About Us - Lestari Capital

Connecting Markets to Conservation

Our role in the environmental finance sector is to foster growth in the community of projects that conserve and restore our world’s ecosystems, by connecting them with responsible finance in the global marketplace.

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Our Purpose

Lestari Capital connects markets to conservation: we finance outcomes on the ground through ethical and efficient mechanisms, to support the adaptation of more equitable market systems.

Through partnership with commodities companies, financial institutions and supply chain actors, we develop and grow sources of demand for ecosystem services projects. Our work ensures that corporate sustainability standards and certifications have verified impact, while addressing a critical lack of long-term finance for conservation and restoration initiatives.

We are piloting this approach in Indonesia by developing a portfolio of high-impact conservation projects connected to financing from the commodities sector that will last for 25 years or longer. Our Indonesia portfolio enables compliance with the requirements of sustainable commodity certification bodies, such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

Our pilot, the Sustainable Commodities Conservation Mechanism (SCCM) can accommodate a blend of public and private capital, providing a flexible platform that can facilitate compliance with the requirements of existing or future standards that enable companies to access increasingly discriminating global markets.

Our Vision

Our vision of success at Lestari Capital is a world where no ecosystem is left stranded and where every natural area is recognized for the value of the services it provides to both local communities and the global commons.

Our role in the environmental finance sector is to foster growth in the community of projects that conserve and restore our world’s ecosystems, by connecting them with responsible finance in the global marketplace.

We support collective efforts to weaken the market drivers of unsustainable land use change, along with efforts to redefine market rewards for companies that protect and restore vulnerable ecosystems in their area of operations. Our mission is to support this process through ethical and efficient conservation finance mechanisms and market development for high-quality projects.

Our vision is to support a large-scale adaptation of market systems, by fundamentally changing the cost and benefit of doing business for sectors that impact vulnerable ecosystems. For commodity actors, this means mitigating and, where stakeholders demand it, redressing environmental impacts. For projects, this means securing reliable, results-based finance to sustain their positive impacts on the ground. In doing this, we address two critical distortions in global markets, which are represented by each “pie piece” in the Lestari Capital logo.

Our Values

We are an advocate for ecosystems; including the communities that rely on them, and those working to protect them.

We lead by example to show that equitable market mechanisms can deliver lasting conservation outcomes

We seek ethical participation of the private sector in conservation

We seek to foster a holistic understanding of land use from the market to the ground, rooted in transparency

Our interdisciplinary background in conservation and finance leads us to recognize the importance of verified conservation outcomes.

Our work to promote efficient private sector investment in conservation does not, and never will, support or endorse “cut and pay” systems.

We acknowledge and defend the rights of the local communities that depend on our world’s ecosystems.

Gabriel Eickhoff

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Gabriel brings more than 15 years of experience designing and developing landscape protection and rehabilitation projects in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa. Gabriel brings a wide range of experience on policy, forestry and climate change issues at national and jurisdictional levels, with a focus on conservation finance. Prior to starting a leading forest conservation company with technical services in Indonesia, Laos and Vietnam, Gabriel led the development of some of the first REDD+ programs in Asia. He has also worked extensively on poverty and environmental issues in central Africa.

Michal Zrust

Co-Founder & Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO)

Michal leads outreach and business development with the sustainable commodities sector, drawing on more than 10 years of experience working in the conservation, biodiversity and corporate sustainability space in Southeast Asia. Michal also leads the vetting and on-boarding process with partner conservation projects, drawing on years of field biodiversity conservation experience working with NGOs in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, including the Zoological Society of London. Michal sits on numerous technical working groups, including for the RSPO and HCSA; a reflection of his strong understanding of the conservation challenges and priorities in Indonesia.

Dr. Sarah M Walker

Chief Conservation Officer

Dr. Walker has over fifteen years of experience in climate and land-use change, with experience across twenty-five countries. Dr. Walker is a global scientific expert and program director for climate change mitigation, resiliency, sustainability, ecosystem valuation, greenhouse gas accounting, and the environmental and economic impact of land use management decisions and commodity production. Dr. Walker is a leading architect of and advisor to a range of national and jurisdictional REDD+ readiness programs along with the regulatory (CDM) and voluntary ecosystem service markets (VCS, ACR, CCB). She’s authored five regulatory and voluntary market approved methodologies and is the lead author on standards, methodological approaches, technical assistance, training programs, and tools on climate change mitigation, sustainable commodity production, resiliency and GHG accounting. She holds a PhD in Environmental Science from the University of Virginia.

Dr. Gary Paoli

Chair of Advisory Board

Gary provides strategic guidance to Lestari Capital, drawing on more than 25 years of experience working on sustainability issues in Indonesia. Gary is a founding partner of Daemeter, a leading consulting firm in Indonesia, which provides smart solutions to policy makers, international institutions, NGOs and private sector clients. Gary holds a PhD in Biology from the University of Michigan and leads Daemeter's program in sustainable palm oil, combining research, outreach and training with diverse stakeholder groups.

Alexander Hanrath

Chief Operating and Financial Officer

Alexander leads Lestari’s financial strategy and management, and oversees operations. He brings over 15 years experience in Environmental Finance, Venture Capital and Startup Management. After starting his career with J.P. Morgan Investment Banking, he joined Climate Change Capital advising on Asian renewable energy projects and later as VP in the Climate Change Capital Private Equity team. He has also served as CFO of several VC-backed clean-technology businesses. Alexander has lived and worked in Asia, Europe, North and South America and holds an MSc in Financial Economics and an MSc in Environmental Technology and Policy from Imperial College London.

Colin Lee

Head of Corporate Development

For over two decades, Colin has helped companies and individuals transform issues into opportunities, foster trust with stakeholders and develop robust and credible reputations. Having served in local, regional and global leadership roles in blue-chip companies such as IBM, Red Hat, Dell and Cargill, Colin has also spoken publicly as a subject matter expert in a wide range of subjects – from Business Management, Marketing, Corporate Communications and Stakeholder Engagement, to Reputation Management, Corporate Social Responsibility, Rural Community Development, and Sustainable Development. As Head of Corporate Development of Lestari Capital, Colin leads in communications strategy, business development outreach, customer relationship management, and plays a leadership role in the company’s continued innovation and development to make the protection of the world’s natural assets a viable commercial reality.

Dr. Henri Sitorus

Head Of Project Outreach

Dr. Henri Sitorus oversees all aspects of partnership for conservation project implementation of Lestari Capital. He aims to work in partnership with project proponents including with International NGOs, National NGOs, corporate sector to engage in conservation and sustainability projects. He has expertise in sustainability and environmental governance, enriched with his extensive experience in rural development in Indonesia which will contribute to the achievement of effective conservation projects such as Hutan Desa, Ecosystem Restoration Concessions or REDD+. Henri earned Msc in Poverty Reduction and Development Management and PhD in Environmental Sociology. He brings his academic experiences and expertise in project management, sustainable development program/project evaluations and research, and strong network in rural development as well as conservation. He previously also served as Country Director of Heifer International in Indonesia, where he engaged with projects on community development integrated with agroecology through sustainable livelihoods program. In addition, he has been team leader for various project evaluation related to poverty alleviation and environmental resources management.

Tito Adikusumo

Strategy and Policy Analyst

With experience as a technical adviser for the World Bank and as an environment expert for Indonesia's House of Parliament, Tito serves as the Policy and Strategy Analyst for Lestari Capital. His degree in engineering from Bandung Institute of Technology led him on a quest to understand the wider dynamics of how we use our planet's natural resources. Tito also worked in Chicago for a think-tank to design financial tools and governance mechanisms to revitalize Chicago’s river, and researched methods to deploy market mechanisms in Brazil to curb deforestation in the Amazon. Tito continually strives to better understand political and economic policy dynamics in Indonesia, and to gather market intelligence that can promote greater private sector engagement in conservation. Tito holds a Master degree in Environmental Policy from the University of Chicago.

Tan Yi Ting

Head of Finance and Operations

Yi Ting handles an array of management tasks for Lestari Capital as a key member of the operations team. In addition to financial management, Yi Ting focuses on improving the internal processes of the company, drawing on years of experience working with several of the Big 4 accounting firms. As a financial auditor, Yi Ting has conducted audits for publicly traded companies and multinational corporations across multiple sectors, including education, shipping, investment property and public enterprises for economic development.

Indra Divayana

Spatial Analyst And Conservation Portfolio Assistant

Indra leads the development, maintenance, and continual improvement of Lestari Capital’s Database and GIS system. Indra also responsible on conducting spatial analyses needed in the project portfolio pipeline development and assisting in onboarding all prospective Lestari Capital conservation and restoration projects. He has experience working with private companies, such as PT Remark Asia, and several NGOs, including INOBU, GIZ, ICRAF and UNDP. In these roles he was involved in supporting forest and land use management programs, stakeholder engagement, and HCS-HCV assessments. He has a Master's degree in Forest Management Science and a Bachelor's degree in Forest Management from Bogor Agricultural University in Bogor.

Rini Mulyasari

Administrative Personnel

Rini is responsible for the administrative and operations work for Lestari Capital Indonesia and works closely with her finance and administration counterparts in Singapore to ensure the Indonesia office runs smoothly and continues to grow. She brings with her over 15 years of experience in the Finance and Administrative fields. Prior to joining Lestari Capital, she was the Head of Accounting, Finance and Tax at IT, Garment and Retails Company. Rini maintains compliance and relationships with national and local governments. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Accountancy from the University of Mercu Buana.

Griffin Ichiba Hotchkiss

Crypto-Economic Advisor

Griffin advises Lestari Capital on the evolution of the blockchain space and its potential to re-align incentives to protect the world's natural capital assets. His primary role is to research decentralized methods to sustain conservation outcomes, along with writing for our Medium blog which promotes the intersection between the blockchain space and the conservation community. Griffin draws on wide-ranging experience in Southeast Asia, both as a lecturer for the Singapore Ministry of Education and as a market analyst in Myanmar where he focused on emerging land use and supply chain trends. Griffin is also a technical writer for the Colony project, a protocol for decentralized organizations on Ethereum.

We strive to lead by example through our work, particularly by showcasing how ecosystem services can be equitably financed through market systems.

We also strive to raise the bar for quality conservation and restoration outcome through selection criteria that ensures each project has been developed according to best practices, has been independently audited and is endorsed by participating local communities and government agencies.

At the pilot stage of the SCCM, the processes by which we engage with both projects and private companies will be reviewed by an independent third-party, with the results published and incorporated into our ESG policy. Lestari Capital’s Environmental, Social and Governance Policy (ESG) guides our overall engagement framework, both within the company and with our clients, partners and project portfolio members.

Lestari Capital ESG Policy

Our Purpose, Vision and Values

Connecting Markets to Conservation

Our role in the environmental finance sector is to foster growth in the community of projects that conserve and restore our world’s ecosystems, by connecting them with responsible finance in the global marketplace.

Our Purpose

Our Vision

Our Values