Marilyn Waite - Managing Director of Climate Finance Fund and Venture Partner at Aera VC

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Marilyn Waite is the Managing Director of the Climate Finance Fund and a Venture Partner at Aera Venture Capital. She is the author of Sustainability at Work: Careers that make a difference (2016), an Editor at GreenBiz, and a host of the China CleanTech Podcast with New Energy Nexus.

Prior to Climate Finance Fund, Marilyn was the Climate and Clean Energy Finance Program Officer at William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a Strategy Executive at AREVA (Nuclear Power and Renewable Energy) in Paris, France, a Senior Research Fellow at Project Drawdown, an Energy Lead at Village Capital, and a Science and Tech Policy Fellow at the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.

She previously studied Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University, worked as a World Food Programme Fellow in Southern Madagascar, and obtained her MSc in Engineering for Sustainable Development from University of Cambridge.

Check out the Climate Finance Podcast website for more information.

Topics discussed:

• Marilyn’s climate journey / sustainable career transitions from working in Madagascar, China, and France to working in Philanthropy, Sustainable finance, and Venture capital.

• Eureka moment: How Marilyn’s experience with unreliable electricity in Madagascar and corporate R&D strategies in France shaped her focus towards mobilising capital for Climate and Clean Energy solutions.

• William & Flora Hewlett Foundation’s Climate Finance Strategy 2018-23.

• Implications of Passive Asset Management on ESG, Decarbonisation, and incorporation of Climate Risks and Impacts.

• Unrealised potential of deposits ($100+ trillion globally) at Credit Unions (Community Financial Institutions) and Retail Banks to fight climate change.

• Global expansion of Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF).

• Case Study: Clean Energy Credit Union - An American Credit Union providing affordable consumer loans for clean energy products and services.

• The role of Venture Capital in enabling Climate and Clean Energy solutions.

• European Union - Complex Finance and Climate Policy Landscape.

• Climate Policies and Actions in the United States
  (Check out Marilyn’s testimony to the U.S Senate Committee on Finance, Housing, and Urban Affairs and Marilyn’s response to Public Input on Climate Change Disclosures to the SEC).

• Policy Innovation in China - Pilot Zones and Central Bank Green Lending (Check out S2E7 and S3E1 on the China CleanTech Podcast).

• Diversity Imperative in Climate Investment Management

• Diversity Initiative Case study: VC Include Fellowship.

Note: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as investment advice. The interview took place on 21st February 2022.