Teresa O’Flynn, BlackRock Alternative Investments’ former head of sustainable investing (pictured), has moved to specialist impact firm Ara Partners.

O’Flynn spent 11 years at BlackRock, including serving as a founding partner of Decarbonisation Partners, the joint venture of Temasek and BlackRock Alternatives, since October 2021. Decarbonisation Partners is a private markets strategy with a target $1 billion target, of which BlackRock and Temasek jointly committed $600 million. Prior to that, O’Flynn had been head of BlackRock Alts’ sustainable investing strategy from July 2019.

She is now co-lead of the newly-launched infrastructure strategy at Ara Partners, a Texas-headquartered firm focused on industrial decarbonisation. “I truly believe Ara’s focus on the transformation of how things get made, how industry operates, the greening of legacy infrastructure and the build of new, is the next pressing chapter that needs to be written on the path to net zero,” O’Flynn said in a LinkedIn post. “It has been an absolute privilege to work at BlackRock for the past 11-plus years. I carry with me so many friendships and valued relationships and I look forward to continued collaboration with former colleagues and my broader industry network.”

Ara Partners’ second flagship buyout fund closed on $1.1 billion in 2021, having set a $650 million target, while its debut closed at $400 million in 2020 against a $500 million target, according to data from affiliate title PEI. The firm is building out its team globally: O’Flynn’s infrastructure co-lead is the newly-appointed Churchill George Yong, a former managing director at ArcLight Capital Partners. And earlier this week, Ara Parners announced the appointment of former KKR principal Manasi Desai as a vice president.

BlackRock and Ara Partners did not respond to requests for comment at the time of publication.

This headline to this article has been updated to clarify that Theresa O’Flynn was previously head of sustainable investment for BlackRock Alternative Investors, rather than BlackRock.