Tomo Kumahira

Tomo Kumahira is a climate entrepreneur, finance innovator, and co-founder and CEO of Mizu Water, a venture focused on addressing challenges at the intersection of climate change and food security. Kumahira pursued an MBA/MS in Environment at Stanford as a Knight-Hennessy Scholar, becoming the first Japanese student accepted into the Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program at Stanford Graduate School of Business. His academic background combines expertise from Stanford's Graduate School of Business and the Doerr School of Sustainability, providing interdisciplinary tools to address systemic climate challenges through business and finance.

Kumahira began his career as a private equity investment professional at Mitsubishi Corporation and served as vice president of corporate finance and strategy at Komaza, a Kenya-based startup partnering with more than 22,000 smallholder farmers to promote sustainable forestry in Africa. At Komaza, he developed the world's first securitization instrument for smallholder forestry, raised over $50 million in blended finance, and led carbon program development. This work was recognized by the Climate Policy Initiative Innovative Climate Financing Award and Environmental Finance Magazine's Impact Project/Investment of the Year. Kumahira's experience in pioneering financial instruments for climate solutions has positioned him as a leading voice in climate adaptation finance.

At Stanford, Kumahira co-founded Project Mizu with Ryo Takanashi and Charles Merriam, agriculture and water industry professionals studying at Stanford's Graduate Schools of Business, Sustainability, and Engineering. The group released a playbook for catalysts in the water-agriculture nexus to accelerate climate adaptation. The Project Mizu playbook offers conceptual frameworks, a taxonomy of more than 150 solutions, a survey of breakthrough opportunities, and scenarios to help navigate complex systems. Project Mizu was featured in Forbes Japan alongside John Hennessy, former president of Stanford University and board chair at Google/Alphabet Inc.

Building on this research, Kumahira established Mizu Water, also known as Mizu Risk Lab, a technology platform that translates climate science into actionable financial intelligence. Mizu Risk Lab enables agriculture asset owners and supply chain stakeholders to simulate water volatility and quantify the financial impact on assets and operations, using machine learning models to assess the effects of climate scenarios on farmland value, operational losses, and product prices. The company presented its AI-enabled water risk analytics for agriculture at the TomKat Center Summer Innovation Showcase at Stanford University.

Kumahira is an Acumen East Africa Fellow and Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow. He holds a BA in international relations from Brown University, graduating with high honors and the Mark and Betty Garrison Prize. With a career spanning private equity in Tokyo, climate finance in Nairobi, and deep-tech entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, Kumahira offers a global perspective on building climate-resilient food and water systems, serving as a resource for investors, policymakers, and stakeholders in sustainable agriculture and climate finance.