Adair Morse
Professor, Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley
Adair Morse is a professor at the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley. Beginning in February 2021, she is on leave from UC Berkeley to serve as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Capital Access in the Office of Domestic Finance at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Morse holds the Soloman P. Lee Chair in Business Ethics and is Professor of Finance at the Haas School of Business. She is also a fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law and Business, and Founding Faculty Director of the Sustainable and Impact Finance Initiative. She sits on the Governance and Allocation Committee of the California Rebuilding Fund, a public-private partnership of the State of California to provide affordable small business loans. She is also an Expert Panel Member of the Norwegian Ministry of Finance, for oversight of the $1 trillion sovereign fund.
Morse’s research spans multiple areas of finance: household finance, sustainable investing, discrimination and corruption, venture capital, and pension management, with the unifying theme that she tries to choose topics useful for leveling economic playing fields. Recent work includes papers on algorithmic discrimination, small business policy during the pandemic, impact and sustainable investment, pension governance, and communication from the Federal Reserve. Her publications appear in the top economics and finance journals, and she has won a number of top finance research prizes, including the Brattle Prize, the Jensen Prize, prizes at the EFA and WFA, the Moskowitz Impact prize, among others. Many of her various works have been directly implemented into policy, including actions by the U.S. Congress, the Greek Parliament, and many state banking regulators. She holds a Ph.D. in finance from the University of Michigan.
Dan Lashof
Director, WRI United States
Dan Lashof is the Director of World Resources Institute, United States. He coordinates WRI’s work in the United States across climate, energy, food, forests, water and the sustainable cities programs. This includes overseeing the work of the U.S. climate team, which aims to catalyze and support climate action by states, cities, and businesses while laying the groundwork for federal action in the coming years.
Dan has been working to promote solutions to climate change for more than two decades. Before the World Resources Institute, Dan was the Chief Operating Officer of NextGen Policy Center and previously served as the Director of the Climate and Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
His focus is developing federal and state regulations to place enforceable limits on carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping pollutants. He has participated in scientific assessments of global warming through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and has monitored international climate negotiations since their inception. He was a member of Governor McAuliffe’s Climate Change and Resiliency Update Commission, and has testified at numerous Congressional and California legislative hearings.
Dan earned his Bachelor’s degree in Physics and Mathematics at Harvard and his Doctorate from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley.
He and his wife now reside in Berkeley and they have three adult children.
Scott Wu
Executive Director, IBank
Before being appointed the executive director of the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank (IBank) in 2019, Scott Wu spent several decades as a banker, investor, entrepreneur and public servant and hopes to leverage his experience to amplify the state’s economic growth.
He cofounded several investment firms that together manage billions of dollars in capital and developed a track record of achieving superior returns. Scott was a partner and co-founder of FTV Capital, partner and head of investments at the Omidyar Network, and served as a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow and senior adviser to the innovation funds of USAID. He was also a member of the founding team of Upstart.com. The long-time Northern California resident is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Business School.
Kate Gordon
Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Energy, U.S. Department of Energy
Kate Gordon has spent the past two decades working at the intersection of climate change, energy policy, and economic development. Most recently, Gordon served under California Governor Gavin Newsom as the Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research and Senior Policy Advisor to the Governor on Climate. Trained as a community organizer, and later in law and regional economic development, her focus has long been on bringing diverse groups together to work toward a more sustainable, inclusive economy. Prior to being appointed OPR Director, Gordon was the founding director of the Risky Business Project, which focused on quantifying the economic impacts of climate change on key U.S. regions and sectors. Gordon has served in senior leadership positions at several nonpartisan think tanks including the Henry M. Paulson Institute, the Center for the Next Generation, the Center for American Progress, and the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. Gordon got her start on energy and climate issues working at the national Apollo Alliance, where she ultimately served as co-Executive Director until the merger with the Blue-Green Alliance in 2011. Under her leadership, the Apollo Alliance drafted key parts of the American Recovery And Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) including the Advanced Manufacturing Tax Credit, and also partnered with the AFL-CIO to draft “just transition” proposals for several key energy and climate bills.
Gordon earned a J.D. and a Masters in City and Regional Planning from the University of California-Berkeley, and an undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University.
Heather Boushey
Member, President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers and Chief Economist to the Invest in America Cabinet
Heather Boushey is a member of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers and Chief Economist to the Invest in America Cabinet. Heather is co-founder of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, where she was President and CEO from 2013 – 2020. She previously served as chief economist for Secretary Clinton’s 2016 transition team and as an economist for the Center for American Progress, the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and the Economic Policy Institute.