Lorenzo’s research focuses on how the carbon markets are shaping climate finance flows.

Lorenzo has worked on climate finance and impact investing for over 15 years with a passion for entrepreneurship, business model innovation, and innovative finance.  He is founding Board Chair Emergent Forest Finance Accelerator, a new intermediary focused on mobilizing large-scale private capital for the preservation of the world’s rainforests through the carbon markets.

He previously served as Managing Director at The Rockefeller Foundation where he led the foundation’s innovate finance portfolio.  His 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). As part of Zero Gap, he managed 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 Rockefeller, Lorenzo worked at Dalberg Global Development Advisors, the Boston Consulting Group, and the investment banking division of UBS.

Lorenzo sits on the investment committee and Board of the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF), a private foundation dedicated to the promotion of new modes of inquiry and interdisciplinarity in the social sciences.  Lorenzo is also a Director of Spring Bank, a Bronx-based CDFI bank, and the first B-Corp bank in New York state.  He also serves as an advisor to the Global Innovative Lab for Climate Finance and is a member of the Global Advisory Council to the Oxford Sustainable Finance Programme.

Lorenzo holds dual Ecuadorian and Swiss citizenship. He did his undergraduate studies at the London School of Economics with a degree in philosophy and economics and completed a PhD in philosophy at Cambridge University.  He completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Columbia University’s Earth Institute.