About Us
Our Team
WCI Fund’s founding members each have served over 30 years each in their respective careers in financial services and women’s empowerment and gender equality within agriculture and natural resource management. This powerful combination of domain experience combined with their team of professionals and partners bring long-standing global relationships with government and private sector investors, and global asset managers with a deep understanding of frontier and environmental markets.
Jeannette Gurung, PhD
Jeannette’s career has focused on gender equality within climate change-related organizations, both public and private, and their projects. She has a MSc in forestry from the University of Washington, and a PhD in Gender and Development from the University of East Anglia. With expertise in certification and standards, monitoring and evaluation, training, research, gender and organizational analysis, policy advocacy and network building, Jeannette is the innovator of the W+ Standard ™ to quantify and verify benefits to women through the use of a results-based financing approach, providing ways for companies, governments, organizations and individuals to drive and measure social and economic empowerment for women. Jeannette has a MSc in forestry from the University of Washington, and a PhD in Gender and Development from the University of East Anglia. She has managed several projects for the UN and multi-lateral development banks and governments; served as Advisor to the Gold Standard Climate Smart Agriculture Panel and Fair Trade Carbon Group of Experts, FAO’s Policy Committee on Incentives for Ecosystem Services, and UNFCCC’s Expert Group on Gender and Climate.
Lee West
Lee West brings almost 35 years of financial services and investing background to the Women and Climate Impact Fund. Lee’s goal is to promote gender equality through commercially viable funding vehicles that stimulate the creation of unique projects, products and services within climate change-related investments for renewable energy, water, waste and resource recovery, sustainable food and agriculture, and sustainable forest management in the developing countries.
Lee has helped introduced financial incentives that encourage institutional sponsors to invest directly into agricultural development and gender mainstreaming programs using the W+ Standard in developed and developing countries that directly impact women. He feels strongly that these programs should repatriate a disproportionate of those credits and incentives directly back into the local communities and NGO’s. Lee has gained substantial perspective working together with WOCAN as a board member since 2012 and helping develop the W+ Standard.
Mr. West’s diverse experience includes over 17 years incubating over 200 hedge funds and money managers across the US with over $34bn in assets and assisted in the formation of over 1,700 investment entities, offering back-office infrastructure and support, outsourced trading, administration, research, facilities management, compliance, legal and accounting services. He has served as a Director and Board Member for an environmental commodities exchange operating in over 25 countries, that supported the trading of carbon credits, water rights, renewable energy, and other global environmental commodities.
Lee works in Los Angeles and attended the University of California at Irvine (UCI) and Los Angeles (UCLA) studying both Economics and Business.
Our Partners
The FairClimateFund finances projects which both reduce carbon emissions and also offer a better future to the most vulnerable by investing in projects for clean cooking methods for households in developing countries in line with Fairtrade principles. Usually in climate projects, the people that generate the carbon credits do not own the climate project and receive nothing in return for the carbon credits. While profits are being made elsewhere in the supply chain, the FairClimateFund assures that projects are set up by local communities to ensure bottom-up development; local households own the project and carbon credits that they generate themselves; local households receive a fair minimum price for the carbon credits, and projects create long term employment and significantly improve the daily lives of the most vulnerable. Fairtrade Carbon Credits are sold to companies, organizations and individuals.
What We Do
Invest and co-invest
The Fund will focus on making co-investments with leading globally recognized institutions, governments and project developers across environmental projects in renewable energy, water, waste and resource recovery, sustainable food and agriculture, and sustainable forest management in the developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Provide Technical Assistance
We have the technical expertise to advise and provide technical assistance to project developers to design and measure results for both women’s empowerment and climate impacts. Experts guide developers of climate –related projects, SMEs, women’s organizations and companies receiving WCI Fund investments to implement projects that achieve the highest possible results for both gender equality and climate action.