Monty Simus

Montgomery ("Monty") Simus works at the intersection of environmental infrastructure, finance, and governance, helping governments and their partners finance and govern the environmental systems needed to address some of the world's most pressing sustainability challenges. As Senior Advisor for Blue Finance at The Ocean Cleanup, he develops partnerships, financing mechanisms, and investment approaches that help governments, multilateral development banks, philanthropies, and private investors scale environmental infrastructure and river-based plastic interception systems around the world. 

Alongside his professional work, Monty is completing a PhD in History at the University of Birmingham examining Indigenous jurisdiction and resource governance, with research exploring how institutions and overlapping authorities shape environmental decision-making. Drawing on more than two decades of leadership across the Global South, his practitioner and academic work bridges finance, governance, policy, and implementation, with a particular interest in how innovative ideas move from concept to large-scale impact. 

In 2023, Monty served as an inaugural Impact Leader in Residence at the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative, where his work focused on resilient investing and climate adaptation. He has also taught undergraduate courses at Whitman College and guest lectured at Yale on environmental infrastructure, blue finance, and ocean sustainability. He enjoys helping students connect ideas across disciplines and explore careers that span sustainability, finance, public policy, entrepreneurship, and global development. 

As a CBEY Alumni Visiting Mentor, Monty welcomes conversations about careers in climate and sustainability, environmental finance, ocean policy, infrastructure, global development, entrepreneurship, and translating ambitious environmental ideas into real-world impact. Students interested in NGOs, multilateral organizations, impact investing, government, academia, or mission-driven organizations are especially encouraged to connect.