And how he thinks about impact, environmental optimism, and scaling solutions
I’m delighted to introduce my friend and former colleague, Rich Gilmore, to readers of this newsletter.
Rich and I worked together at The Nature Conservancy for many years; he led our Australia unit and was a conservation finance lead in Asia during my tenure as CEO. At the time, our main strategy at TNC was pretty simple: given TNC’s size and financial strengths, we wanted to pursue the biggest and boldest conservation initiatives we could think of. Size is not everything, of course, but if you’re looking to have a big impact by protecting nature, doing things in as large a way as possible is usually a good way to make that happen.
Rich was a great colleague—super smart, fearless, always ready to not only challenge the private and the philanthropic sectors to step up, he also challenged TNC leaders like me too. Rich devised and led some of our boldest strategies. He left TNC shortly after I did in 2020 and today is the CEO of Carbon Growth Partners (CGP), a leading investor in the nature-based carbon business.
Please meet Rich.