natural Resource and Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University in Fort Collins and the University of Aberdeen in Scotland), a second M.Sc. in Statistics and his PhD in soil conservation from the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium). He has been a postdoctoral scholar for two years at the University of California, Davis.

Benktesh Dash Sharma, Ph.D., Principal – A forest management professional with 10 years experience in modeling and simulation of forest harvesting and terrestrial carbon sequestration, implementation of different forest management modalities, process optimization, and inventory and analysis of forest biomass and carbon. His areas of expertise include forest operations, climate change adaptation of forest resources and application of advanced computing technologies such as GIS, Remote Sensing and computer simulation. Dr. Sharma has developed several different computer models to understand forest ecosystem processes and carbon sequestration enhancement options. Dr. Sharma also has a proven track record of successful collaboration with local communities in developing countries, academic scientists, industrial stakeholders, and governmental and non-governmental institutions related to forestry. He received a B.S. in Forestry from Tribhuvan University in Nepal in 2001, an M.Sc. in Tropical Forestry from Wageningen University in the Netherlands in 2003, and a Ph.D. in Forest Resource Science from West Virginia University in the U.S. in 2010.

Jeff Silverman, Director – A GIS specialist with nine years of experience in remote sensing, spatial analysis, GIS, environmental science and ecology. Before joining Terra Global Capital he worked for the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) where he provided spatial analyses for various research programs and assisted with conservation education programs. Prior to AMNH, Jeff worked as a spatial scientist specializing in vegetation mapping in environments ranging from arid drylands to wet tropical forests. Jeff holds a Master of Applied Science in Geographic and Land Information Systems from the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University, Cairns, Australia.

Erica Meta Smith, Associate – Forest Carbon Field Development Specialist, Joined Terra Global Capital in 2009. Erica provides technical forestry knowledge, on-ground carbon quantification expertise, and specializes in forest mensuration projects. Erica has firsthand knowledge of a forestry-based income the experience of depending on natural resources as a livelihood. Before working with Terra Global Capital Erica worked in forest policy and on forestry technical operations. Erica received her undergraduate in forestry and Master of Forestry from University of California-Berkeley in 2005 and 2007. Her master’s work reviewed California Climate Action Registry’s Forestry Protocols and implications of carbon markets in California.

Special Projects

Gabriel Thoumi, CFA, Director, Forest Carbon, Markets and Communities (FCMC) Project - 6 years experience in forest carbon working for Forest Carbon Offsets LLC as a Project Developer and Manager, MGM International (Morgan Stanley) as Global Forest Director, and WWF Indonesia, and Starling Resources where he consulted on and co-wrote project design documents for 20 forest carbon projects in 15 countries under the multiple standards including: CDM, CAR, CCB, and VCS. He is co-founder, Secretary, and Board Member of the International Forest Carbon Association. Before moving into the forest carbon sector he worked for six years in institutional brokerage and sales and banking, focusing on institutional risk management at Wells Fargo, American Express, and Black Swan Risk Advisors LLC. Gabriel is a Chartered Financial Analyst and earned an MSc in Sustainable Systems and an MBA in Sustainable Enterprise from the University of Michigan where he was an Erb Masters and Consortium Fellow.