Team
Katie MacDonald, Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Katie MacDonald is a climate activist, investor, and innovation policy expert who has been working on climate change since she skipped school at 17 to protest for offshore wind. She is the co-founder of Tailwind, an innovation studio focused on accelerating innovation for climate adaptation and resilience solutions. Before Tailwind, Katie served as Director of Tech to Market at the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) where she was responsible for the organization’s early-stage startup investment portfolio. In her role Katie oversaw a portfolio of over $200M in investments and including innovation programs focused on building decarbonization, finance and insurance, energy storage supply chain development, product manufacturing, industrial decarbonization, and carbon removal.
Katie launched several new programs while at NYSERDA including the organization’s first ever startup equity investment program (New York Climate Progress), the nation’s first $20M research and commercialization hub for carbon removal companies based at Columbia University (the Carbontech Development Initiative), and the first publicly funded Insurance Accelerator. Katie also led the development of a new partnership between NYSERDA, and the country of Denmark focused on carbon removal and green hydrogen innovation that was announced at COP26.
Previously, Katie led Partnerships at Greentown Labs, North America’s largest climate tech incubator, where she founded the ‘Greentown Go’ program and ran seven unique accelerators designed to commercialize climate solutions from green hydrogen to advanced energy storage. Katie’s work at Greentown has enabled companies to raise over $300M (and counting) in follow-on funding. Before Greentown Labs, Katie served as the Executive Director of Cleantech Open Northeast, a regional accelerator for climate tech startups based in Boston, and as a Regional Divestment Organizer for 350.org. Katie is a Truman National Security Project Security Fellow and co-lead of the organization’s Climate Affinity group. She has served on a variety of non-profit boards, supporting climate policy and water policy work and is on the Advisory Board of America Adapts, a podcast on how climate change is shaping the US. She is a graduate of the Environmental Studies Program at UMass Amherst where she graduated with honors.
Emilie Mazzacurati, Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Emilie is a climate tech entrepreneur and investor with 18 years of experience working at the intersection of climate change and capital markets. She is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Tailwind, an innovation studio focused on accelerating innovation for climate adaptation and resilience solutions. Emilie is also a Board Member of Climate Resilience for All, a gender-focused climate adaptation nonprofit dedicated to the protection of people and livelihoods from extreme heat and all its impacts.
In 2012, Emilie founded Four Twenty Seven, a climate risk analytics firm that pioneered the use of climate data in financial decisions. Four Twenty Seven’s work laid the foundation for large financial institutions to integrate physical risk considerations in investment and lending decisions globally, winning the Risk Market Award for Alternative Data of the Year in 2019. Four Twenty Seven also led groundbreaking work on heat and adaptation with the state of California with the California Heat Assessment Tool (CHAT: cal-heat.org), and with hospitals and local governments across the US, earning First Prize in the ESRI Challenge of Climate Change and Human Health as part of its commitment to the White House 2015 Climate Data Initiative. Four Twenty Seven was acquired by Moody’s Corporation in 2019, and Emilie took a leadership role as Managing Director, Global Head of Climate Solutions to spearhead the integration of climate risk analytics in Moody’s offering. Previously, Emilie was Head of Research at Thomson Reuters Point Carbon, where she directed research and modeling on carbon markets and decarbonization.
Emilie has published extensively and is a frequent public speaker on the impacts of climate change in financial markets and on adaptation finance. She is an advisor to the Climate Bonds Initiative Resilience Taxonomy Advisory Group, to several startups, and to the Global Adaptation and Resilience Investor group (GARI), which she helped co-found in 2016.
Emilie taught at the University of California, Davis Executive MBA on Business & Climate Change from 2013 to 2019. She holds a Master’s of Political Science from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris and a Master’s of Public Policy from UC Berkeley. She has received multiple awards for her work, including the Berkeley Visionary Award and Top 100 People in Finance.
Brooke Zhang, Senior Associate
Brooke Zhang is a Senior Associate with Tailwind, where she conducts research on adaptation and resilience innovations, maladaptation, and the social impacts of climate change. Prior to Tailwind, Brooke developed the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion program at an environmental law firm and worked as an in-house consultant with multiple climatetech companies. In addition to her work at Tailwind, she is the project manager for a pioneering hardtech climate incubator that Urban Future Lab and Secondmuse are leading. She recently earned a M.S. in Sustainability Management from Columbia Climate School and is a graduate of UC Berkeley.
David Babikian, Senior Associate
David Babikian is a Senior Associate with Tailwind, where he conducts market research on supply and demand for adaptation and resilience technologies. David’s career focuses on the climate resilience and commodities spaces, spanning work with policymakers, investment firms, and NGOs. In addition to being a Senior Associate at Tailwind, he is a fellow at Climate Cabinet, a nonprofit focused on helping policymakers run, win, and legislate on climate, and a fellow with Closed Loop Partners, an investment firm in the commodities space. He is a graduate of Princeton University.
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