We believe that combining new technologies, grants and investments is the key to making businesses in emerging markets sustainable.
MS Innovation Lab is a technology and capital advisory firm focused on helping emerging market companies make the necessary switch to more sustainable techniques and technologies necessary to adapt to the impact of climate change. Working directly with local entrepreneurs and their investors, we deliver cutting-edge, resource-efficient technologies and growth capital to aid in the transition to more sustainable and resilient practices. By combining grant capital with new methodologies, we de-risk this transition for local companies ensuring that local communities keep vital jobs and services in place.
Our Services
Emerging Technologies + Grants + Debt & Equity Investments
Technologies designed for a changing planet
We mobilize the latest resource-efficient technologies from around the world for local operations.
Grant research, writing and application
We help producers secure grant-based capital to finance new solutions that make them climate resilient.
debt and equity investments
One-stop shop for growth equity, structured notes, and customized financing solutions.
Our team
Our team is a mix of capital markets, business development and entrepreneurial professionals. We enter each project as a scientist that enters a laboratory, seeking a creative new solution within a disciplined and pragmatic system. We are relentlessly unconventional in thinking and re-imagine how our clients can succeed. Having worked across industries and geographies, we have delivered value to a wide range of clients and are not intimidated by challenging situations.
Arleen Mitchell
Arleen's 20 years of entrepreneurial ventures has helped lay the groundwork for newly launched MS Innovation Lab. As a co-Founder of Powasa, she helped launch the company which provides proven technologies in the areas of Power, Water and Sanitation to benefit people in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa. Before her relocation to Europe, she worked as an independent strategy consultant for seven years between New York and Sub-Saharan Africa working with a wide range of investors supporting and expanding agribusinesses in East Africa as well as various early stage and startup ventures. Prior to this, she worked for 3 years with a NY-based medical device company where she was responsible for and executed the company's capital raising efforts to support its clinical trials. Previous to this role, she was in-house advisor to a family office in New York where she was tasked with deal origination and due diligence which lead to several successful acquisitions in the area of women's wear. She also worked for a NY-based family foundation where she lead the foundation's work in the area of arts and education, she located, analyzed and executed grant agreements. Looking to change career paths after a successful career in the music industry, where she was composer, producer and business manager and worked for some of the largest media and music companies in the world, she successfully started and later sold a baked goods company in New York.
Steve Rocco
Steve brings more than 20 years of experience in finance across a wide range of areas including traditional capital markets, SME finance, as well as pioneering entrepreneurial work in impact investing.
In a consulting/advisory role, Steve has recently worked on a series of innovative projects. Steve has advised a NGO consultancy working in the blue economy sector on its transformation to an investment banking operation focused on emerging market SMEs working in the blue economy in Asia. Prior to that with the Swiss based NGO, Es Vicis, he worked with the CEO to refine the overall business model, created the budgetary process and initial budget that was later successfully presented to Fondplata, a development bank based in South America which is supporting the project. Steve was also part of the Pipeline Builder project, an innovative SME funding advisory business funded by the UN SDG lab at the UN in Geneva.
As an entrepreneur, Steve was co-founder of Mission Markets, a pioneering fintech startup which provided impact companies and funds with capital raising services via an online platform, prior to crowdfunding. He was also CFO/COO while the company grew to a dozen employees. With Byfusion, a waste to use startup focused on plastics, Steve was acting CFO.
In investment banking, Steve has worked in capital markets in New York across most asset classes in various institutional sales/relationship management roles. He began his banking career in corporate finance.
In asset management, Steve has worked both as a portfolio manager and in a sales and marketing role, most recently with MainStreet Partners, a London based advisor focused on Italian institutional investors.
Steve has a Master’s Degree in International Finance and Business from Columbia University’s School of International Affairs and a BA in International Political Economy from UC Berkeley.