Getting Your Strategy Investment-Ready
Workshops & Advisory Services
Expert support to sharpen your strategy, position your value and get you ready to attract capital with confidence
You’re building a forest or land-use strategy – or giving one a reset. But with investor expectations rising, sustainability growing more complex, and more players entering the market, it’s getting harder to stay current, stand out and mobilize capital efficiently.
Does this sound like you?
Working on a strategy that you don’t want to be like everyone else’s – but you’re finding it hard to differentiate.
Integrating Sustainability, ESG and Impact but unsure how to do it credibly without compromising returns.
Fielding investor questions that reveal gaps in your documentation or logic.
Struggling to clearly explain your value in a way that builds trust and momentum.
Stuck between competing internal views or spinning in planning mode longer than you want.
You don’t want to overcomplicate things. You want to make smart decisions, fast – have a clear way forward to ensure your forest investment strategy is both attractive to investors and implementable. But with so much on the go and so much at stake – you feel paralyzed on how to move forward.
That’s where The ForestLink comes in.
As an independent advisor, I help investment managers and NbS developers sharpen their strategy, pressure-test their thinking, and prepare for investor engagement – so you can raise and deploy capital faster.
What this support looks like
To get you the best results and meet your goals, click on the buttons below. From this initial assessment, you’ll get a customized road map outlining the steps needed to raise and deploy capital faster. If a workshop or advisory engagement is recommended – this assessment will precisely show you how it will be designed to give you the outcomes you seek.
If you have a specific workshop, training or advisory need, see how I can help you below.
Workshops & Team Training
Workshops and team training are consistently my clients’ most-valued engagements. Through customized, interactive sessions you will build team spirit, motivation and get your team on the same page in such a way that builds clarity on how to refine your strategy and communicate it to investors with confidence. You can expect to:
- Gain clarity on sustainability, ESG and impact matters so your whole team understands where value lies and how to articulate it in your strategy.
- Develop your Theory of Change to align your financial and impact goals, giving you a compelling, investable narrative and roadmap for implementation.
- Build investor readiness so your team can speak confidently and build investor trust to raise capital more quickly and develop the systems to execute smoothly.
Workshops are delivered in-person or virtually – always tailored, never off-the-shelf.
Strategic Advisory Options
Advisory Board Participation
Shauna joins or helps build your advisory board of multi-disciplinary professionals – so you can access her cross-cutting advice in sustainable forest management, forestry finance, ESG and impact and business development.
Quarterly or monthly cadence, ideal for 12-month+ engagements
Advisory Retainer
Ongoing access to Shauna’s strategic input across meetings, document reviews, investor engagement, or internal decision-making, so you can move faster and go into investor conversations prepared and with confidence.
3–6+ month terms, you decide the cadence
On-Demand Advisory
Focused advice and feedback on specific challenges – think pitch decks, theory of change review, or validation of your ESG management framework. Here, you can get high-quality input when you need it without a long-term commitment.
Timing as needed, best for one-off challenges you need support with
Not sure what you need yet?
The best place to start is the Forest Investment Growth Assessment for Asset Managers and the Fast-Track Finance Assessment for NbS Developers. Book a Fit Call to see if this is right for you, or we can chat if you have a more specific request.
Case Studies
ESG & Impact Workshop plus Training for TIMO Team
As part of a suite of services provided for a leading Timberland Investment Management Organization (TIMO), Shauna designed and led a workshop and management training on ESG and Impact Management and the Theory of Change. The training helped the team gain a wider understanding of environmental and social management, and how to apply it cross-functionally in asset management. The workshop had the team walk through a cross-cutting risk assessment and build a Theory of Change for their combined financial and impact objectives.
The outcome? A unified understanding of how financial and impact objectives work together – This has helped in conversations with prospective investors and is supporting prospective investees to understand investor expectations and how to implement them.
Strategic Insight for Drax’s Independent Advisory Board
When Drax convened an Independent Advisory Board to bring scientific rigour to its sustainability strategy, the group leaned heavily academic. Shauna joined to round out the table—bringing a grounded, private-sector lens to debates around biomass sustainability and how the company delivers on its Climate, Nature, and People-Positive commitments.
By translating science into actionable business best practice, she helps the board frame sharper questions, challenge assumptions, and offer advice that resonates beyond theory—into boardrooms, supply chains, and communications.
Why The ForestLink?
Shauna Matkovich, Founding Director of The ForestLink has 20-years of combined experience in operational sustainable forest management, international forest investment management, ESG and Impact management and business development of new forest investment strategies.
Shauna’s unique skillset and her collaborative get-things-done personality have helped numerous investment organizations in achieving their forest investment goals. Her combined focus on profitability, risk reduction and impact creation with expertise on how working forests operate is what you need if you care about sustainability and want it integrated into your organization and investment strategies.