The Billion-Dollar Shift in Sustainable Investing | Dan Pascone with Helena Wasserman | Ep #21

Helena Wasserman is the co-founder of Investors for Climate, a private network focused on moving capital into sustainability. She is Swiss-Italian, lives in New York City and began her career at the Clinton Foundation, where she says her interest in moving capital into sustainability and impact took root. Her career then took her to London, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, and she relocated to New York about 18 months before the recording.

She started her first company at 29. Her co-founder is based in Singapore, and both brought strong investor relationships from earlier roles, which is where the network started.

Helena describes Investors for Climate as a mix between a community and an investment arm. By her account, it's a private network of about 400 climate investors, including family offices, venture capitalists and high-net-worth individuals, with events in 32 cities. It began as a free, invitation-only community (you applied and were interviewed), and about a year in, once the founders felt it delivered real value, they introduced membership fees. [VERIFY: guest figures]

She says members want different things, so the network serves 3 groups.

• Angel investors: They want access to the syndicate, which lets them invest alongside others with a smaller ticket than they'd need on their own.
• Fund managers: They're typically raising their next fund, so they want to meet family offices through the network's LP–GP series. Helena says the target ratio is 2 limited partners (LPs) for every 1 general partner (GP).
• Family offices: They come for deal flow, looking for the right opportunities to deploy capital.

According to Helena, deals are referred by members, and a member can only submit one if they're personally invested in the company. She says the network doesn't allow placement agents, doesn't "promote" deals and instead spotlights opportunities so members can take it from there. A separate investment unit also forms SPVs that group capital into specific opportunities. A team sorts through submissions and showcases the strongest ones. Being personally invested shows a member's alignment, but it doesn't replace your own diligence.

On growth and events, Helena says the network uses ambassadors in 32 cities who are themselves family offices or fund managers and take the role as a leadership opportunity rather than a paid one. She compares the model to TED and TEDx: a central brand and local chapters that follow a playbook. Her rule of thumb is that 80% of attendees at each event are investors and 50% of those are family offices.

Helena says her team is in this space "by conviction." She acknowledges that, with the current administration, sustainability isn't a trending theme in the U.S. right now, and she sees Asia and Europe carrying through more than the U.S. By her estimate, about 10% of venture capital funding globally goes to sustainability, and she expects that share to keep growing. That's a prediction, and it may not come true. [VERIFY: guest estimate]

Her bigger idea is that sustainability becomes a lens rather than a vertical like "cleantech" or "climate tech." Just as investors look at deals through risk and return, she thinks they'll also ask how well a company preserves resources, the same way they'd ask how it treats employees. Dan summarized it as every private deal having a sustainability component used to evaluate it, and Helena agreed.

She also points to education as a gap. Some investors from earlier generations assume sustainability means losing money. Helena counters that entire industries are being built, citing sustainable cement as an example she describes as cheaper and less polluting. That's her view, and no strategy guarantees returns, whether or not it has a sustainability angle.

Dan noted that private markets have seen less IPO activity in recent years. Helena says that in sustainability there are fewer IPOs and more mergers and acquisitions (M&A), and she thinks M&A fits her space because the goal isn't to build unicorns. She describes the target as companies worth around $200 million with healthy EBITDA. An acquisition like that can create liquidity, though possibly not at the scale of an IPO.

For investors, the takeaway is practical: exit timing and size are uncertain, and private investments can stay illiquid for years. We'd treat any money in them as money you won't need.

• Meal for the rest of your life: Pizza. As an Italian who grew up on comfort food, she says it makes her feel at home anywhere.
• Technology she can't live without: An AI tool called Fixer.ai that drafts her email responses. (Not an endorsement.)
• Favorite quote: "Better build a product that 30 people love instead of a product that 100 people find just okay." Her takeaway: be specific.
• Favorite book: The Money Trap, which she describes as more about the meaning of life and wisdom than financial tools.
• Personal hack: Walking in nature with her phone away for at least 30 minutes. She says even a walk on a call keeps your brain in the same mode.
• Bucket list item accomplished: Moving to New York and building everything from scratch in 18 months.
• Financial milestone: Not a specific number. She says she isn't chasing a billionaire-sized goal and wants to live comfortably while keeping money moving in support of the planet. She values freedom of time most.
• Outside of work: Meeting the fascinating people you meet in New York.
• Advice to her younger self: Don't overthink and start faster. Entrepreneurship, she says, is a muscle you build with practice.

• A lens doesn't change the fundamentals: Looking at a deal through a sustainability lens can be a useful screen, but it doesn't remove the need to weigh risk, valuation, fees, liquidity and fit with your goals.

• Private deals trade liquidity for access: Syndicates and SPVs can lower the minimum, but you usually can't sell when you want. SPVs can also carry their own fees and terms, so read them closely. Many offerings are limited to accredited investors.

• A community referral isn't diligence: A member being personally invested is a signal of alignment. It tells you little about price, structure or your own situation. We cover this trade-off in our post on private equity and alternative investments.

This hypothetical is for illustration only. All figures are assumed, aren't projections or recommendations, and ignore fees, taxes and expected returns.

Assume an executive, age 50, with $700,000 in household income and $4,000,000 in investable assets who is an accredited investor and interested in climate-focused private deals. She decides in advance that private investments in total will be capped at 5% of investable assets, which is $200,000, and that she's comfortable treating that money as potentially lost and not needed for at least 10 years.

• Spread across deals: She commits $50,000 each to 4 deals ($200,000 total) rather than $200,000 to a single deal.
• Worst case: If all 4 lost their full value, the loss would be $200,000, or 5% of her investable assets. She'd still have $3,800,000 in her other holdings.
• Contrast: If she put 10% ($400,000) into a single deal that failed, the loss would be double that amount.

Sizing the position first and then choosing deals keeps the decision tied to her plan rather than to the deal flow in front of her. A CPA can address any tax questions, such as the partnership tax forms (Schedule K-1) these investments can generate.

We use Life-Driven Planning, a 6-phase plan covering Cash Flow, Retirement & Hybrid Retirement, Risk, Expense & Goal, Tax and Legacy. A wish to invest in line with your values belongs in the Expense & Goal and Risk phases, alongside what the money is for and how much loss you can absorb.

Life Driven Investing (LDI) is how we build a portfolio backward from your life using the Four Liquidity Bands: 0–2 years, 3–5 years, 6–10 years and 10+ years. Private, illiquid deals belong, if at all, in the 10+ year band, so money you need sooner isn't tied up in them. Our video on investing for your life, not just returns explains the framework. Under our Quarterly Strategy Rhythm (ongoing plan updates, decision reviews and rebalancing), we revisit how much concentration you hold. For executives with RSUs, options or an ESPP, our Equity Compensation Playbook, a set of structured rules for those awards, matters here too, because a large company-stock position already adds concentrated risk before any private deal is considered.

This episode is educational and isn't an endorsement of Investors for Climate or any company, tool or investment discussed.

This episode is for corporate executives and senior professionals in their 40s and 50s with $500k+ in household income and complex compensation who are curious about sustainable or private-market investing and want to understand how it fits a bigger plan. If you're working toward a Hybrid Retirement, where work becomes optional on your terms, this conversation can help you think through how values, liquidity and risk fit together.

If you're a high-earning executive weighing private or values-based investments against the rest of your plan, we'd be glad to talk it through. Book a free Wealth Strategy Call with us, and we'll look at your situation together.