Episode #16 - Nancy Pfund

Nancy E. Pfund is Founder and Man­ag­ing Part­ner of DBL Part­ners, a ven­ture cap­i­tal firm whose goal is to com­bine top-​​tier finan­cial returns with mean­ing­ful social, envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nomic returns in the regions and sec­tors in which it invests. Nancy is also the Founder of DBL Investors. As a lead­ing player in the grow­ing field of impact invest­ing, DBL has helped to reveal the power of ven­ture cap­i­tal to pro­mote social change and envi­ron­men­tal improve­ment, and Ms. Pfund writes and speaks fre­quently of impact investing. Ms. Pfund cur­rently spon­sors or sits on the board of direc­tors of sev­eral com­pa­nies, includ­ing; Farm­ers Busi­ness Net­work, The Muse, Advanced Micro­grid Solu­tions, Off-​​Grid Elec­tric, Primus Power, and, prior to their pub­lic offer­ings, Tesla Motors and Pan­dora. She also served on the board of SolarCity from 2008 until its acqui­si­tion by Tesla in Decem­ber 2016, on both the audit and com­pen­sa­tion com­mit­tees, and chair­ing its cor­po­rate gov­er­nance com­mit­tee; Prior to found­ing DBL Investors, Ms. Pfund was a Man­ag­ing Direc­tor in Ven­ture Cap­i­tal at JPMor­gan, hav­ing started her invest­ment career at Ham­brecht & Quist in 1984. Pre­vi­ously, Ms. Pfund worked at Intel Cor­po­ra­tion, the State of Cal­i­for­nia, Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity and the Sierra Club. Ms. Pfund was fea­tured #17 in the 2014 FORTUNE Inau­gural World’s Top 25 Eco-​​Innovators; and appeared on Fast Company’s 2016 List of Most Cre­ative Peo­ple in Busi­ness. She serves on the Advi­sory Coun­cil of the Bill Lane Cen­ter for the Amer­i­can West at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity; the Advi­sory Board of the Lawrence Berke­ley National Lab­o­ra­tory (Berke­ley Lab); the UC Davis Cen­ter for Energy Effi­ciency, and co-​​chairs the Yale School of Man­age­ment Pro­gram on Entre­pre­neur­ship. Ms. Pfund is also a Trustee of the National Geo­graphic Soci­ety. She has been a Lec­turer in Man­age­ment at the Stan­ford Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness and the Yale School of Man­age­ment; and is a C3E Ambas­sador to the U.S. Clean Energy Edu­ca­tion and Empow­er­ment Pro­gram, led by the U.S. Depart­ment of Energy. She is also a found­ing offi­cer and direc­tor of ABC2, a foun­da­tion aimed at accel­er­at­ing a cure for brain cancer. Ms. Pfund is the author, along with Ben­jamin Healey of the widely cited report on the his­tory of U.S. energy sub­si­dies enti­tled, “What Would Jef­fer­son Do? The His­tor­i­cal Role of Fed­eral Sub­si­dies in Shap­ing America’s Energy Future”, co-​​authored with Michael Lazar, “Red, White & Green: The True Col­ors of America’s Clean Tech Jobs”, co-​​authored with Noah Walker, “Ask Saint Onofrio: Find­ing What Has Been Lost in A Tale of Two Energy Sources”, co-​​authored with Anand Chhabra, “Renew­ables Are Dri­ving Up Elec­tric­ity Prices: Wait, What?”, and co-​​authored with Kristofer Holz, “The 2017 Inau­gu­ra­tion: Empow­er­ing a Clean Energy Nation”. Ms. Pfund received her BA and MA in anthro­pol­ogy from Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity, and her MBAfrom the Yale School of Management