About episode
When Tom Steyer and Katie Hall came together in 2021 to bring Galvanize Climate Solutions to the world, it promised to be something rather unique. They both bring decades of experience managing many billions of dollars, incredible networks, and insights to find the best, most impactful investment opportunities for climate. Recently, Secretary John Kerry joined Galvanize as a Co-Chair, adding perhaps unparalleled international expertise to their team.
The firm prioritizes not just financial returns for their investors, but also real climate impact. I was thrilled to sit down with Galvanize Chief Impact Officer Nicole Systrom to learn about how such an all-star team thinks about the impact they create. We spoke about Nicole’s background, the three different asset classes Galvanize invests in, three different levels of impact they consider before and after their investments are made, the impact of the election on their work, and much more. I learned a lot and am certainly glad Galvanize is doing the work it’s doing. Enjoy.
In today’s episode, we cover:
- [02:35] Nicole’s background & career focus on climate
- [06:59] Galvanize & what makes it unique
- [11:21] Feelings & optimism in climate work
- [14:36] Galvanize’s investment strategy across asset classes
- [15:59] Impact approaches for public equities, real estate & venture
- [17:59] Galvanize’s thesis & embedding impact across the firm
- [22:36] Three levels of impact
- [24:02] Diving deeper into impact approaches for different asset classes
- [26:11] Galvanize’s real estate investment strategy
- [29:24] Nicole’s goals & priorities for the next year
- [32:42] The impact of the recent election
- [34:28] What else needs to change in climate finance
- [36:28] Closing reflections & call to action
Nicole’s background & career focus on climate
Nicole has focused her entire career on climate, often working at the intersection of different disciplines and sectors. She started at Pacific Forest Trust, where she worked on carbon offset project protocols for working forests. From there, she went to TerraPass, managing and developing carbon offset projects at landfills across the United States.
Nicole then decided to go back to business school, as she wanted to better understand how to make the business case for climate action and ensure that it was profitable. After business school, she ran her own consulting firm for nearly eight years, working with a variety of stakeholders, including philanthropists, entrepreneurs, and investors, to bring more resources and people into the climate movement.
Nicole’s diverse experiences and interests eventually led her to Galvanize, where she could bring together all of these different threads and work towards her goal of getting more resources dedicated to addressing climate change.
Galvanize & what makes it unique
Galvanize is a unique investment firm, as it is solely focused on the business of decarbonization. Nicole emphasizes that Galvanize is a market-rate, for-profit investment firm, not a philanthropic or concessional one.
The key to Galvanize’s approach, according to Nicole, is building an interdisciplinary impact team that brings together expertise from various fields, including science, technology, policy, markets, and geopolitics. This allows the firm to deeply understand the nuances of the energy transition and make better investment decisions as a result.
Nicole highlights the recent addition of Secretary John Kerry to the Galvanize team, which she said brings unparalleled international expertise to the firm. She describes Galvanize as a dynamic and collaborative place, where the team engages in lively debates and lifts each other up to learn from the diverse backgrounds and experiences of the founders and staff.
Galvanize’s investment strategy across asset classes
Nicole explains that Galvanize has a “whole-of-economy” approach to addressing climate change, investing across three main asset classes: venture, real estate, and public equities.
In the venture portfolio, Nicole says Galvanize’s impact team works closely with the venture investors to assess the total addressable climate impact of each potential investment, ensuring the companies are addressing emissions at a significant scale.
On the real estate side, Nicole highlights that buildings account for a large portion of global emissions, around 40%. Galvanize’s real estate strategy focuses on upgrading industrial facilities, multi-family homes, and other properties with solutions like solar, heat pumps, and LED lighting to dramatically reduce their carbon footprint and increase the value of the assets.
In public equities, Nicole explains that Galvanize’s engagement work centers around supporting portfolio companies in aligning executive compensation with the achievement of climate goals, as a way to drive decarbonization efforts.
Nicole emphasizs that Galvanize sees impact and returns as inextricably linked, and the firm is committed to measuring and managing impact across all of its investment strategies.
What else needs to change in climate finance
Nicole highlights that one of the key things she believes needs to change in the climate finance space is increasing transparency and improving the ability to measure and disclose the impact of investments.
She explains that having better, clearer, and more consistent information on the impact of climate-focused investments is crucial for driving accountability and pushing all stakeholders to do more. Nicole sees this as a unique contribution that Galvanize’s impact team can make – focusing on increasing transparency and the ability to track progress.
Beyond that, Nicole emphasizes the need for all the different stakeholders in the climate movement, including investors, policymakers, advocates, and others, to work together more effectively and in concert. She believes that when one group gets out ahead of the others, progress can be stymied until everyone catches up.
Nicole also highlights the importance of continuing to demonstrate that the economic transition to a net-zero future is happening irrespective of who is in political power, as the technologies become better, cheaper, and more desirable. She sees this as a key opportunity in the coming year to share the stories of progress and success.
Resources Mentioned
Connect with Nicole Systrom
- Connect with Nicole on LinkedIn
Connect with Jason Rissman
Keep up with Invested In Climate
- Sign up for our Newsletter
Have feedback or ideas for future episodes, events, or partnerships?
