In the earlier days of Rob’s career he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala, working with indigenous subsistence level farmers on improved seed selection and postharvest management. 

 

He then moved on to work for the World Bank’s Investment Management Department in the Treasury, helping to manage the Bank’s pension fund and short- term cash portfolios. 

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Prior to Aqua Blue Investments, Rob most recently worked for The Nature Conservancy (TNC) for nearly twenty-two years. During his time there he led an initiative to assist Small Island Developing States and coastal countries, using the issuance of Blue Bonds, to finance debt-conversions to fund marine conservation and ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change. The first such debt-conversion (approx. US$22 million) was concluded in February 2016 with the Seychelles. In 2019, Rob raised $40 million in grant funds to staff a team that developed additional debt-conversions totaling over $2+ billion for several countries across the globe in the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa. 

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Rob’s prior experiences with TNC includes work on numerous debt-for-nature swaps under the Tropical Forest Conservation Act in Latin America and the Caribbean, including Jamaica, Belize, Guatemala, and Costa Rica as well as the design and establishment of an eight country US$175 million regional endowment (Caribbean Biodiversity Fund) and the associated national-level trust funds, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in sustainable financing for conservation projects in those countries.  Furthermore, Rob was the primary architect of the “Caribbean Challenge,” a twelve-country/territory regional initiative to place 20% of these countries near shore marine areas under protection by 2020 and develop sustainable finance mechanisms to finance the countries national systems of Protected Areas.

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