Reflections on a journey towards climate-positive growth

When reflecting on the past few months, I am reminded of a passage I once read.

Sometimes you have the key before the lock.

You may not know what door will open, but you proceed. You carry on with self-assured tenacity to find what you, and you alone, can unlock.

An intrinsic dedication to a better world has been a key driver for me as long as I can remember. Although I may not have always known how to describe it, it’s what pushed me towards Peace Corps, sustainable development, the public sector, corporate growth strategy, ESG, management consulting and more.

I was encouraged by a friend and advisor to share more about this journey and am making a first attempt with you all today.

Getting close to 20 years ago I went to Africa for the first time as a Peace Corps Volunteer in sub-Saharan Africa. I recall that upon arrival to Mozambique that my life as I knew it shrunk instantaneously, and everything ahead of me expanded infinitely. This feeling of the possible proved irreversible for me, and ultimately spurred an international consulting career that took me to many corners of the African continent and the world – Liberia, Ghana, Zambia, South Africa, Rwanda, Uganda, Malawi, Tanzania, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Indonesia and beyond.

While working globally I have had the pleasure of serving public sector entities, even being embedded in government ministries, while also working with the largest global companies seeking to grow their businesses by expanding into Africa and other emerging markets.

At the onset of the pandemic, I left the consulting firm I was leading to launch Telesto Strategy. I was dissatisfied with our stale approaches to strategy consulting. Growth for the sake of growth is not the silver bullet the world expected it to be. We’ve learned as a community of private and public sector leaders that hockey sticks and double digit growth alone aren’t enough. Instead, it’s about how to infuse the climate agenda and economic agenda. This is the only way we can guarantee a better future for generations to come.

In putting all of this together, I saw an opportunity to build a platform that could be solely dedicated to the question of accelerating climate-positive growth. That's how Telesto Strategy got it's start.

Every day my team and I work towards this goal of climate-positive growth with the vision to regenerate the planet. That is our mandate and our enduring heartbeat.

We've just wrapped up our support for the Partnerships of Opportunity Delegation (POD) Ghana. And, as I come back to a wintery Chicago from a tropical Accra, I am reminded of this journey.

Alongside the 美国国务院 and the Connecting Climate Entrepreneurs (CCE) Program, we as Telesto recently hosted a Climate Capital convening to identify solutions for the climate finance gap in Ghana; and the appetite for partnerships, solutions and engagement couldn’t be more clear.

Our work in Ghana has built on our recent official side event at the margins of the White House's U.S.-Africa's Leadership Summit. Like the reaction from our recent trip to Ghana, we were overwhelmed by the enthusiasm for the identification and scaling of climate solutions by those who were with us in DC last December.

As a outcome from the delegation and U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, we’ve identified and champion solutions to activate the deployment of climate capital. We believe these solutions hold promise for both Ghana and for addressing the climate financing gap across many emerging economies.

It is with humble gratitude and a lifted spirit that we look to others in our orbit to join the momentum with us on mitigating the climate financing gap.

Stopping where I started, we find ourselves in a moment in history. We finally have both the lock and key. Now it’s a question of making sure the hand is well directed.

I must extend a special thank you to POD Ghana delegation leader, Special Representative for Global Partnerships, Dorothy McAuliffe, and to Managing Director/Chief Partnerships Officer, Thomas D. , for designing and directing such a meaningful time to catalyze climate action and Ghana’s dynamic landscape of climate entrepreneurs and enterprise. I am also grateful to the warm welcome from the US Embassy in Ghana, which established such a strong foundation and facilitated our integration with local ecosystem leaders.

Thank you to all those who have encouraged me over the years and here’s to all that we can, must and will achieve together to catalyze global climate solutions.?Many are counting on us.

#ghana #climatecapital #sustainability #ESG #climatefinance #PODGhana