Lorenzo Bernasconi

I am Chairman of the Board of Emergent, a new intermediary to drive large-scale private finance for the preservation of the world's rainforests. I am a Former Managing Director for Innovative Finance at The Rockefeller Foundation. My responsibilities included managing the Zero Gap portfolio, a flagship initiative of the Foundation to support a next generation of financial products and instruments to mobilize large-scale investment towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Zero Gap spans a grant portfolio of 50 initiatives across 28 countries as well as an impact investment fund created in partnership with the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation with the aim of mobilizing more than $1 billion in new investment to address the SDGs.

Prior to joining the Foundation, I worked at Dalberg Global Development Advisors, the Boston Consulting Group, and the investment banking division of UBS.

I hold dual Ecuadorian and Swiss citizenship. I received my bachelor’s degree in economics and philosophy at the London School of Economics, a PhD at Cambridge University, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Columbia University’s Earth Institute.  I sit on the board of Spring Bank, a Bronx-based community bank, the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF) dedicated to the promotion of new modes of inquiry and interdisciplinarity in the social sciences. I also serve as advisor to the Global Innovative Lab for Climate Finance.