Tim Whitley

Tim Whitley is founder and CEO of Carbon Offsets To Alleviate Poverty (www.COTAP.org), a 501(c)3 nonprofit startup and crowdfunding platform based in Oakland, CA. COTAP empowers individuals and organizations to address both climate change and global poverty by connecting their unavoidable carbon footprints with accredited forestry projects in least developed countries which create life-changing income for the world’s poorest people. COTAP’s initial project portfolio in Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda, and Nicaragua is poised to generate over $1M for participating rural communities, an amount COTAP seeks to scale to $30M annually by 2015.

Tim’s inspiration to launch COTAP occurred while he was in the MBA program at The University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School focusing on Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Enterprise. Prior to UNC, Tim held various roles in consulting, marketing, and grants management at the Sierra Club and California Affordable Housing Initiatives. Tim is an avid wilderness backpacker, cyclist, and microbrew aficionado and resides in Oakland with his wife Valerie and son Graham.