Amy Duffuor

Amy Duffuor started her climate journey in the back of a pickup truck in Indonesia, now she gets to choose what climate startups get funded. Rooted in social justice, she is passionate about investments that have real outcomes for people most affected by the climate crisis.

“For me, with my hybrid background and being driven by the end impact on people, I tend to be drawn to companies that have more of an intersectional impact. That's one of the reasons I really love agriculture.”

So delighted to speak with you today Amy. You’ve moved from finance and banking into VC, and specifically funding climate startups. How did you get here?

Where I am now is the confluence of my experience in business, finance, and impact. My career started focused on social justice. I was an immigration researcher, looking at the movement of people and how marginalized immigrants from West Africa were becoming integrated and civically engaged in whatever host country they were in. I come with this background focused on social impact, and am particularly interested in intersectional impacts that play a role in all our lives. 

The climate movement hasn’t always done a good job of focusing on intersectional impacts. But the people impacted by climate change are disproportionately low income communities and communities of color, and it will affect health, the food we eat, how we learn, and who moves from place to place. For me, the question quickly became how can we address this crazy crisis? And how can we do it in the shortest amount of time possible? I came back to technology as a way to harness and drive that climate impact, hopefully, sooner rather than later.

When I think about climate and sustainability I don’t just think about the polar ice caps melting, but about the people that are impacted today. What are we doing to make sure they and their children and their children's children have the same right to enjoy life and live on this planet as others do. 

“What are we doing to make sure they and their children and their children's children have the same right to enjoy life and live on this planet as others do.”

That’s a really powerful arc of how you began to work on climate solutions, and I love that it is really underpinned by the human element. Did this change start happening at Oxford?

You know, it was not officially part of my studies at Oxford. I was speaking to people, but climate change didn’t always resonate with me. It felt like it was always the same homogenous group of people talking about reefs and rainforests. When I started to hear about the communities that were impacted, and movements around environmental justice, that really created the link between my social impact experience and climate impact.

Climate is an element that we all have in common, and there is a momentum where we all want to focus on how we can really address this existential threat. 

I'm curious about your process; how did you make the change from being outside to moving into the climate impact space?

Before I went to business school, I was running early-stage social venture accelerators around Southeast Asia. I was doing everything from sourcing to running training workshops. The companies that we worked with were from various sectors such as financial inclusion, healthcare, education, and clean energy. 

I had the chance to work on this really cool project in Indonesia. It was a micro-hydro project and it was nuts. I was riding through rivers and up mountains in the back of a pick-up truck! The work was incredible, I am still inspired by what this small community was doing and how they were trying to harness clean energy.

At Wharton, I majored in finance and entrepreneurial management. I knew already that I had this unique perspective working with early-stage companies, and I wanted to get some experience with mature companies. So I joined Bank of America as a renewables investment banker after business school.

The most meaningful thing that I worked on was the IPO of Sunnova. John Berger, the CEO, built this residential solar company from the ground up and its  valued at approximately $1BN. I was there traveling around the world with the management team for their IPO roadshow. I was there when they rang the bell on the New York stock exchange. It was such a privilege to see an entrepreneur's dream become a reality. 

As an investment banker, you're really an advisor, an intermediary. You're not truly investing in something. I had had this incredible experience to see both the early-stage phase of a company and the mature stage. I thought to myself I would love to be in a decision making role, to be able to choose which of these breakthrough climate innovations get funded and then become a hands-on partner with these companies. That was the drive that made me transition.

Now that you are in the stage where you do get to make decisions about funding for these companies that are building our future, how do you connect that arc of your climate story to social issues that you were originally motivated to impact?

Our fund, Prime Impact Fund, is an early-stage venture capital fund that invests in transformative technology companies with the potential for gigaton scale climate impact. Each of us in the fund has an interest in different areas. For me, with my hybrid background and being driven by the end impact on people, I tend to be drawn to companies that have more of an intersectional impact. 

That's one of the reasons I really love agriculture. I made our first ag investment and I'm sitting on the board of that company, Clean Crop Technologies. This company has developed a cold plasma technology that can generate different reactive gas species, which can degrade pathogens, toxins, and pests responsible for food waste. There are over 500 million tons of food wasted each year,  and 400,000 deaths a year are due to these pathogens, toxins, and pests. People in low-income countries often have no other option but to eat contaminated food, and in Sub-Saharan Africa, aflatoxin (which is a problem for peanuts, and is a huge stable in the Sub-Saharan African diet) has been linked to poisoning in expectant mothers and young children, in addition to cancer. I hope my  investments reflect the environmental and climate justice angle which brought me into this space in the first place.

How do you get yourself up to speed in ways that you can make decisions around these highly technical areas?

Reading and talking to people is really important. I read a fair amount of blogs, newsletters, and science publications. McKinsey also publishes a lot around agriculture and for somebody who is also a former consultant, the way that it's explained is useful to then communicate that to a potential customer or partner who does not have a technical background. 

And then I ask a lot of questions! If I don't understand something, I just keep asking. In this space, I may not speak the same language that others do, but I really want to understand the end to end process. Sometimes when you ask questions your perspective can often get to the root of an issue or an opportunity much sooner, because you're not really taking everything for granted.

I ask a lot of questions! If I don't understand something, I just keep asking.

If you were going to give advice to people who are sitting on the sidelines, what would you tell them about moving into this space? 

Especially if you’re an entrepreneur, it's a great time to move! A number of climate tech focused funds have come out in the past couple of weeks. We recently did the final close of our fund so we have a lot of dry powder to invest. 

Be thoughtful about what matters to the investors you're speaking to. For example, we care about greenhouse gas emissions reduction. If you are going to pitch us your company and you mention nothing about GHG emissions reduction, then you’re not speaking our language. Check-in beforehand on how the investors assess different climate technologies and use that to guide you.

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