Thomas Flahive

Tom Flahive is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of CrossBoundary Group, a firm that mobilizes private capital in underserved and frontier markets. Over his career he has worked on more than 50 blended finance transactions across sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Latin America, and South and Southeast Asia. In CrossBoundary's early days he led the firm's operations in South Sudan while based in Juba, helping establish the on-the-ground model that CrossBoundary has since scaled across the continent. Today he is responsible for the firm's advisory services and sits on the investment committee of CrossBoundary Energy, and he is one of the partners in the leadership of CrossBoundary Advisory (alongside Jake Cusack, Paul Ouma, and newer partners Fanta Conde, Kirtika Challa, and Jonathan Duarte).

Before CrossBoundary, Flahive began his career at Lazard Alternative Investments in one of the firm's private equity groups, where he specialized in real assets. He subsequently worked at the global real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle. Prior to joining CrossBoundary he gained international experience at Mongolia International Capital Corporation in Ulaanbaatar, focusing on public and private equity transactions in consumer goods, ICT, and mining services.

Flahive holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and graduated summa cum laude with a BA from the University of Pennsylvania. He serves on the Corporate Council on Africa and is a frequent voice on development finance, speaking at venues such as Harvard's inaugural Development Finance Symposium and the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition's Impact Forum.

• Blended finance as the core tool: CrossBoundary's central approach is using catalytic capital from public or philanthropic sources to crowd in private-sector investment for sustainable development in frontier and emerging markets.
• "Making frontier markets investable": The firm's stated mission — reflected in Flahive's talks — is to unlock private capital in markets others deem too risky, by structuring transactions, generating market research, and de-risking deals.
• Sector priorities: Renewable and distributed energy (CrossBoundary Energy, CrossBoundary Access mini-grids), natural capital / nature-based climate solutions, agribusiness, aquaculture, forestry, and broader private-sector development in Africa.
• Institutional structure, not angel checks: Deals are executed through dedicated CrossBoundary vehicles and funds (e.g., CrossBoundary Energy Access has targeted deploying ~$150M over three years), so "check size" is transaction/fund-scale rather than individual angel investments.