Terraformation provides early-stage financing for biodiverse carbon projects. They function as an extension of a team to identify, design, and grow reforestation projects that deliver a portfolio of high-quality carbon credits. Their partnership team connects with forestry organizations around the world to build a pipeline of future reforestation projects across Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.

Yee Lee was the first team member to join Terraformation and has an extensive track record as a serial entrepreneur with involvement in many of the most impactful companies in the tech industry. Yee began his career in Silicon Valley as an early team member at PayPal and, over the course of 25 years, has served in engineering and product management roles at companies like eBay, Google, Skype, TaskRabbit, and Facebook. Yee founded four startup companies in the social network, ecommerce and fintech sectors. These roles have allowed Yee to leverage his extensive understanding of engineering, design, social apps, and fintech to scale transformative products.

At Terraformation, Yee leads the Growth and Capital Markets team, focused on growing the global regenerative forest restoration industry by creating systems and resources that help foresters start more new projects and be more successful.

Show Notes:

[1:33] - Yee shares his background and his “why” in dedicating his career to climate and forestation.
[4:30] - After working for 25 years in tech, Yee made connections with Yishan Wong, who later became the Founder and CEO of Terraformation.
[7:24] - How did his experiences in Silicon Valley lead him to a career change?
[9:58] - In the early days of Terraformation, Yee and Yishan determined what could be scaled to make a difference in climate change.
[11:13] - Creating forests is a value creation exercise.
[14:11] - If you are interested in having conversations with those who are in the climate space, Yee gives some tips. Most people are eager to network.
[19:00] - Yee describes the early days of networking at Terraformation.
[21:51] - While it seems like Terraformation’s goal is to plant 1 trillion trees, it is really the world’s goal to reforest that much land. Terraformation has teams that work on doing as much as possible to restore nature.
[23:36] - Terraformation needs foresters trained in a specific skill set. There are not enough people with these skills to reach these goals.
[27:08] - Terraformation is known for its seed banks.
[30:17] - What is the role of machine learning and AI in reforestation?
[31:56] - Yee shares what the next few years will look like for Terraformation and the broader reforestation movement.

Links and Resources:

• Terraformation Website