Meet the Founder - Joana Picq

Joana Picq is a French-Brazilian tech entrepreneur turned natural capital investor, fully committed to reshaping how we value nature. Trained as a civil engineer, she built a global career in technology — from incubating emerging technologies at Microsoft to scaling B2B startups across Europe and Silicon Valley.

Her transition into nature finance stems from a simple but urgent realisation: we cannot expect people to stop destroying nature if financial rewards come only from its destruction. For Joana, the solution lies in putting biodiversity on the balance sheet — assigning real financial value to the ecosystems on which our economies and societies depend.

Her journey into nature finance was deepened by the Oxford Impact Investing Programme, where she explored new models for mobilising capital toward conservation. Through her latest venture, |XAU, Joana now turns those insights into practice, designing financial structures that channel investment into biodiversity through equity rather than philanthropy. By linking ecological performance to financial value, |XAU aligns investor returns with biodiversity protection, creating counter-incentives to environmental destruction and accelerating the transition towards regenerative economies.

She draws invaluable insight from her husband, Jonathan Rossouw, one of history’s most experienced naturalists, and her sister, Manuela Picq, an international relations scholar and Indigenous rights activist.

Joana weaves the expertise and wisdom of these and other advisors to build a framework that empowers investors and conservation teams, forging partnerships that protect wildlife, reward local communities and usher in a new era of business.