Who We Are
Shu Dar Yao
(Soo-Dar Yow)
Shu Dar Yao is an ESG advisor who teaches financiers about social and climate inequality. She supports venture capital, private equity, and wealth managers that seek market-rate returns, and her scope of work has included designing ESG policies and reports, fund structuring, supporting investor relations teams to respond to LP inquiries, and preparing companies for public listing. Previously, she has worked across ESG and impact investing on both the buy-side and sell-side.
At RSF Social Finance she served as Chairwoman of the Investment Committee and rewrote the firm’s investment policy statement, impact and ESG reporting strategy, and restructured the firm’s fund of fund and direct equity portfolios. At Social Finance, she led Capital Formation and Investor Relations. At Citigroup, she structured fixed-income green bonds, microfinance fund investments, and social and cleantech enterprise investments. At the World Bank’s IFC, she developed the $4bn Global Infrastructure Crisis Facility. She started her career as an investment banker at JPMorgan where she worked in M&A, Syndicated Leveraged Finance and Private Equity Sponsors.
Shu Dar received her MBA from MIT Sloan, BS from NYU Stern and has been recognized by the Sorenson Impact Center as a Global Impact Leader. She lives with her husband and two children in Bernal Heights, San Francisco California.
Cecilia Young
(Seh-see-lee-uh Yung)
Cecilia Young is an ESG advisor who specializes in strategy and policy design, research, and impact measurement. Her prior experience spans the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, including work for startup social enterprises, the U.S. government, and nonprofits. Inspired by the transformative power of capital allocation decisions and the speed of the private sector, she now focuses on the nexus of competitive investment returns and future-forward stakeholder management.
Most recently, she worked for Sustainable Capital Advisors, a financial advisory serving the sustainable infrastructure ecosystem, where she supported the launch of an impact investing fund and the design of a green bank lending platform. She enjoys tapping into her mixed lexicon to translate across stakeholder groups.
Cecilia received her MS in Global Business & Finance from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, and her BA in International Politics with a minor in Human Rights from UCSD. She lives in San Diego, California with her partner and their two rescue pitbulls.
Kai Diep
(Kai Dee-ep)
Kai Diep is an ESG advisor, and is committed to ensuring a sustainable transition towards decarbonization. She leverages experience in economics, climate and energy policy research, and sustainable business consulting to identify and help to reduce the environmental impacts of private market investing.
Previously, she worked for Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2) researching the economic risks and benefits of clean energy and environmental policies in California. Complementing her policy experience, she developed operational ESG expertise as a consultant implementing sustainable practices within clients’ business models.
Kai received her BS degrees, in Environmental Economics and Policy and Energy and Resources, from UC Berkeley. She lives in Oakland, California and enjoys hiking with her dogs.