Quantum Energy Partners unveiled enhancements to its ESG initiatives including the hiring of Keila Hand as head of the ESG program at the Houston-based private capital firm.

“We are excited to welcome Keila to our leadership team to further enhance our stewardship efforts across our ESG programs,” Dheeraj Verma, president of Quantum said in a statement on May 13. “She brings a fresh, global perspective to our ongoing efforts and has a strong operational background that will serve our portfolio companies and us well over the coming years.”

Hand joins Quantum from Crown Holdings Inc., where she had been responsible for companywide sustainability strategy, implementation regulatory affairs since 2019 as director of Crown’s global sustainability program. Prior to joining Crown, Hand was sustainability director at PepsiCo, where she led the company’s strategy and initiatives in Asia, Middle East and North Africa, and also led corporate sustainability partnerships at the World Wildlife Fund and was part of environmental science projects at NASA.

Since its launch in 1998, Quantum Energy Partners has managed together with its affiliates more than $17 billion in equity commitments to the global energy industry.

In a May 13 release, the provider of private equity capital said it was founded on “strong principles of health, safety and environmental stewardship” and, in 2013, formalized its approach into an ESG framework in collaboration with many of its key stakeholders.

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During the past several years, Quantum has implemented a variety of changes to its comprehensive ESG framework and implementation timelines.

Commenting on Quantum’s recent ESG initiatives, Verma said: “As a firm, we are committed to action and implementation while many others are still busy discussing concepts and ideas. We aim to hold ourselves and our companies to the highest standards and will approach our ESG initiatives with the same sense of urgency and excellence as we approach all of our investing activities.”

In addition to hiring Hand, who assumes the senior leadership role responsible for stewarding Quantum’s successful and long-standing ESG efforts, the firm also recently became a signatory to the Principles for Responsible Investment and the Institutional Limited Partners Association new Diversity in Action initiative.

On May 13, Quantum also reported it continues to collaborate with the Environmental Defense Fund  (EDF) on best practices in methane detection and reporting plus it also invested two new companies that are focused on ESG best practices and implementation across industries including Project Canary, a Denver-based startup that offers continuous monitoring solutions for methane and also provides supply chain certification for responsibly sourced natural gas.

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