Team Management and Advisory Team
Management Team
Andrew Miller, Managing Director and Founder
Alberto Lacouture, Director of Operations and Business Development
Board of Advisors
John Scharffenberger, Co-Founder, Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker
Dr. Florencia Montagnini, Director of the Program in Tropical Forestry, Global Inst. of Sustainable Forestry, Yale University
Dr. Margaret Zeigler, Founder and Deputy Director, The Congressional Hunger Center
Carmen Herold, Sustainable Tropical Forestry Specialist, Defensores de la Naturaleza
Toby Tiktinsky, Senior Client Manager, Ecosecurities
Management Team
Andrew Miller, Managing Director and Founder. Most recently Andrew planned, financed, and managed overseas development projects, including several large USAID-funded programs in Bolivia, Nicaragua, Honduras and Kenya. Projects incorporated agriculture, natural resource management, health and infrastructure components. In this capacity, he performed monitoring and evaluation, financial and technical oversight, compliance, planning and policy advocacy. Prior, he served as strategy consultant and economic researcher on UN and IADB projects in South America. He worked as a consultant at the firm Moore Iacofano Goltsman to a variety of public sector and nonprofit clients in California on management and policy planning and organizational development. Before that, as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala, he fundraised and implemented commercial fruit tree and greenhouse projects where he brokered public and private partnerships, community training and long-range planning. These boosted household income and the latter was scaled up significantly, becoming a cash flow positive social enterprise that continues today. Andrew has master degrees in public affairs and urban/regional planning from Princeton University, an MBA from IE Business School in Spain where he was a Fulbright recipient, and a BA from Brown University. He was a Mickey Leland Hunger Fellow with the Congressional Hunger Center. He is fluent in Spanish and conversant in Portuguese and has backpacked through much of Latin America on a shoestring. He brings to Foresta a strong network within the business, multilateral and development assistance communities in Latin America.
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Alberto Lacouture, Director of Operations and Business Development. Alberto served as vice president of a major Colombian agro-industrial company with 2,500 hectares of landholdings, 500 employees and $20 million in annual revenues. He helped facilitate a partnership between the company and Colombia’s Office of the President to create jobs, provide technical assistance and guarantee a market to a local farmers cooperative. In conjunction with a local nonprofit, the company assists 91 families with an estimated 58,000 workdays generated. The company shared knowhow to boost members’ productivity and income. Additionally, Alberto successfully founded more than 8 companies in different industries including hazardous waste management, restaurants and agriculture and negotiated financial exit with other shareholders for several of these. He is completing his MBA at IE Business School and holds an M.Sc. in corporate finance. Through a key partnership facilitated by Alberto, Foresta Capital will benefit from strong local expertise around land acquisition, logistics, human resources, government relations and finance while also sharing certain overhead costs, such as office facilities.
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Board of Advisors
John Scharffenberger, Co-Founder, Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker. Mr. Scharffenberger is currently on the Advisory Board of the
Dr. Florencia Montagnini, Professor in the Practice of Tropical Forestry, and Director of the Program in Tropical Forestry, Global Institute of Sustainable Forestry, Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Professor Montagnini's research centers on variables controlling the sustainability of managed ecosystems, such as plantations and agroforestry systems, in the tropics, with special emphasis on Latin America. Identification and quantification of ecological services provided by forest ecosystems, including biodiversity, carbon sequestration and watershed protection. Projects that she is currently conducting include the role of native tree species in plantations and sustainable agroforestry systems in reclaiming degraded areas with species of economic value; the identification and quantification of ecological services provided by forests (biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration, and water); forest landscape restoration; and tropical plantation silviculture with a focus on mixed species. Her research examines the social factors and policies that influence the adoption of agroforestry and forestry systems in developing countries as well as Payments for Environmental Services as tools to promote restoration and rural development. She collaborates with institutions such as CATIE (Tropical Agriculture Research and Higher Education Center, Costa Rica) and universities in Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama, Argentina, and Brazil. Professor Montagnini has written over 100 scientific articles for international journals, and several books on agroforestry systems and tropical forest ecology and management. She teaches courses in tropical forest ecology and management, soil science, agroforestry, and restoration ecology. She is scientific advisor to PRORENA (Native Species Reforestation Project) at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
Dr. Margaret Zeigler, Founder and Deputy Director, The Congressional Hunger Center. Margaret established the Congressional Hunger Center, an anti-hunger leadership development organization based in Washington, D.C. where she manages organizational development, liaises with corporate and congressional donors and serves as a spokesperson for international hunger and relief and development activities. She worked with U.S. Congressional staff and non-government advocacy organizations to design key legislative and policy initiatives for international food security. She monitors international hunger, refugee and sustainable development issues, interacting regularly with non-governmental organizations, multilateral institutions, and government agencies. She regularly contributes articles and edits publications related to global hunger issues. She co-chairs the US NGO Working Group on UN IFAD and the Committee on Development Policy and Practice at InterAction. She taught for 10 years as adjunct faculty at George Washington University and University of Cincinnati. She brings a wealth of contacts from the U.S. Congress and UN Secretariat staff, WFP, UNICEF, FAO, IFAD and UNHCR staff in the U.S. and overseas. Margaret has a Ph.D. in Geography and International Development Studies from the University of Cincinnati.
Carmen Herold, Sustainable Tropical Forestry Specialist, Defensores de la Naturaleza. Carmen has expertise in tropical forestry planning and management. She earned a master's in sustainable forestry management and business administration from Universidad del Valle, one of the foremost institutions for tropical forestry in the region. She is currently leading the implementation of Guatemala’s National Botanical Garden and serves as a manager for Defensores de la Naturaleza, an environmental NGO in Guatemala. Prior, she managed and consulted on several projects with the Nature Conservancy, including forestry inventories, community watershed and forestry management plans, and hydrological mapping and management.
Toby Tiktinsky, Senior Client Manager, Ecosecurities. Toby has expertise with both the voluntary and regulatory carbon markets. He has eight years of experience developing emission reduction opportunities across a spectrum of technologies and industries, including oil and gas, biofuels, energy, mining, and heavy industries. Prior to his current post, he served as Senior Origination and Regional Coordination Manager in Dubai and Pakistan.
Founders & Company History
Foresta Capital was born in the summer of 2007 when founder Andrew Miller attended the Latin American Carbon Forum in Lima, Peru and realized the vast potential of capital markets and carbon finance to catalyze reforestation activities on a broad scale beyond what government and nonprofits were capable of. The concept continued to evolve as an academic project at IE Business School in Madrid, Spain. It was a collaborative effort among several teammates who worked on the project through the institute's "Venture Lab" business incubator program. The team was comprised of individuals from the US, Latin America and Europe. The project earned several plaudits, winning the Sumaq Alliance's annual Net Impact contest for best social enterprise and as a finalist at the school's own "Venture Day" competition. Indeed, Foresta is the product of a long-term, collective effort of an international team. The members of the Venture Lab team included David Suárez of Colombia, David López of Spain, Adolph Schutt of Guatemala, Gabriel Storch of Uruguay, and Andrés Krutzfeldt of Bolivia as well as Andrew Miller who hails from Berkeley, California.