Jamie leads the Forest Strategy & Intelligence team at Xilva.

Learn about what drives his passion

What’s the story behind Xilva?

Read on Jamie Micah Lawrence’s personal story in this interview feature.

“As a Forest Solutions professional, I have been lucky enough to work across many sectors with sustainability front runners from industry, civil society and philanthropy. Having such a broad exposure to the forces influencing forests I am made acutely aware of the many gaps in our organizational infrastructure and the dysfunctional market failures of our current economic system that negatively impact forests. Such panoramic insights of the challenges facing forests comes with a responsibility to be part of a ‘can-do’ movement in solving them.

Forests are perhaps the world’s most undervalued asset, they supply us with so much and yet many of those values (biodiversity, water, air quality, legacy, beliefs) are rarely measured or monetized in a way that provides sufficient incentive and resources to the stewards of these lands, rewarding them for their efforts to preserve, enhance or regenerate them.

Growing up in an inner city environment, I guess that forests and the surrounding countryside became a way for me to escape from the challenges of a conflictive neighborhood and lead me to work in conservation and study forestry. Now, for me, forests represent the zenith of nature's complex interdependent relationships and a state of balance that we must emulate. If we can get our relationship with forests right by moving away from purely transactional, antagonistic, urban to rural relationships to attaining regenerative, mutually beneficial balance then the forests, our climate, and us - all stand a chance of a bright, green future. Xilva contribution to that future is to be an enabler of funding Nature Based Solutions by providing a standardised, data-driven framework and methodology (a blueprint) to assess projects consistently. It is clear that we need to get trillions of dollars out of polluting asset classes and into natural climate solutions. It is also obvious that due diligence will play a crucial role in enabling deployment.”

▶️ What I do at Xilva 🚀 :
Co-founder and Forest Lead

▶️ I enjoy working at Xilva because 🌎:
I’m totally convinced that, by working with capital providers and forest project developers directly, we will develop a solution to ‘connect capital to forests faster’. I love having a shared vision working with a high calibre multidisciplinary team building it everyday.

▶️ My biggest learning along the journey so far 🔬:
Breaking free of our professional silos to allow the team structure for forest experts to work with market and finance or digital experts is creating “the magic in the middle” required to make a marketplace successful.

▶️ My connection to forests is 🌲:
I am a forester by training, education and by passion.

▶️ A must-do thing in my hometown 🌇:
In my original hometown, I would seek ways to replace a dark undertone of aggression & frustration with strong community ties and plan urban development to create regenerative neighbourhoods with green open spaces. In my adopted hometown, I would seek to realise its full local economy potential as a gateway to some of Southern Europe's finest natural landscapes.

▶️ The music I love to listen to in nature 🎧:
I actually don’t listen to music when I’m out hiking or trail running, I find it too distracting from the bird song, from the silence or from the reassuring sound of simply putting one foot in front of the other.

▶️ A digital tool I can’t live without 📱:
LinkedIn - my network is a strong part of what I can bring to Xilva and my work colleagues over the last 25 yrs have a wealth of expertise in so many related fields that they are invaluable to me for checking my assumptions.