23 April 2026, Zurich: South Pole, the leading climate project advisor, today announces the next step of its growth plans under Nadia Kaddouri’s leadership, marked by the appointment of Leila Toplic as Chief Product & Go To Market (GtM) Officer. The newly established role reflects a broader evolution of the organisation, focused on strengthening how South Pole serves customers today, while putting the foundations in place to scale as carbon markets evolve.
Building on a 20-year track record of working with governments and customers across more than 15 countries, South Pole is evolving its go-to-market approach to better align customer needs, market requirements, and delivery. This will enable clearer offerings and reliable delivery, including carbon certificates designed to meet evolving compliance requirements over time, while continuing to support high-integrity voluntary demand. It will also provide customers and project partners with greater confidence in timing, cost, and quality.
The evolution comes as carbon markets continue to mature, with voluntary frameworks increasingly complemented by the development of compliance-driven demand, shaped by schemes like CORSIA and Article 6.
Leila brings more than 25 years of international experience building and scaling companies and markets across technology and climate, including at Microsoft and, most recently, Carbonfuture, a digital infrastructure company for carbon markets.
Over the course of her career, she has led work spanning go-to-market, product, policy, due diligence, and organisational transformation in complex, multi-stakeholder environments. In this role, Toplic will lead the integration of product strategy and global go-to-market to strengthen product-market fit and modernise commercial workflows.
Alongside the new Chief Product & GtM role, South Pole is strengthening its operating model to improve how it translates market signals into delivery, including more digitally enabled ways of working across commercial and delivery workflows.
This includes expanded responsibility for global carbon project delivery under a dual CFO & COO mandate, led by current CFO, Aaron Barasz. A seasoned executive, Aaron brings over 20 years of experience in strategy, finance and operations to further enhance the company’s global carbon delivery infrastructure.
South Pole has also set up a dedicated global origination and sourcing function, reporting directly to the CEO, and is restructuring its regional model to enable more consistent execution globally.
Nadia Kaddouri, Chief Executive Officer, South Pole, said: "The future of carbon markets will be defined by compliance and reliable execution at scale. Leila’s appointment and Aaron’s expanded role solidify our leadership team as we strengthen our product, go-to-market, and commercial foundations to turn our access and technical expertise into durable value for customers and project partners, and long-term profitability for the business."
Leila Toplic, Chief Product & GTM Officer, South Pole said: "South Pole has helped shape carbon markets for nearly two decades. The opportunity now is to build on that foundation by getting product, go-to-market, and delivery working as one system - turning customer needs into high-integrity offerings and delivering them reliably across both voluntary and compliance markets.”
Media contact: media@southpole.com
South Pole is the world's leading carbon asset developer and climate consultancy.
Since 2006, South Pole has been a trusted partner and advisor to governments, public sector organisations, and leading businesses on their decarbonisation journeys. South Pole serves over 1,000 clients across the world, and its global team of experts has helped many Fortune 500 businesses implement comprehensive strategies that help build resilience and turn climate action into long-term business opportunities.
In line with its mission to deliver true climate impact for all, South Pole has used the power of markets to help channel climate finance to over 850 projects in more than 50 countries across the globe. To date, these projects have helped reduce over 200 million metric tonnes of CO2 emissions, accelerated low-carbon transformations across several sectors, and provided measurable benefits to communities vulnerable to climate change.
The business is supported by world-class investors, including Temasek's GenZero, Lightrock, Corisol, and Salesforce Ventures.
South Pole is a social enterprise recognised by the World Economic Forum's Schwab Foundation, and committed to becoming a B Corp globally.
For more information, visit www.southpole.com or LinkedIn.
