Welcome, Amy Figueiredo!
We are excited to welcome Amy Figueiredo to the Banyan Infrastructure family as the Head of Customer Success! Amy is a climate industry veteran with 20 years of interdisciplinary leadership experience from engineering to consulting. She is passionate about people management and fosters successful, driven teams with clear metrics and feedback. We recently sat down with Amy to get to know her better.
Please share your background and what led you to Banyan Infrastructure.
I started working in the climate space in 2007 and have dedicated my career to using my experience and skills to make an impact in preventing the worst-case scenarios of climate change.
After earning a bachelor's and master's in engineering at MIT, I joined a carbon credit project developer, EcoSecurities. Back then, the US voluntary carbon market was very nascent and unstable. I worked with carbon credit projects across the US, as well as landfill gas and hydro projects in Honduras and Chile. It was my first opportunity to become a manager and a leader. During that time, I also married my husband, who is Brazilian, and we moved to Rio de Janeiro.
I moved back to the US in 2013, and the Bay Area was a natural choice for working in the climate and environmental space. I spent almost eight years at Carbon Lighthouse, my first early startup experience. I held various roles there, starting with three years on the engineering team doing energy efficiency projects for commercial real estate. Ultimately, I led a customer success team to support ongoing relationships for turnkey projects, pilot projects, and other ways to expand within a customer’s real estate portfolio. There, I also helped build a customer-facing portal for ESG reporting and performance analytics.
I spent the next two years working on high-efficiency motor manufacturing at Turntide Technologies. It was an exciting opportunity because it was my first chance to work on software built in-house to support a hardware manufacturer’s products.
Why did you choose to work at Banyan Infrastructure?
I wanted to do more, faster. I thought, “Can I find something with a large impact, or at least the potential for a large impact?” That’s always been important to me. I could see that Banyan Infrastructure has the potential for that kind of impact by unlocking capital that is already burning a hole in people’s pockets. People want to do the right thing with their money, and Banyan Infrastructure enables these stakeholders to do so much more by helping accelerate investment in sustainable infrastructure. Plus, I’m excited to get to know a new customer base!
I was also attracted to the collaborative, creative environment at Banyan Infrastructure. It’s important to me who I work with and how we work together – and I love how we constantly push ourselves to do our best in a supportive team atmosphere.
What do you hope to accomplish at Banyan Infrastructure?
I am a lifelong learner who constantly desires to push my brain to the next level. I hope to continue up-leveling in this role while applying the skills I’ve developed in my past roles. For example, the outcomes Banyan Infrastructure aims to achieve for our customers differ from my past employers. I’m excited to learn more about this space and how Banyan infrastructure provides value!
I also love being a team leader! We spend so much time at work, and it’s important to me as a manager to help my team grow. I get a lot of personal satisfaction from building teams and fostering growth. I feel like I’ve found the path I am meant to be on, employing a nice mix of soft and hard skills and, as a manager, helping people find their paths and perform at their best.
In six months or a year, my main question will be: What were we able to accomplish together? I want to measure our collective impact and how we helped the entire industry grow because that really motivates me. Going back to why I joined Banyan Infrastructure in the first place: the potential for its impact at scale.
What do you like to do in your free time?
I just learned that Amanda Li, our COO and Co-founder, and I have sons who are only one day apart – my toddler just turned two! He is such a large part of my life. I love being outdoors, hiking, going to the beach, and kayaking on the Russian River. I also enjoy other activities like wine tasting, going to breweries, and hosting friends and family for barbecues
