Jonas Restle-Steinert

Jonas Restle-Steinert has supported SEED since 2017. He is in charge of overseeing SEED’s direct enterprise support activities with a particular focus on managing and implementing SEED’s Acceleration Programmes (SEED Accelerator and Catalyser). In his position as Senior Manager at SEED's hosting partner adelphi research, he focuses on sustainable private sector development, social and eco-inclusive entrepreneurship, capacity building, design thinking as well as green and climate finance topics.

Before joining adelphi, Jonas has coordinated and conceptualised diverse international development projects in a multitude of emerging and developing countries in West and Southern Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. Beyond entrepreneurship, renewable energy, and financing models, his work was primarily focused on private sector, market, and financial systems development. Jonas managed a large multi-year post-Ebola economic recovery project in Sierra Leone funded by DFID and has worked on projects aimed at improving employment, economic structures and skills development in Northern Nigeria and Pakistan.

Jonas holds a postgraduate degree (MSc) in Development Management from the London School of Economics (LSE). For his dissertation, he conducted field research in rural Zambia on innovative, socially responsible financing schemes for small-scale entrepreneurs as alternatives to traditional microfinance. Previously, he studied Politics and Administrative Sciences (BA) at the University of Konstanz, and wrote his dissertation on determinants of trust in the granting process of microloans.

Kathrin Kirsch

Kathrin has supported SEED since 2018 in both direct enterprise support and ecosystem building.

Currently, she is working on SEED’s enterprise support with the focus on the SEED Accelerator and SEED Catalyser with the focal countries Botswana and Uganda, as well as heading the incubation team of SEED global for SEED Starter and SEED Replicator activities. In recent years, she has lead the SEED Practitioner Labs Climate Finance, developing new financial instruments with institutions in multiple SEED countries. In her position as Manager at SEED’s Hosting Partner adelphi research Kathrin focuses on green entrepreneurship and green finance. She is convinced that working on access to finance with both financial institutions and enterprises is the key to scaling sustainable impact.

Luis Ebert

Luis Ebert joined SEED in 2020 through SEED’s hosting partner adelphi research. As a Research Analyst, he focuses on research activities and the support of social and environmental entrepreneurship and sustainable business.

Before becoming part of the team at SEED, Luis gained professional experience in international cooperation at Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the GIZ, both in the Philippines. He is also one of the founding members of the social business “Rückenwind” that facilitates mobility services for refugees in need in Berlin.

Luis studied his Masters in Global Development Studies at the University of Copenhagen and Economics at Humboldt University in Berlin. Prior to that, he completed his B.A. in Politics and Public Policy at Potsdam University.

Maggie Sloan

Maggie Sloan has supported SEED since 2018 with the implementation and communication of eco-inclusive enterprise support. She gained international experience with a World Bank clean cookstove programme in Indonesia, an EU-sponsored risk reduction and climate change adaptation project in Peru, and an engineering firm with expertise in environmental remediation in the US. She graduated with an MSc in Environmental Governance and a focus on corporate environmental management from the University of Oxford. Her Master’s thesis explored the role of small- and mid-sized environmental consulting firms in balancing the demands of private-sector clients and environmental regulators.

Tobias Hausotter

Tobias Hausotter is a Senior Project Manager at adelphi specializing in climate policy. After supporting the development of the Paris Agreement as a negotiator, he is now focusing on its ambitious implementation in a range of complex projects. With over ten years of work experience, he has covered a diverse set of topics related to climate change mitigation and adaptation and is particularly interested in innovative approaches to climate finance. The overarching goal of his projects for domestic and international clients is to support partner countries in their efforts to achieve climate-friendly development. Central to this is building partnerships between different actors across sectoral boundaries. Moderations and trainings are another focus of his work.

From 2008 to 2013, Tobias helped establish the Secretariat of the International Carbon Action Partnership (ICAP), a network of more than thirty governments and public authorities that shares knowledge on and experience with emissions trading. As Head of the Secretariat, he gained extensive expertise in providing strategic guidance and coordination of international policy networks. He is also well versed in designing capacity development measures for different stakeholder groups.

As an advisor in the Climate Policy Support Programme of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), Tobias spent several years coordinating the advisory work for the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (BMZ) Special Unit on Climate Change on the mitigation of greenhouse gases. He primarily worked on the implementation of nationally determined contributions (NDCs), climate policy cooperation with multilateral development banks (MDBs), and issues relating to the climate-energy nexus with a focus on the international financing of coal. During that time, Tobias represented the BMZ as part of the German delegation in the European Union’s expert group on market mechanisms and in the UNFCCC negotiations.

Tobias holds a Master of Public Policy from the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, Germany, where he focused on topics relating to climate and energy policy, and public management. He previously studied International Relations at the Dresden University of Technology (TU Dresden), Germany and the Université Robert Schuman in Strasbourg, France. Tobias is Capacity WORKS certified and completed further training at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management where he was awarded the certificate as a "Certified Expert for Climate and Renewable Energy Finance".