Montgomery (Monty) Simus is Global Director of Public Affairs, Policy, and Blue Finance at The Ocean Cleanup (https://theoceancleanup.com/), a Dutch nonprofit organization that develops and scales technologies to rid the world’s oceans and rivers of plastics – with millions of kilograms removed to date.
Monty is also a member of the Treatied Spaces Research Group based at the University of Birmingham, U.K., a research center bridging disciplines and sectors to make traditional Indigenous knowledge, treaties, and environmental concerns central to global education, policy, and public understanding. He is conducting interdisciplinary PhD research on one of the world’s primary sites of contemporary water cultures in profound conflict: Pebble Mine, Bristol Bay, Alaska. Monty’s PhD project explores the new, global dependence on energy transition minerals; how Indigenous and non-Indigenous imperatives intersect within debates on their potential development; and what Pebble Mine — one of the largest known undeveloped copper-gold-molybdenum deposits in the world that sits aside Bristol Bay, the world’s largest salmon fishery — can teach the world about growing tensions between decarbonization and conservation.
In 2023, Monty was an inaugural Impact Leader-In-Residence at Harvard University, focused on global water accessibility, sustainable investing, and resilient infrastructure, and currently serves as an Associate at the Harvard-China Project on Energy, Economy, and Environment (https://chinaproject.harvard.edu/) at Harvard University’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Previously, Monty spent several decades at the nexus of impact investing, catalytic philanthropy, and innovative social finance, building and scaling high-growth, purpose-driven, commercial and philanthropic initiatives that served millions in the Global South. He graduated from Yale (Bachelor of Arts - History) and Harvard (Master in Public Policy).
Monty can be reached at msimus@post.harvard.edu and welcomes the opportunity to mentor students interested in emerging/frontier markets, resilient infrastructure, climate change, the water-energy-food nexus, First Nations, climate-adaptive finance, natural resources, and the blue-green trade-offs necessary to make balanced policy and economic decisions.