nature-based-solutions
(3)
Saif Bhatti
Saif Bhatti is the founder and CEO of Renoster, an Austin-based carbon credit ratings agency that uses remote sensing and open science to grade nature-based carbon projects on whether they actually remove carbon. He started the company in 2019 as anti-poaching technology - a device that listens for gunshots on the African savanna to protect rhinos - and pivoted it into one of the sharpest, most independent watchdogs in the voluntary carbon market. A Northwestern-trained industrial engineer and philosopher turned data scientist, he has helped review hundreds of millions of credits and published deep-transparency reports that have rattled some of the world's largest carbon projects.
Kurt Tsuo
Kurt Tsuo is the Chief Business Officer of Varaha, a Gurugram-based carbon removal company building high-integrity credits with smallholder farmers across Asia and Africa. A Harvard-trained economist who spent seven years in agriculture before it was a climate headline, he has built business lines at the Gates Foundation, Farmer's Business Network, ProducePay, and Breakthrough Energy, and co-founded the carbon storage startup Graphyte. His through-line is unglamorous and stubborn: make the economics of fixing carbon work for the people who actually grow food.
Troy Carter
Troy Carter is the CEO and Co-Founder of Earthshot Labs, a Sebastopol, California-based climate tech company that uses AI-driven ecological modeling, satellite data, and geospatial analysis to develop, finance, and verify nature-based carbon projects at planetary scale. Before founding Earthshot in 2020, Carter co-founded RIZOME, a bamboo building materials company, and was an early employee at Airbnb. Raised on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands and educated at Stanford, he brings a rare combination of entrepreneurial grit and ecological urgency to the carbon markets, with Earthshot managing 50+ client projects across more than one million hectares and directing $55M+ in project financing.