Planting Tomorrow: What reforestation taught me about leadership and led me to join the mission

Inside Three Trees' vision to restore landscapes and create more prosperous communities.

There is something quietly radical about planting a tree you may never see grow. It requires a kind of faith that most of us have forgotten how to practise.

It rained heavily on the morning of 1st September, the kind of Seoul rain that makes you want to cancel everything. Nobody did. The Gallery Seoul welcomed Jo Choi, Co-Founder and CFO of Three Trees, for a conversation about reforestation, carbon credits, and what it really means to build something that lasts. 

Jo's journey did not begin in forests. It began on Wall Street, moving money and understanding cash flows. But it was a hike among 1,000-year-old trees in Yakushima, Japan, that changed everything. Standing among those trees, something clicked. She realised she had found her life's mission. From that moment, the question was no longer what she wanted to do, but how to build something that could make it real, financially, structurally, and at scale. That search eventually led her to her co-founder, a connection also made in Japan. Where her co-founder is out front, comfortable in rooms full of investors and never shy about selling the vision, Jo is the one making sure the foundation holds. Two very different energies, equally vital. 

The model is elegant in its logic: plant trees, generate carbon credits, and sell those credits to organisations committed to reducing their emissions. One ton of carbon removed equals one credit. Major corporations and governments around the world are increasingly mandating carbon reduction. The demand is real, and growing. But what makes Three Trees different is not just the business model. It is the vision behind it. To take degraded land and turn it into restored, living space. To invest in local communities, not just local landscapes. To prove that social impact, economic viability, and scale are not competing goals but complementary ones.

What struck me most, though, was not the mechanics. It was how Jo spoke about the places where this work actually happens. In Ghana, Three Trees does not arrive with a plan and ask communities to accept it. They meet the chief, build trust, and genuinely ask whether the project will benefit the people living alongside the land. I found that distinction important because so much well-intentioned work in sustainability and development still gets this wrong. It is easy to optimise for the outcome you can measure and overlook the relationships that make the work sustainable in the first place. Three Trees seems to understand that you cannot restore a landscape without first restoring trust.

Jo also spoke honestly about the challenges. Irrigation systems remain dependent on weather conditions. Timelines in reforestation are long, sometimes spanning a century. Degraded land, cattle that eat seedlings, and the absence of mandatory government frameworks in some markets all create friction. There is no clean, linear path. But Jo's response to that complexity was not to simplify it. It was to build a team she trusted and to overcommunicate every step of the way.

Jo spoke about the leap of faith it took to walk away from stability and build something from scratch. But what struck me was how clear she was about why. It was not a leap into the unknown. It was a leap toward something she had already found. That is a very different kind of courage.

"The destination has changed," she said, "but as a person, you don't need to change." It was Lehman Brothers that gave her the foundation to do all of this. The skills she built on Wall Street, understanding cash flows, moving money, reading risk, did not become irrelevant when her mission changed. They became the very tools she used to build something entirely different. The context shifted. The skills travelled with her."

I have been sitting with that one. Because I think what she means is that the purpose is not a reinvention. It is a recognition. You do not have to become someone else to do work that matters. You just have to be honest about what that work is.

In the weeks before the event, the Gallery Seoul events team, Inger and I, sat down with Jo over coffee to plan and prepare for the morning.I found my own purpose among the trees. So when Three Trees was looking for someone with my profile, I put myself out there. I have since joined Three Trees as a Finance and Internal Controls consultant. It is early days, but already I can feel the difference between working on something and working toward something.

At her talk Jo said: "I found something I want to dedicate my life to." It was said with the certainty of someone who has done the hard work of figuring out what matters and then built her life around it.

That serves as a reminder that purpose does not require you to become someone else. That following a thread of genuine curiosity, even when it leads somewhere unexpected, is itself a form of leadership. Jo has spent three years proving that you can restore landscapes, support communities, and build a financially sustainable business all at once. That is not a small thing. 

And it is only just beginning.