John has over 15 years of renewable energy development experience in Africa, having moved to South Africa in 2007 to run the Clinton Climate Initiative’s utility- scale solar park efforts which culminated in the successful renewable energy independent power producer program (REIPPPP).

John was concurrently the C40 Climate Leadership Group’s City Director for Johannesburg supporting the development and financing of municipal sustainable infrastructure projects including Joburg’s and Africa’s first bus rapid transit investment which has reduced over 300,000 tonnes of CO2 annually since 2010. Additional firsts include Joburg’s first non-motorized transit infrastructure in Soweto, the testing of clean ethanol buses run on locally grown sugar beet, and the first energy efficiency building retrofit performance contracts that financed carbon reducing projects from future
electricity savings.

John was the Country Manager of Symbion Power’s Ugandan operations developing a 33 MW peat plant and supported the development of crude to power and renewable energy projects in Madagascar. He was also the Country Manager for a two year pilot with Eskom managing a team of 30 employees for Comverge, a Nasdaq listed demand response company taken private. He was was the Deputy Chief of Party for the USAID’s South African Low Emissions Development Program and was a Power Africa transaction advisor and credit enhancement specialist for the Deloitte run SAEP program. He currently advises a Cape Town based renewable energy PE firm with a commercial and industrial solar focus across Africa with utility scale renewable energy assets under management in Namibia, South Africa,
and Mozambique.

John previously worked for the Federal Bank of St. Louis, McDonnell Douglas Aerospace, and Sustainable Finance (prior to the firm’s sale to PwC in 2007). He holds a BA from Colgate University and an MA in International Economics and Finance from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).