About Us
Investment Readiness Advisory Built on EDFI Experience
Bridging field-level climate ambition with institutional investment requirements.
TerraBridge Development Partners was established to address a recurring challenge in climate, land-use, and forestry finance: the gap between high-potential initiatives on the ground and the readiness required for institutional capital engagement.
What distinguishes TerraBridge is the combination of experience it brings. Our founding team has worked inside European development finance institutions — conducting due diligence, structuring investments, and shaping institutional ESG strategy. They have also worked in the field, implementing ESG and delivery systems in complex landscapes across Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. This dual perspective — from both sides of the transaction — is the foundation of how TerraBridge works.
Why We Exist
Investment readiness is a structural constraint across climate and land-use finance. Strong ambition and technically sound projects are not enough — initiatives must also demonstrate financial coherence, ESG credibility, governance integrity, and delivery capacity in ways that institutional capital providers can independently assess. TerraBridge exists to build that credibility systematically.
What We Enable
By strengthening investment readiness, TerraBridge supports the conditions under which institutional capital can contribute to climate mitigation and adaptation, nature-positive land use, sustainable food systems, and improved livelihoods. Impact is not claimed by TerraBridge — it is enabled by clearer alignment between field realities and the requirements of responsible capital deployment.
How We Work
We work through disciplined, stage-based processes that respect institutional roles and decision-making boundaries. Our approach emphasises proportionality, selectivity, and integrity — focusing effort where it is most decision-relevant and avoiding unnecessary or premature interventions.
Our Team
Core Team
The TerraBridge core team brings together practitioners with dual experience — inside development finance institutions conducting due diligence and structuring investments, and in the field implementing ESG and delivery systems in complex landscapes. This combination is uncommon in advisory practice and is fundamental to how TerraBridge works.
Jessenia Angulo
Co-Founder & Managing Director
Jessenia Angulo is an ESG and investment readiness specialist with over 20 years of experience across agriculture, aquaculture, forestry, and land-based value chains in emerging markets. Her career bridges field-level implementation, sustainability standards, and development finance, shaping a highly execution-focused approach to ESG and investment design. She previously worked with producers, governments, and donor-funded programmes, and served as a Senior Environmental and Social Specialist at FMO.
At TerraBridge, she leads ESG systems, sustainable practices, safeguards systems, and operational readiness for DFI and blended finance investments.
Gerhard Engel
Co-Founder & Investment Advisor
Gerhard Engel is a development finance professional with more than 30 years of international experience across forestry, land-use, renewable energy, and financial sector development in emerging markets. He spent approximately 25 years at FMO in senior investment and leadership roles across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, including shaping the institution’s forestry and land-use strategy beyond plantation models. His experience spans the full investment cycle — from origination and structuring through to portfolio management and institutional strategy.
At TerraBridge, he provides senior investment judgment, focusing on structuring, funder alignment, and long-term value creation.
Michel de Jong
Operations & Execution Support
Michel de Jong brings over 25 years of experience in complex, regulated project environments, with a background spanning construction execution, foundation systems, and quality assurance under strict safety and regulatory frameworks. His career includes hands-on project supervision, leadership of large-scale infrastructure works, and company management in the Netherlands.
At TerraBridge, he contributes operational realism and execution discipline across feasibility assessment, delivery risk management, and ESG engagement quality.
The core team is supported by a social safeguards and stakeholder engagement officer and a GIS and spatial analysis specialist — both currently joining TerraBridge; expanding the firm’s in-house delivery capacity across community engagement, FPIC facilitation, and geospatial environmental screening.
TerraBridge operates across Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia; geographies where the gap between initiative quality and institutional engagement is most pronounced, and where structured investment readiness has the greatest potential to unlock durable climate, nature, and livelihood outcomes.
Regional
& Local Specialists
TerraBridge works with trusted regional specialists embedded in the contexts where initiatives operate. Their involvement ensures that global standards and institutional expectations are applied with local accuracy—particularly in relation to land tenure, stakeholder dynamics, regulatory frameworks, and political economy considerations.
Current regional coverage spans West Africa, East Africa, and Latin America. Specialist expertise within this network includes environmental and social field assessment, land tenure diagnostics, HCV and biodiversity field surveys, certification auditing (FSC, RSPO, Rainforest Alliance), community engagement and FPIC facilitation, legal analysis, and agronomic assessment. Regional specialists are engaged transparently and their roles are defined within TerraBridge’s delivery architecture from the outset of each engagement.
Partner Consultants & Technical Network
For specialised technical needs outside our core scope, TerraBridge engages a curated network of vetted technical consultants and partner organisations — activated selectively, transparently, and proportionate to each engagement’s needs. We are direct with clients about what TerraBridge delivers and what sits with a specialist.
Partner expertise covers biodiversity and HCV/HCS assessment, GIS and spatial analysis, social safeguards, legal analysis, agronomic systems, and production auditing. This model ensures that specialist inputs contribute directly to investment readiness outcomes — without duplication, cost inflation, or scope drift.