Our client is one of the fastest growing carbon project developers, advancing farming and nature-based solutions to address climate change, soil degradation and water scarcity. The company partners with farmers and communities across Africa and South America to drive pioneering regenerative agriculture, sustainable ranching and forestry practices, with the ambitious target of transforming 6 million hectares of land into thriving ecosystems by 2030.
The company sought a Head of Certifications to lead their certification efforts and ensure projects meet the highest carbon standards at scale. This critical role required overseeing technical compliance across a large, diversified portfolio spread across multiple countries, managing certification processes from scoping and PDD oversight through to final certification. The position demanded expertise across various standard bodies including Verra, Gold Standard, Plan Vivo and CCPs, with responsibility for managing teams of carbon project and technical experts across different geographies.
New Company, New Team: As a rapidly scaling organisation building their foundational technical capabilities, attracting senior talent to a newer player in the market presented positioning challenges against more established carbon project developers with proven track records.
Geographic and Linguistic Requirements: The client’s unique regional focus and operational footprint required candidates with specific geographic and linguistic expertise. The ideal candidate needed fluency in multiple European languages and familiarity with the operational contexts across their target markets in Africa and South America.
Scale and Complexity: The role demanded someone capable of managing certification processes across a vast, diversified portfolio spanning multiple countries, methodologies, and project types. Finding professionals with both the technical depth and operational scale experience to handle such complexity represented a significant talent identification challenge.
We conducted an extensive briefing session with the founding team to understand their current capabilities, team gaps, and specific requirements for this critical hire. Drawing on our deep knowledge of the carbon project development landscape, we provided comprehensive market mapping and analysis of candidate skill sets, experience profiles, and geographic expertise across the sector.
Our approach focused on presenting the opportunity as a chance to make significant impact at scale with a high-quality team operating globally. We positioned the role around the opportunity to work directly with communities, be part of a foundational team building pioneering solutions, and the chance to leave a lasting impact on climate and environmental outcomes across multiple continents.
Through our established network and targeted headhunting, we identified candidates who not only possessed the technical expertise and scale experience required, but also had relevant regional experience and the linguistic capabilities essential for success in the role.
– Comprehensive market mapping and candidate analysis provided to client
– Highly curated shortlist of candidates with relevant geographic and technical expertise
– Strategic insights on market positioning and talent attraction
Market Intelligence: Our extensive mapping of candidate profiles and skill sets across the carbon certification landscape provided the client with strategic insights that informed their talent acquisition strategy and understanding of the competitive market for senior technical talent.
Outcome: We successfully identified and placed an exceptional candidate who had worked in the specific regions where the client operates, possessed experience with similar project types, and spoke the required languages – representing an ideal match for their unique requirements. Both the candidate and client expressed high satisfaction with the cultural fit and technical alignment. The successful placement led to Rivit Search being retained to build out their technical and commercial teams.
Client Testimonials
Head of Business: “The candidate is an excellent fit and we’re very happy with the outcome. We should have partnered on this this search sooner. We look forward to working with Bibin to now build out our technical and commercial teams.”
