Environmental Pioneer Shares Personal Story
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Peter Fusaro, Founder Global Change Associates, is an environmental pioneer. Beginning in 1970, he has been working and advocating for the environment. Much of his work has been focused on finding the opportunities to save and make money by doing the right thing for Mother Nature.
He says, “I have been ardently committed to sustainability by focusing on practical solutions to complex problems through books, mentorship, lectures, interviews and insights on five continents. After a while, the ideas take root and get disseminated. Sort of like, Johnny Appleseed.”
It may be that his biggest challenge is what ultimately gave him the ability to influence so many. He got started before the race began. He says, “Being early” is the biggest challenge he’s faced. “One of my colleagues calls me ‘before early.’ When people are not ready to change behavior, there is much resistance.”
He overcame that challenge by finding ways to understand and collaborate with people. He says, “The way forward has been to find common ground and not scare people.”
When you jump the gun, you have to be patient. Peter says, the keys to his success are: “Tenacity, perseverance and vision.”
Over the years, his success and credibility have allowed him to help firms like our sponsor, Clean Energy Advisors, to raise capital. He advised Toyota on the Prius. His firm created energy efficiency programs for the NY-NJ Port Authority. He says he was among the first to spot problems at Enron.
He explains his success this way: “When you have a mission, you need to know yourself well enough to suffer failures, criticisms and skepticism. However, you continue to move forward by engaging people throughout the world in conversation and dialogue.”
Peter Fusaro, courtesy of Global Change Associates.
On Friday, October 14, 2016 at 1:00 PM, Peter will join me here for a live discussion of his remarkable career and his insights about where we go from here. Tune in here then to watch the interview live. Post questions in the comments below or tweet questions before the interview to @devindthorpe.
More about Global Change Associates:
Global Change Associates is an energy & environmental advisory firm based in New York City and focused on the environment and capital markets. To that end, it works with fund managers in clean energy and sustainability to raise capital such as Clean Energy Advisors and Terra Global Solutions. The company also provides business strategy on market entry for renewable energy, energy efficiency and clean water for growth companies entering their expansion stage of development. The company has completed over 200 successful engagements since 1991 and has offered advice to the Toyota Prius development team on electric power issues, created energy efficiency programs for the NY-NJ Port Authority, assisted in automating due diligence for a Silicon Valley solar platform, and created the natural gas & electricity strategies for Total in Paris among others engagements. The company was first to identify problems at Enron, to identify the emergence of energy & environmental hedge funds, and offer energy & carbon risk management services. He is also founder of the Wall Street Green Summit, now in its 16th year and the oldest environmental finance event in North America.
Peter’s bio:
Twitter: @fusarotweets
Peter Fusaro has been an ardent environmentalist since Earth Day 1970 when he wore a solar power tee shirt in Pittsburgh. Over his long career in sustainability, Peter helped the US EPA take the lead out of gasoline and co-wrote an environmental impact statement on LNG safety & siting in the 1970s, created the first energy efficiency programs in New York City as part of the Mayor’s office in the 1980s, and helped transform how energy analysis was transmitted by email & fax in the late 1980s, and has been engaged in how energy can be used more efficiently and environmental benignly using capital market solutions. He identified energy & environmental hedge funds in the early 2000s and co-created the Energy Hedge Fund Center. He has run a clean tech venture capital fund. His focus for the past 10 years has been on the emerging field of impact investing. Here he is focused on direct investment in clean energy and energy efficiency technologies to reduce carbon and scale enterprises commercially.
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Devin is a journalist, author and corporate social responsibility speaker who calls himself a champion of social good. With a goal to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems by 2045, he focuses on telling the stories of those who are leading the way! Learn more at DevinThorpe.com!
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