At this year’s Yale Philanthropy Conference, themed “Catalyzing Change,” Prime Coalition’s Executive Director, Sarah Kearney, participated in a panel alongside Sheena Strawter-Anthony, Director of Impact Investment Strategy at the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund. Liqian Ma, Global Head of Sustainable and Impact Investing Research at Cambridge Associates and Prime Fund Advisory Committee member, moderated the discussion. The conversation centered on “the evolution and challenges of impact investing in philanthropy.” Together, they explored the promise of catalytic capital—how philanthropists can deploy charitable dollars while offering the possibility of financial recovery—and how it is distinct and also complementary to mission investing among returns-prioritizing investors.

Lara Pierpoint joins Addison Stark, CEO and Co-Founder of AtmosZero, and Sasha Bukhari, Data & Ecosystem Associate at the Cleantech Group, for a fireside chat entitled Catalytic Capital: The Future of Climate Infrastructure.

Gigi Alsaadi, CRANE fellow at Prime Coalition, highlights the essential role of nonprofits in scaling sustainable technologies at the Sustainable Engineers Association's (SEA) “2025 Sustainability Conference: Adaptation – Planning for Future Challenges."

This year, Trellis Climate organized a two-part panel “Achieving Speed and Scale: Financial Tools for Catalyzing FOAK Climate Projects” at Verge 2024 in San Jose, CA. The session was focused on highlighting the role of corporate partnerships for supply, plant construction, and offtake in bridging the commercialization gap.

Lara Pierpoint, Managing Director of Trellis Climate, took part in the 2024 Carbon Removal Capital Summit in San Francisco. This summit, organized by Santander CIB in collaboration with the XPRIZE Foundation, brought together global leaders and experts in carbon management to discuss pivotal strategies for rebalancing Earth's carbon cycle.

Lara Pierpoint moderated a panel titled Innovative Financing Models for Carbon Removal Projects, alongside four incredible women who are unlocking new approaches to finance CDR, including Annalise Downey, Head of Climate Consulting at Sylvera, April Allderdice, CEO of MicroEnergy Credits, Nicole Pasricha, Head of Climate and Impact at ALMA, and Shirin Jamshidi, Director of Investments, Asia, Middle East, North Africa at the DFC.

Members of the Trellis Climate team, including Managing Director Lara Pierpoint, Principal Emily Lewis O'Brian, and Principal Lee Scott, spoke at several New York Climate Week events while also attending a dozen sessions focused on the critical capital gap faced by climate technologies as they scale for impact. The Trellis team’s active participation in these conversations around First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) climate projects brought forward invaluable insights on the challenges and opportunities for accelerating the transition to a net-zero economy by supporting FOAK projects.

Prime Coalition was honored to attend the White House’s Climate Capital Convening for an engaged discussion about driving capital to climate solutions, centered around the Biden administration’s Investing in America agenda, on May 30, 2024.