Our Team
Kokei Otosi
Director of Investment Operations
Kokei owns and strengthens the systems and processes behind Elemental’s investment and portfolio work — managing end-to-end deal flow, supporting strategic planning, and serving as a cross-functional hub to help the team make decisions and maximize impact.
Connect on LinkedIn 
Kokei moves opportunities from sourcing and diligence through investment decisions and execution, while supporting strategic planning, business reporting, and alignment on organizational priorities. In doing so, Kokei helps build the operational backbone that allows the pieces of Elemental’s strategy to work together — improving information flow, surfacing insights, and strengthening collaboration and accountability so the team can bring the full value of its platform to entrepreneurs, funders, local partners, and investors alike.
Prior to Elemental Excelerator
Kokei led the clean energy and infrastructure portfolio at BuildUS, a $60M philanthropic fund. Earlier in her career, she sharpened her strategic and operational fluency at IBM, where she served as a strategy consultant to corporate executives. She also worked at Alante Capital, a climate venture fund, and led complex multi-stakeholder infrastructure and innovation initiatives at New York City Economic Development Corporation and Van Alen Institute, including a first-of-its-kind $30M climate tech demonstration program. Kokei holds an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and studied Public Health and Spanish at NYU.
Outside of the office
Her hobbies include ruminating over a good plot line, being in the sun, and seeing the faces of her friends and family around her dining table. Residents of Los Angeles, Kokei and her husband Jeff can be found meticulously adjudicating samples of whatever fruit’s in season at the farmers market.