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Taj Ahmad Eldridge is a 25+ year investment professional whose career has included high level executive roles in banking, asset management, alternative investments, and entrepreneurship. As General Partner of Include Venture Partners and Senior Director of Investments at the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI), Taj has built a longstanding career with expertise in the fields of fintech, media, energy, transportation, and the circular economy. Taj has been named one of the 53 Investors to Watch in 2021 by Pitchbook & 101 Black Titans in Tech. Taj is also one of the 70 Black Investors in Bevy.com - a $325 million virtual conference platform as noted in AfroTech. Taj has been profiled in publications such as Impact Alpha, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pitchbook, Forbes, GreenBiz, Entrepreneur Magazine, and more regarding his tireless efforts on achieving alpha while also advancing equity. Taj has a BA degree in poetry & literature from Texas A&M University-Commerce, an MBA degree in International Business from Pepperdine University, and studied geopolitical economics at Claremont Graduate University as a PhD. Taj also studied abroad at The Universidad Adolfo Ibanez in Santiago, Chile, The Universidad Do Porto in Porto, Portugal, and The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in Hong Kong, China.

Rob Brown is the Co-Founder and Senior Partner of Atlas Impact Partners, an equity L/S firm dedicated to impact. Atlas owns only those companies whose products and services directly enable solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges in the environment, food systems, and human health and welfare, and makes short investments only in those companies whose products and services directly cause such problems. Prior to founding Atlas Impact, Rob was Head of Research at JUST Capital, where he led the team which developed and implemented the inaugural ranking of Americas Most JUST Companies. Previously, Rob was Senior Portfolio Manager for AllianceBernstein and Head of Equity Research for Nomura Securities International. Earlier, he worked at Morgan Stanley where he was responsible for the Global Macro Research team. Rob started his career as an economist at Bankers Trust. Rob is a member of the Executive Committee and Treasurer of The READ Foundation, a member of the Advisory Board of the International Business School at Brandis University, and Chairman of the Board of the InHEIRitance project. He is on the investment board for the Michael Price Fund at New York University and was formerly a member of the investment committee for the endowment at Brandeis University. He has lectured on issues of impact measurement and metrics and data standards at Yale University School of Management and Columbia University Business School. He earned a BA, cum laude, in Economics and an MA in International Economics from Brandeis, with joint course work in econometrics at the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics at Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium.

Nic has over 13 years of experience in alternative assets with a focus in real assets investments. He leads the identification, due diligence, and selection of real assets investments. He also assists in the management of the teams responsible for sourcing, conducting due diligence, and evaluating investments in the private equity and real asset sectors, and directly oversees the Associate-level investment professionals. Prior to Aksia’s acquisition of TorreyCove Capital Partners, Nic was a Senior Vice President, joining the firm in 2011. Prior to that, Nic was an Associate at Pacific Corporate Group, where he supported the Risk Management department and assisted in the due diligence of private equity investments. Nic graduated from the University of San Diego with a BBA and holds an MBA from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. In 2019 and 2020, Nic was recognized as a Knowledge Brokers “New Guard” and Knowledge Broker, respectively, by Chief Investment Officer.

JoAnn is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the non-profit Church Investment Group (CIG) which works on behalf of Episcopal endowments. CIG enables Episcopal entities to realize the benefits of investing at scale and encourages the adoption of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing approaches. CIG works with Episcopal endowments to review their mission goals, spending policies and asset allocation, to consider adopting ethical investment policies and integrating ESG criteria into investments, and to institute proxy voting. Prior to CIG, JoAnn was a founder of Avanti Investment Advisors, which managed over $1.2 billion for institutional investors. Earlier investment management roles included serving as a managing director of Lazard Freres & Co. and a Vice President of J.P. Morgan Investment Management, Inc. She currently serves on the Real Estate Advisory Committee of the New York State Common Retirement Fund and the Advisory Board of the Alternative Investment Forum. JoAnn is on the Vestry of St. Mary’s-in-Tuxedo and also attends Good Shepherd, a mission church for the Ramapough Lenape Native Americans. JoAnn has a BA from Yale University (summa cum laude) and an MBA in Finance from Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania.

Tanya Khotin is an independent strategic advisor in sustainable and impact investing. Her 25+ career in capital markets has included serving as Managing Director at UBS Investment Bank, where she ran Russian and Emerging Markets Equities, consulting at Bain & Co., and as an Executive Committee Member at the ESG start-up Cornerstone Capital (now Pathstone). Her current Board roles include serving as Treasurer at the Norcross Wildlife Foundation and on the Advisory Council of the Urban School Foods Alliance.

Matthew Lipton is part of the Private Infrastructure team, based in Denver, and leads the Infrastructure Investment Research function. He has 17 years of industry experience. Prior to joining Partners Group, he worked at Neuberger Berman, Macquarie Capital (USA), UBS Securities, and Deloitte. He holds an MBA and a bachelor’s in finance and accounting from New York University Stern School of Business, USA.