Building Teams for the Climate Transition, Resilience Economy, and Critical Minerals Future.
Founded by Practitioners. Grounded by Experience.
BeechTree was founded by two career climate change practitioners who spent more than thirty years working across government, academia, and implementation before returning to executive search.
Our Story
Daniel Abrahams began his career in executive search before spending more than fifteen years working across climate policy, international development, and national security, ultimately leading USAID's climate security portfolio. Andrea Warren spent her career advancing resilience, nutrition, food security, and humanitarian programming across government and research.
Through those experiences, it became clear that organizations across climate, environment, and critical minerals needed a different kind of search partner: one built by people who already knew the organizations, understood the work, and had spent careers earning the trust of the professionals they now place. The unprecedented disruption of the federal climate workforce in 2025 only reinforced that need, bringing an extraordinary concentration of expertise into transition at a pivotal moment for the sector.
Inspired by the resilience of the American beech tree, we are an executive search and strategic advisory firm guiding organizations in solving the leadership and technical challenges at the heart of climate action -- from navigating climate risk, to structuring innovative finance and securing the minerals essential for a resilient future.
Meet the Founders
Daniel Abrahams, PhD
Co-Founder & CEO
Daniel leads BeechTree's search practice with fifteen years of climate work behind him. He spent five years at USAID leading the agency's climate security portfolio -- providing technical assistance across agency programming and serving as a policy liaison to the White House, with a focus on joint climate-conflict challenges, natural climate solutions, and critical minerals. He began his federal career as an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow.
Before USAID, Daniel spent five years at Michael Page International, where he helped build the firm's public accounting practice and led dozens of senior searches, before moving to On-Ramps, a retained search firm focused on nonprofit and socially driven organizations.
He holds a PhD in Geography from the University of South Carolina and a Master's in Public Policy from Johns Hopkins University, and has held climate-focused academic appointments at Colby College, Lehigh University, and the University of South Carolina. He regularly writes and speaks on climate issues for both specialized and general audiences. Some examples can be seen here.
When not working, he can be found re-wilding his Virginia home, woodworking, or (most often) wandering woods and navigating waterways with his wife and daughter.
Andrea M. Warren, PhD
Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer
Andrea brings deep expertise across public health, nutrition, and food security, with a focus on research, monitoring and evaluation, and program design. She spent five years at USAID -- first as a Nutrition Research Advisor with the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, then as Senior Nutrition Advisor with the Bureau for Resilience, Environment, and Food Security -- working directly with USAID Missions and implementing partners to strengthen food security and nutrition programming, and contributing to agency and government-wide policy.
Before USAID, she was a Research Associate at the University of South Carolina, leading evaluations of nutrition programs across Ethiopia, Nepal, Bangladesh, and the U.S., among other countries.
She holds a PhD in Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior from the University of South Carolina and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Florida.
Outside of work Andrea enjoys hiking with her family, cooking, or chasing her feisty toddler
The organizations shaping the climate transition deserve search partners who already understand the work.
Whether you're building a climate or energy transition function, scaling a climate technology company, navigating a leadership transition, or searching for specialized technical expertise, we bring practitioner experience to every search we lead.
We'd love to learn what you're building.