Rafael Roca

Rafael Roca is a Senior Private Sector Specialist at Forest Trends Association in Lima, Peru. Previously, Rafael is an Associate at McKinsey & Company. He holds a B.S. in Forestry Engineering from La Molina National Agrarian University.   Prior to Yale, Rafael spent more than three years working in Lima and Peru’s highlands and rainforests for Edegel (Enel Endesa Corporation), the largest private power generation company in Peru, managing the environmental impacts generated by the power plants’ operations in different ecosystems. This experience allowed him to participate in leadership training programs with ENDESA in Spain, Ireland, and Morocco, and ENEL in Italy. Some of the key projects he was involved in consisted of modifying the operation of hydro power plants to reduce downstream environmental impacts, implementing compensatory projects for local communities, expanding coffee plantations by improving technical training, and developing woodstoves, water and sanitation systems. This led him to build positive relationships with local communities, government officials, and his supervisors in the private/corporate sector.   At Yale, Rafael worked with CBEY to organize the International Society of Tropical Foresters’ 20th annual conference ‘Capital and local approaches to financing of tropical forest conservation.’ In collaboration with a fellow Master of Advanced Management student from Chile (SOM 2014), he has developed an environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) managerial tool as part of a startup. Past experience in business related to reducing climate change also led Rafael to be part of the team at SOM/FES that developed the first National Low Carbon Case Competition.   Over his first summer at Yale, Rafael completed an internship at the global headquarters for The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in Arlington, Virginia. This internship was part of TNC’s Global Leaders on Behalf of the Environment (GLOBE) program, where Rafael worked with the Corporate Engagement team to encourage engineering firms to implement green and hybrid infrastructure solutions. Last summer, Rafael travelled to Rwanda to research the status of ecological restoration of abandoned artisanal gold mining sites in Nyungwe’s National Park, followed up by a conservation study tour. Then he travelled to the Peruvian Amazon to study and understand local communities’ perspectives on small scale illegal gold mining, and how regional and national policies affects them and the surrounding environment.