Our Team
Jeff Waldon
Sr. Managing Partner
Jeff Waldon is an advisor for land management, carbon, biomass energy, timber, and wildlife clients throughout North America. He has extensive experience in international forestry, biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and the international carbon markets working on land conservation and climate change. He also has direct operational experience in Belize conducting multiple projects there since 1989.
Mr. Waldon recently served as the Chief Technical Officer for Forest Carbon Offsets LLC a company devoted to the development of forest carbon offset projects in Belize. FCO developed the first Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) project in the tropical western hemisphere, certified by both the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance and the Verified Carbon Standard. He also served as the first project manager for the successful Natural Bridge (Virginia) State Park private-to-public conversion, winning a project team award as “Deal of the Year” from The Land Report, a national land ownership and conservation magazine and website.
Jeff was formerly the founder and Executive Director of the Conservation Management Institute, a center within the College of Natural Resources at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). Waldon also managed various research centers at Virginia Tech for 23 years. The Conservation Management Institute employed over 80 faculty, staff, and students working on projects ranging from field surveys of animals and plants, to biomass energy to GIS, remote-sensing, and web-based decision support systems development for agency land management.
Andy Raines
Senior Partner
Mr. Raines has more than a quarter of a century of experience in the financial services industry, focusing on the field operations of both retail and wholesale financial product distribution. As a Regional Vice President and Regional Sales and Marketing Director for several global financial industry giants (including Allianz, AXA, ING, and Wells Fargo), Raines directly oversaw more than $1.25B in new assets raised in investment funds and insured portfolios for individual investors. He has successful operational management expertise in insurance distribution at the wholesale and retail level, and he is the Founding and Managing Member of both a successful retail and a wholesale insurance distribution firm.
Fred Circle
Senior Partner
Fred Circle is the CEO of FDC Enterprises, Inc. (FDCE). FDCE has established and managed 350,000 acres of Native Warm Season Grasses (NWSG) since 2003. FDCE has also been involved in a number of bioenergy projects focused on the use of NWSG, (particularly switchgrass) as a primary feedstock supply source. FDCE has established, and continues to provide 3,300 acres of processed NWSG feedstock (as a ready-to-use boiler fuel) to the Commonwealth of Virginia Piedmont Geriatric Hospital (PGH) from 2011 to present. By switching its feedstock source to NWSG, PGH has realized substantial financial and environmental benefits for itself, the rural community it is part of, and the Commonwealth it serves.
Additionally, FDCE has successfully executed two U.S. Department of Energy grants (Design & Demonstration of Advanced Agricultural Feedstock Supply System for Lignocellulosic Bioenergy Production (2010) and Demonstration of an Advanced Supply Chain for Lower Cost, Higher Quality Biomass Feedstock Delivery (2013). FDCE is also the switchgrass bio-feedstock establishment partner for a 3rd U.S. DOE grant (Enabling Sustainable Landscape Design for Continual Improvement of Operating Bioenergy Supply Systems 2016) which is in its third of a five year project.