Santiago Cortes

Santiago is currently ESG Manager at AMERRA Capital, a private, alternative asset management firm providing strategic capital to upstream and midstream agri-business operating companies in the Americas and Western Europe. He received his Masters in Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in 2017. He is interested in the development of innovative business models to promote long-term economic growth, environmental sustainability and social welfare. Prior to coming to Yale, Santiago worked as a Project Manager at a nonprofit consulting firm in Colombia. He worked in a wide range of projects with multiple stakeholders that aimed at developing sustainability and poverty eradication initiatives from a strategic and financial perspective.   

Over the summer of 2016, Santiago was based in Washington D.C., where he did his internship at the World Resources Institute (WRI). He worked in the Natural Infrastructure for Water project, an initiative that seeks to catalyze a global movement to enhance water security and bolster economic development through landscape conservation, restoration, and sustainable management. His main role was to conduct environmental and socio-economic research and spatial analysis to evaluate a sustainable business case for scaling up investments in ecosystem services as a water security strategy in Monterrey, Mexico.   Santiago holds a double undergraduate degree in Industrial and Environmental Engineering from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Colombia. At Yale Santiago co-led the Social and Environmental Entrepreneurship SIG at F&ES, and was a writer for the Conservation Finance Network.