About Us

Global Adaptation and Resilience Investment (GARI) working group

The Global Adaptation and Resilience Investment Working Group (GARI) is a private sector, private investor-led initiative that was announced at Paris COP21 in conjunction with the UN Secretary General’s Climate Resilience Initiative. The working group brings together private and public sector investors, bankers, lenders and other stakeholders to discuss critical issues at the intersection of climate adaptation and resilience and investment with the objective of helping to assess, mobilize and catalyze action and investment.

GARI aims to provide education, research and resources to build awareness and capacity in the private sector towards the mission of catalyzing investment in resilience.

History

GARI was conceived in 2015 and launched at COP21 in Paris in conjunction with the UN Secretary General’s Anticipate, Absorb, Reshape (A2R) Climate Resilience Initiative. Now an official partner of A2R, GARI was designed to bring together private investors and a range of other stakeholder groups to focus on investment and climate adaptation and resilience. The idea was to bring together in as open a manner as possible interested investors, climate experts, and other stakeholders to focus on how to practically invest in the face of climate adaptation and resilience needs.

Since 2016, GARI has convened over 40 in-person and remotely-accessible meetings in New York, Washington DC, San Francisco, and London, bringing together over 300 private sector investors and other stakeholders from pension funds, endowments and foundations, insurance companies, banks and investment managers to corporations, start-ups, think tanks, advisory firms and development finance institutions.

In 2020, GARI received support from Kresge Foundation to form a non-profit focused on broadening and deepening the stakeholder network, expanding and deepening thought leadership and dissemination of information, and identifying new financial instruments to advance climate adaptation and resilience investment.

Leadership

Jay Koh, Founder and Chair of GARI

Jay Koh founded GARI in 2015 in collaboration with key partners at the Paris COP21 climate talks. Jay is currently Co-Founder & Managing Director of The Lightsmith Group and has over 20 years of experience in investing and public policy in the public and private sectors.

Prior to co-founding Lightsmith in 2016, Jay was a Managing Director and Partner of Siguler Guff, a global alternative investment firm with over $10 billion under management and Head of Investment Funds and Chief Investment Strategist at the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). At OPIC Jay led the agency’s $2.6 billion active emerging markets private equity program. From 2007 to 2009, Jay led private equity and illiquid investing for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at R3 Capital, formerly the Global Principal Strategies Division of Lehman Brothers. Previously, Jay focused on direct growth equity investing as a Principal at The Carlyle Group, where he worked from 2000 to 2007 and from 1993 to 1995. From 1998 to 2000, he served as a law clerk to Justice David H. Souter, United States Supreme Court, and to Judge Michael Boudin, United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Jay serves on the Board of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), and the advisory committee to the NY Green Bank. He serves as an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He holds an A.B. magna cum laude in Economics from Harvard College, a master’s degree in Management from Oxford University and a J.D. from Yale Law School.

Serena Shi, GARI Program Manager

Serena Shi is a Vice President at The Lightsmith Group and joined the team in November 2018 as a Senior Associate. Prior to Lightsmith, Ms. Shi was an Investment Analyst at the International Finance Corporation, the private sector investment arm of the World Bank, where she focused on direct equity and debt investments in the telecoms sector in emerging markets. She was previously an Associate at Goldman Sachs, where she worked on structured debt transactions across the renewable energy, telecoms, media, pharmaceutical, and consumer retail sectors.

Ms. Shi holds a B.S. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.