PORTLAND, Ore. (June 30, 2021)—Jonathan Eisenberg, a partner in Tress Capital, has joined the Board of Directors of Resource Innovation Institute (RII) as the non-profit gears up to provide cultivation operations with services related to Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) performance.
Eisenberg brings over 25 years’ experience in supporting carbon credits sustainability programs, water conservation, energy efficiency and waste diversion economics to the RII Board of Directors. At Tress Capital, Eisenberg focuses on the Tress mission of creating economic and social impact through responsible strategic investment in Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) sectors.
“RII is thrilled to bring Jonathan onto our Board. He brings investment depth and over two decades of expertise that will help inform and guide our work, especially as it relates to ESG, now an important measure of success for CEA producers,” said Derek Smith, RII Executive Director. “Jonathan’s appointment comes as RII supports jurisdictions with policy guidance and cultivation operations with benchmarking services using PowerScore, our trusted, vetted and secure facility benchmarking platform that measures energy, emissions, water and waste performance relative to industry-standard KPIs.”
“Based on aggregating individual site data into anonymized CEA industry benchmarking metrics, investors and producers can now answer the call for credible ESG benchmark reporting.” said Eisenberg. “RII is a leading non-profit organization, and the PowerScore is a highly secure platform that operates at a HIPPA compliant level of data confidentiality. I’m excited to join the Board and support the market adoption of the PowerScore as a means to measure and manage CEA performance relative to industry peers.”
Eisenberg is a former managing director, Asia Pacific Region for Citicorp Capital, and by appointment of Citigroup, served as a Board member for several listed and unlisted companies. Over his career, Eisenberg has filed patents on online fractional plant monitoring and on using molecular bio markers for use in cannabis breath diagnostics; was a co-founder of an industrial hemp processing company converting hemp waste stalks into commercial products; advised Agilyx, a company focused on diverting low-value plastics from landfills into industrial uses; was a director of a 180,000-square-foot zero discharge (living machine) aquaculture facility where fish waste fed bacteria to create clean water; was a director of a battery monitoring company that partnered with NASA on lithium battery state-of-health monitoring devices in service at utilities in California and in the Midwest; advised MBL, one of the largest solar installation companies in California; advised the City of Bayannur in Inner Mongolia on an ethanol project using sorghum; advised (in partnership with Owens Corning) the City of Urumqi, Xinjiang China on an energy efficiency city plan in line with the Kyoto Protocol; and was an analyst for the U.S. Foreign Commercial Service at the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai to research 10 Sino-Foreign JVs on foreign technology transfers to China.
Eisenberg has an MBA from Columbia University Graduate School of Business and has received New York State Workforce Development certifications as an Energy Efficiency Building Analyst and on PV (Solar) System Installations. Eisenberg currently serves as Chairman of Grownetics (www.grownetics.co), a Tress Capital portfolio company serving large scale cultivators with sensor networks and AI-driven quality and yield gains from big data analytics.