Search

René Nutter is the U.S. Food Security & Agriculture Client Account Lead. She has more than two decades of experience helping further food security and education in women and children. From studies with Yale, Harvard, and the Gates Foundation to a long and successful partnership with the USDA Food and Nutrition Services (FNS), she has led large data collection studies and evaluations, provided technical assistance, and helped train the next generation of researchers.

Ellen Bomasang is a global development professional whose focus has been clean energy, climate, and inclusive growth across emerging economies in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. Bomasang’s more than 25 years of experience have earned her recognition as a thought leader in clean energy and gender equality and social inclusion (GESI). She has led GESI-related interventions around the themes of women’s and girls’ leadership, male allyship, women’s economic empowerment, GBV prevention and response in energy/infrastructure projects, and building diverse, respectful workplaces.

Joe Donahue is an environmental policy specialist and portfolio manager with more than 15 years of experience supporting governments in developing and implementing policies and programs focused on climate change, clean energy, ozone layer protection, and solid waste management. His work spans both domestic and international programs and initiatives. Technical areas of expertise include climate change mitigation strategies; international capacity building; greenhouse gas quantification methods; short-lived climate pollutants, especially methane, black carbon, and hydrofluorocarbons; and clean energy policies.

Amanda Quintana is a global environmental health professional with over seven years of experience in international health and development, program management, and implementation. Currently, Amanda is pursuing her Ph.D. in climate resilient health systems at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), where she looks at the implementation of climate adaptation policy for health in South Africa. She has experience supporting international agencies, government partners, civil society, and country decision-makers around the world on global health activities and climate and health research priorities.

Dr. Lisa McDonald is a natural resource economist with more than 25 years of experience in environmental compliance and policy.  She has led the development of both economic impact tools used to evaluate large investment decisions and conceptual models to evaluate benefits of restoration projects. Dr. McDonald also has led or completed several socioeconomic and environmental justice impact analyses for various projects, including evaluating changes in land use policies, watershed management studies, restoration projects, and energy and infrastructure development. She often applies various economic analysis techniques in these studies, including economic impact analysis, benefit-cost analysis, financial modeling, and market and non-market valuation.

Daniel Peniston is a Climate Adaptation and Resilience Specialist at Abt Global, where he provides technical support in adaptation, resilience, and climate change. He has experience in adaptation, climate policy, nature-based solutions, responsible forest management, ecosystem services, sustainable supply chains, political economy, urban sustainability, air pollution, and supporting Indigenous-led forestry and climate programs. 

Joan Chahenza is a renewable energy finance and policy expert with more than a decade of private and public sector experience in on-grid and off-grid renewable energy. Her main areas of expertise are financial modeling and structuring of power generation projects, government and regulatory stakeholder management, technical advisory services for renewable energy enterprises, and contract negotiation for power purchase agreements and geothermal drilling contracts.

Lindiwe Chola Dlamini is a certified expert in climate change and renewable energy finance with 18 years’ experience in sustainable energy policy, resource mobilization, partnership development, and program management. Her career includes leadership, resource mobilization, and implementation roles for sustainable energy in Eswatini. She has provided expert technical advisory support for public-private partnership negotiations in energy infrastructure and team leadership for Eswatini's Programme for Affordable Renewable Energy. She has worked with start-up social enterprises and with development programs funded by the U.S. and EU government, African Development Bank, United Nations organizations, World Bank, and African Legal Support Facility.

Rosa Amboage is an environmental economist with 10 years of experience expanding markets for nature-based solutions (NbS) to achieve climate, economic and social progress. Working across academic, private, and public sectors, her expertise includes land use policy, NbS, environmental markets, green finance, and natural resource management.Amboage contributed to the UK’s post-Brexit agri-environmental policies and designed its first national scheme promoting a natural capital approach to economic and climate goals. Before Abt, she was the lead economist of the £640M GBP ($740M USD) Nature for Climate Fund, a national program to help industries and communities realize net-zero ambitions.

Niko Dietsch has 20 years of experience working on domestic and international government initiatives to support the clean energy transition and improve air quality. Dietsch has expertise in clean energy policy evaluation, climate and air quality regulatory development, federal voluntary program delivery, and international capacity building. He spent 16 years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) State and Local Branch working to advance clean energy as a strategy to help states meet their clean air and climate change requirements. This included playing a lead role in developing the energy efficiency provisions of EPA’s Clean Power Plan and establishing regulations that allow states and cities to include renewables and energy efficiency in their Clean Air Act (CAA) plans.