Aaron Goach
AARON GOACH is a senior governance, legal and finance professional with diversified experience as a chairman, chief executive officer, executive director, INED, chief financial officer, treasurer, fundraiser and general counsel, of non-profit and for-profit organization boards alike, in Hong Kong, the Greater Bay Area, the Mekong Region / Greater Indochina and across ASEAN, and worldwide.
Currently, Aaron is: Member of the Bretton Woods Committee, a nonpartisan network of prominent global citizens, which works to demonstrate the value of international economic cooperation and to foster strong, effective Bretton Woods institutions as forces for global well-being; Founder and Managing Director of Cardamom Capital, a frontier and EM VC in multi-sectoral FDI and sustainable economic development via business incubation, seed capital financing, angel investment, startup acceleration, market entry and general advisory and consulting services, focusing on disruptive innovation via alternative and transformative technologies, primarily in the Greater Indochina / Mekong Region and other frontier and emerging markets across ASEAN and other developing regions; Advisory Board Member at Ascend Global Solutions, a professional consultancy providing advisory and fundraising services to investment projects worldwide; and an executive officer of the Independent Power Producers Forum, an international energy industry roundtable.
Previously, Aaron was an INED at Blue Sky Energy Asia, a specialist financing and development company structuring and funding tailored infrastructure upgrades to help clients improve energy management and reduce energy costs.
Aaron began his career in finance at Merrill Lynch, where he was a Director and Counsel in the Global Markets and Investment Banking Group, advising on Asia-Pacific M&A transactions, privatizing China’s public enterprises including the 2006 US$22 billion simultaneous NYSE and HKEx listing of ICBC, then the largest IPO in world history, and navigating Merrill Lynch’s Asia-Pacific businesses through the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008.
A longtime and regular delegate to ADB, APEC, ASEAN, IMF-WBG and WEF/Davos meetings, Aaron has appeared on Bloomberg TV, CNN and other media networks and been featured in The American Lawyer (cover), Asian Legal Business (cover), Corporate Counsel Magazine, Euromoney, FinanceAsia, International Financial Law Review and other major industry publications.
A member of the New York Bar for nearly 25 years, Aaron is a graduate of: Chicago Booth Executive Education’s “Chicago Booth Approach to Finance” (2024); Advisory Board Centre’s “Certified Chair Executive Program” (2021); Financial Times Board Director Program’s “Effective NED Program” (2018); Harvard University, where he earned a Doctor of Law in Jurisprudence at the Harvard Law School and was a Teaching Fellow in the Economics Department of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard College and Business Manager of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy (1999); and Muhlenberg College, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics, summa cum laude, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa (1995) and was a Charles A. Dana Foundation Scholar (1996).
Aaron’s community and philanthropic activities include: Chair of the Board of Directors of Friends of Kellett School (Delaware), a non-profit, independent U.S. alumni association and fundraising affiliate of Kellett School, consistently ranked as one of the best British international schools in the world; Vice Commodore, Company Board Director and Member of the Governance, Human Resources, Finance, Sailability and Sailing Committees and past Company Secretary, Treasurer and Chair of the Balloting, Governance and Sailability Committees and Membership Working Group at The Hebe Haven Yacht Club, the premier sail-training club in Hong Kong and home of Sailability Hong Kong, a world pioneer and leader in accessible and inclusive sailing, co-founded by Kay Rawbone BEM; Certified Crew Member of Sailability’s Solaris 40 performance cruiser Mo Han (Limitless), a gift of the Li Ka Shing Foundation; Hong Kong Sailing Federation Provisional Club Judge and Race Officer Level One Examinee; and past Group Financial Treasurer of the 299th East Kowloon Scouts Troop of the Silver Jubilee District, the English-speaking section of the 95,000-strong Scout Association of Hong Kong.
