Matthew Tilleard is co-founder and co-Managing Partner of The CrossBoundary Group, an innovative investment firm that unlocks private capital for sustainable development. It employs over 270 investment professionals across offices in Nairobi, Johannesburg, Lagos, Bamako, Washington DC, Dubai, London and New York City. CrossBoundary Energy is the first dedicated investment fund for commercial and industrial solar in Africa. It is now one of the largest distributed solar utilities in Africa with over $200M of projects under construction or operation across Africa. In 2018, CrossBoundary announced the formation of CrossBoundary Energy Access. A blended finance facility backed by the Rockefeller Foundation and private investors to use project finance to distributed solar-storage mini-grids for rural electrification of over 170,000 people. CrossBoundary Advisory provides investment and economic advisory services across a range of developing countries and has also developed innovative mechanisms to attract investment in fragile states affected by conflict.
Matthew began his career at The Boston Consulting Group where he focused on projects at the intersection of the private and public sector. While at BCG he co-founded ripple.org, a nonprofit website raised over $1M for charity. In 2008 Matthew left BCG to become a policy advisor to Noel Pearson, a respected indigenous leader in Australia. In 2009, he moved to Kabul, Afghanistan to help establish the Afghan Investment Climate Facility (Harakat) - an innovative Afghan led $50M USD facility with a mandate to remove barriers to private sector development in Afghanistan. Matthew holds a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Melbourne, a Masters of Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and and MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he attended as a Fulbright Scholar. In 2015, he was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.