Dakota Forgione

M. Dakota Forgione is a project-finance specialist with a career rooted in energy, environmental services, and infrastructure. She earned her undergraduate degree at the State University of New York at Buffalo and completed an accelerated graduate program in Environmental Policy. Early in her career she founded and built one of the largest medical-waste companies in New York State, which she later sold to a public company — an entrepreneurial exit that shaped her subsequent focus on environmental and energy assets.

Over the following years she coordinated development and financing structures for a range of projects — co-generation, heat recovery, and alternative-energy facilities — across both North and South America. On the corporate side, she led the strategic acquisition and roll-up of one of the largest environmental-response companies on the West Coast for Foss Maritime, a company she and her firm's materials describe as a ~$1.3 billion enterprise, and later consulted with Fortune 500 firms on energy-asset acquisitions. Her stated specialty is structuring debt, equity, and innovative lease platforms for developments in the roughly $20–400 million range.

She is a Managing Partner at Excelsior Capital Partners, the Asheville, NC firm through which she does project finance and advisory work in alternative energy/power, media and entertainment, and commercial real estate. In addition to Excelsior, she has served as CEO and board member of LIG Assets, Inc. (OTC: LIGA) — a role she stepped down from in June 2022 while continuing in a consulting capacity — and public profiles list her more recently as Managing Director and Chief Strategy Officer at Solarix Group USA, alongside earlier roles at Windcrofte Capital.

• Project finance over startup equity: Forgione establishes "structured financial products for the private equity and institutional capital markets," concentrating on structured debt, equity, and lease platforms rather than writing seed checks into early-stage software companies.
• Deal size: Developments valued approximately $20 million to $400 million.
• Sectors she says yes to: Alternative energy and power (renewables, co-generation, heat recovery), media & entertainment (positioning firms "through this digital transition"), and commercial real estate.
• Industry-specialist bias: Excelsior states it maintains "a strategic focus on industries in which it has extensive experience, deep understanding and a proven track record of success" — meaning she gravitates to energy/infrastructure and real-asset deals where her operating background applies.
• Value-add beyond capital: The firm emphasizes providing "not only financing but all of the analysis and structuring that goes into making businesses successful" — i.e., hands-on structuring and strategic consulting alongside capital.