WAYNE, Pa., July 21, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Inverness Graham (the “Firm”), a Philadelphia-based buyout firm focused on acquiring innovative companies where technology is transforming traditional industry, today announced the launch of its Green Light Sustainability Council (the “Sustainability Council”). Collectively, the inaugural members – Curtis Ravenel, Nira Johri, and Kish Rajan – have advised governments, led sustainability initiatives at Fortune 100 companies, and built businesses driving the circular economy. The Sustainability Council will inform the Firm’s Green Light investment strategy, which pursues control buyouts of lower middle market businesses that can deliver Environmental Sustainability Now—practical sustainability today through products and services that improve efficiency, resilience, and resource productivity.
The Sustainability Council formalizes and extends Inverness Graham’s Industry Executive Partner (IEP) program, which has long connected the Firm’s investment teams and portfolio companies to seasoned operators and practitioners. Council members will partner with Inverness Graham leveraging their expertise and networks to sharpen deal sourcing, refine investment theses, evaluate new platform and add-on investments, and shape value creation initiatives across the Green Light portfolio.
“Inverness Graham was founded on a simple premise: partner with founder-owners and apply real operating discipline to industries where technology is reshaping how business gets done,” said Ken Graham, Founder & Chairman of Inverness Graham. “The Green Light Sustainability Council is the natural extension of that heritage. Curtis, Nira, and Kish are practitioners – they’ve built, operated, and financed at scale – and their counsel will help us keep raising the bar for what sustainability delivers in the lower middle market.”
“This market requires more than capital; it requires investors who understand how operational improvements translate into both environmental and commercial outcomes,” said Curtis Ravenel, inaugural Green Light Sustainability Council member. “That is why I am excited to partner with Inverness Graham, whose operating heritage in the lower middle market reflects exactly the kind of operational discipline this work requires. I look forward to bringing my perspectives, alongside Nira and Kish, to founder-owners who are driving everyday solutions to sustainability.”
Inaugural Green Light Sustainability Council Members
- Curtis Ravenel is a distinguished global leader in sustainable finance. He currently serves as Senior Advisor to former U.S. SEC Chair Mary Schapiro on Michael Bloomberg’s Climate Finance portfolio, Distinguished Fellow in Sustainable Finance at ClimateWorks Foundation, and a board member and advisor to several sustainability-focused businesses. He previously served as Senior Advisor to Mark Carney, COP26 Finance Advisor and UN Special Envoy for Climate Finance, co-led the launch of Financial Stability Board’s (FSB) Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) Secretariat, and was an early Board Member of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB). Mr. Ravenel founded the Sustainable Business & Finance Group at Bloomberg LP and served as its Global Head from 2007-2019, leading efforts that drove environmental and financial returns both internally and externally with customers. He holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a B.A. from Davidson College.
- Nira Johri is a sustainability executive with more than 20 years of operating experience across commercial strategy, complex supply chains, and cross-sector stakeholder engagement. Ms. Johri is a subject-matter expert on agriculture, circularity, energy transition, and human rights. Presently, she is an advisor to Gravity, an AI-native carbon and energy management platform. Most recently, she served as Chief Sustainability Officer at KFC (Yum! Brands), advising the Board and Executive Team of the $34.5B brand operating 33,000 restaurants across 150 countries. Her prior experience includes Vice President of Global Inclusion and Sustainability at Rich Products Corporation, Senior Director of Strategy at the World Cocoa Foundation, and serving in the Obama administration as a Special Assistant at the U.S. Department of Defense. She holds an MBA from the University of Cambridge and a B.S. and B.A. from the University of Maryland.
- Kish Rajan brings deep experience at the intersection of business, technology, and public policy. He is currently CEO of Mt. Diablo Resource Recovery (a family-owned business) and a Board Member of Napa Recycling & Waste Services. He was the inaugural Director of the California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) under Governor Jerry Brown, where he established and led the primary agency for business and economic development in California. Mr. Rajan spent more than a decade in the mobile and enterprise technology industry in senior commercial roles and has since advised growth-stage companies, institutional investors, and policy organizations. He holds a J.D. from Golden Gate University School of Law and a B.A. from UC Berkeley.
About the Inverness Graham Green Light Strategy
Green Light is Inverness Graham’s lower middle market strategy focused on investing in businesses that can deliver Environmental Sustainability Now—practical sustainability today through products and services that improve efficiency, resilience, and resource productivity. The Green Light Fund closed in 2024 at $238 million, above its $200 million target, and has completed seven investments across three platforms, with one exit to date. The Fund targets four key investment themes: (i) the Energy Transition; (ii) the Industrial Transition; (iii) the Built World Transition; and, (iv) the AgTech Transition. The strategy applies the same Strategic Platform Build discipline, value creation playbook, and partner-of-choice approach for founder-owners the Firm has refined over two decades.
About Inverness Graham
Inverness Graham is a Philadelphia-based operationally focused buyout platform that partners with founder-owned and founder-led innovative, high-growth businesses where technology is transforming traditional industry. With more than $1.8 billion in assets under management, Inverness Graham brings institutional-scale capabilities to the North American lower middle market while maintaining a focused partnership approach with founder-owners and management teams. The firm’s Flagship strategy targets high-growth businesses in Healthcare, Tech-Enabled Services and Software, and Advanced Manufacturing, while the Green Light strategy targets tech-enabled businesses where Sustainability is a key driver of accelerated growth.
Across its strategies, Inverness Graham combines deep sector expertise with an operationally intensive value creation playbook, leveraging robust dedicated resources across deal sourcing, operational enhancements, transformative M&A, and AI enablement. Founded by senior executives of the Graham Group, the firm builds on a more than 60-year legacy of operational excellence and entrepreneurial leadership.
For further information, please contact:
Wilson Tong
wtong@invernessgraham.com
610-722-0300
