William J. Barber III is the Senior Director of Impact and Equitable Investments at the Coalition for Green Capital. As Senior Director, William works with CGC’s investment and impact teams to analyze investing strategy through both social and economic indicators. William also coordinates with the investment team to prioritize perspectives of communities, households, and customers by developing and integrating financial products/models responsive to the needs of underserved communities, including alternative underwriting strategies and reparative/catalytic capital strategies to drive product adoption in communities while also achieving GHG reduction goals.
Over the course of his career, William has served as an environmental advocate, a renewable energy executive, and a climate scholar–leveraging over a decade of experience, academic and legal training, and entrepreneurship towards driving community solutions to the climate crisis. He has contributed as a thought leader on numerous publications and articles describing the historic opportunity to use green finance, technological innovation, and policy to create wealth generation for communities, especially rural communities on the frontlines of climate impact. William has sat on numerous adviosry boards notably including the DOE Boost Energy Innovation Board convened by Sandia National Laboratory and the Southeast Energy Insecurity Advisory Board convened by Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.
His academic background includes a Bachelor’s degree in environmental physics from North Carolina Central University and a Juris Doctorate from UNC School of Law, where he focused on environmental and energy policy.
In 2019, he founded The Rural Beacon Initiative, a North Carolina-based social enterprise that provides consultation on operationalizing equity frameworks within sustainable solutions, and works to increase BIPOC ownership in the growing supply chains of regenerative agriculture and renewable energy. As a self-described son of the south, he is especially interested in increasing opportunities for self-determination and rural revitalization within the clean economy. William’s work on community solutions has been featured in numerous outlets, including NextGen’s 30 under 30 Young Black Changemakers and Paypal’s Rising Leaders Series.