About us | Arukah

Message from CEO

Arukah was founded during a period of accelerating economic and climate instability across agricultural markets in Southeast Asia. Climate volatility, commodity compression, and employment dislocation continue to affect farming communities across the region and throughout the broader Global South.

From the outset, we made a deliberate choice: build durable foundations in one region before expanding beyond it.

Over the past year, that discipline has translated into tangible progress.

In 2025, Arukah:
- Began operating Southeast Asia’s largest biochar facility.
- Achieved first-in-market digital MRV approval for household biogas under Gold Standard.
- Advanced new programmatic partnerships across Southeast Asia.
- Established a credible pathway toward 1 million tonnes per annum of climate impact by 2030.

At the core of the platform is a structural commitment to embed 50% of gross carbon revenue within agricultural systems. Over time, evidence has reinforced what we believed at inception: when economic participation is designed into the value chain, climate performance strengthens and durability improves.

With industrial capacity established, verification standards embedded, and long-term partner relationships secured, the platform is now positioned for disciplined geographic expansion where agricultural supply chains, policy alignment, and institutional partners support governed scale.

We remain anchored in Southeast Asia, while responding carefully to requests to deploy the model in other regions where similar conditions exist.

We are grateful for the partners, institutions, and operators who have chosen to build alongside us. Trust is earned over time. Our responsibility is to deploy it carefully.

Joanna Yeo,
Founder and CEO

TEAM

Our Leadership

Institutional Discipline. Operational Execution.

Arukah’s leadership integrates institutional finance, industrial engineering, regulatory strategy, agricultural systems expertise, and digital infrastructure architecture.

The platform operates across sovereign contexts, complex agricultural supply chains, and institutional capital markets.

Climate infrastructure in the Global South demands disciplined execution and cross-system alignment. Arukah is structured to deliver both.

Joanna Yeo

CEO

Joanna founded Arukah to build institutionally structured agricultural biomass infrastructure that embeds durable farmer economics at scale.

She began her career in private equity at Morgan Stanley and Keppel Corporation, after working in data science at Stanford and Harvard. Her experience spans institutional investing, sustainability strategy, and digital systems design.

Joanna currently serves on the Investment Committee of the UN Sanitation and Hygiene Fund and as an advisor to Figure Technologies (NSDQ:FIGR). She previously served as an independent non-executive director of Collectius, a Southeast Asian partner in the World Bank IFC’s $40 billion DARP program.

She has been selected as an Asia 21 Young Leader (Asia Society) and a Gates Cambridge Scholar. She holds degrees from Harvard, Stanford, and Cambridge.

Under her leadership, Arukah has developed Southeast Asia’s largest biochar facility and advanced first-in-market digital MRV approvals under Gold Standard.

Zech Lung

Operations, Engineering

Zech leads industrial operations and engineering across Arukah’s biomass infrastructure projects.

With over fifteen years of experience in water treatment, energy systems, and industrial project management across Asia, he has built and optimized mission-critical systems spanning last-mile energy access to large-scale industrial facilities.

At Arukah, Zech oversees facility engineering, process optimization, and industrial deployment — including the rollout of Southeast Asia’s largest biochar facility.

He holds degrees from MIT, Tsinghua University, and Nanyang Technological University.

Nicole Mah

Projects, Policy

Nicole leads regulatory strategy and policy engagement.

She previously served in Singapore’s National Climate Change Secretariat (Prime Minister’s Office) and the Urban Redevelopment Authority, where she contributed to national climate and urban sustainability frameworks.

At Arukah, she aligns stakeholders and ensures that projects align with sovereign climate priorities, carbon market standards, and regulatory requirements across operating jurisdictions.

She holds degrees from Cambridge and Columbia University.

Bryan Hugill

Carbon Projects, Agriculture

Bryan leads carbon project design and agricultural integration.

With over twenty years advising development finance institutions and agriculture financiers — including ADB, IUCN, WWF, and UNEP — he brings deep expertise in sustainable agriculture, biochar systems, and waste-to-value models.

Bryan also owns and operates an internationally certified organic rice farm and cooperative, where he has worked for over seventeen years advancing smallholder-led regenerative agriculture.

Yang Ruan

data, software

Yang Ruan leads data infrastructure for Arukah’s CarbonCast digital MRV.

Over the past fifteen years, she has built data systems across carbon markets and ESG platforms, including infrastructure supporting an exit to FactSet.

She specializes in high-integrity data architecture, secure ingestion pipelines, testing environments, and infrastructure-as-code frameworks.

Yang holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from MIT and leads the systems that connect field-level production to institutional-grade verification.

Ferdi Kurt

Blockchain, Infrastructure

Ferdi designs blockchain infrastructure for regulated finance and secure digital assets.

He previously built digital asset custody systems at Securrency (acquired by the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, now DTCC Digital Assets), and has held senior engineering roles at Filecoin, IOHK (Cardano), and Midnight.

At Arukah, he architects Project Attest — ensuring carbon credit traceability and immutable audit trails aligned with institutional market standards.

Operational Footprint

Arukah's leadership team is supported by
- A finance lead
- Project and engineering teams across Southeast Asia
- 19 full time operational staff on the ground at our biochar plant in Cambodia

The platform integrates field execution with institutional governance and digital infrastructure.

Advisors

Our Advisors and Investment Committee

Simon Page

Credit & Risk

Simon is a seasoned Chief Risk Officer and credit expert -he has been Group Chief Risk Officer at Bank of China-Fullerton Community Bank, before moving to CreditEase as the Head of European Investment for the FinTech fund in 2016. He has also served as Chief Risk Officer for China Bohai Bank and Country Chief Risk Officer at Standard Chartered, UAE.

Simon graduated in Economics from Trinity Hall, Cambridge and Finance at London Business School before working at Barclays Group as Head of Portfolio Management. He speaks fluent Chinese having lived in China for 15 years and now is based near London.

Matthew Gamser

Public & Private Finance

Matthew Gamser has over 40 years’ experience in private enterprise and financial sector development. He worked for the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, for 18+ years in various positions from Washington, DC, and Hong Kong, where he has focused on SME finance and on financial sector development. In his last role prior to retiring from the IFC, Dr. Gamser was the Founder and former (retired) CEO of the SME Finance Forum, the world’s leading center for knowledge exchange, good practice promotion and networking for the finance industry in this field. The SME Finance Forum is managed by the IFC for the G-20 countries’ Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion.

Dr. Gamser started his career with 25 years in management consulting and in senior leadership in an international NGO. He holds A.B. and A.M. degrees from Harvard University, and M.Sc. and D.Phil degrees from Sussex University (UK), where his work focused on the management of technological change.

Yuki Yasui

Sustainable Finance and Carbon Markets

Yuki is a seasoned expert in sustainable finance with over 20 years of experience. She served at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Finance Initiative from 2002 to 2022, where she played a key role in advancing the sustainability practices of financial institutions globally and especially in the Asia Pacific. Since 2022, Yuki has been the Managing Director of the Asia Pacific (APAC) Network at the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), leading efforts to mobilize the financial sector in support of global net-zero targets.

A Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), Yuki trained and worked at one of the Big Four accounting firms. She is currently based in Singapore and has lived and worked in Bangkok, Geneva, and London.

Yuki holds a BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics (LSE) and an MSc in Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford.

Wai Kit Koh

Asian Emerging Mkts and Private Assets

Koh Wai Kit brings over a decade of investment experiences, a vast network, and expertise. As managing partner of East Ventures, and founding member of Pavilion Capital, a Temasek subsidiary focused on Asia private equity and venture capital, he spearheaded investments in China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia. Prior to setting up Pavilion Capital, Wai Kit served in investment, strategy and portfolio management functions at Temasek.

Before joining the private sector, Wai Kit was a member of the Singapore Administrative Service where he was involved in public policy formulation and implementation. Wai Kit received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2001.

Pieter Franken

Hardware & Software Expert

Pieter Franken is a seasoned technologist and the co-founder of Safecast. He is a technology advisor to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), a researcher and guest professor at Keio University, and a researcher at MIT Media Lab.

Pieter has built technology for financial services for over 30 years, including as chief technology officer (CTO) for Union Digital Bank and Monex Group, and deputy CTO for Shinsei Bank. He started his career as a researcher at Panasonic and Hitachi.

Arukah (noun): To Heal, To Restore

Our Leadership

Our Advisors and Investment Committee

Partner in Scaling Agriculture Biomass Infrastructure