Lori Collins
Climate resilience investment and ecosystem builder
I build commercial pathways for markets before capital is ready to move. I did it in mutual funds at Fidelity Investments, in online lending at LendingTree, and in clean energy through emerging ventures. Today I work on climate adaptation, a $1.4 trillion market with a fraction of the investment it warrants.
Finance Executive
- At Fidelity Investments, I led development of the open architecture mutual fund platform that let investors buy funds that Fidelity did not manage. Inside the company this was heresy, but the proprietary offering alone was not a competitive strategy, and it was a ceiling on share of wallet. I returned to executive leadership every six months with the business case to stay the course. We prevailed and within 3 years, grew assets from zero to $9 billion.
- Years later, when I read LendingTree's 10-K, I recognized the same structure: a closed, intermediated market that would break open the moment someone gave consumers a choice. I joined the executive team at LendingTree and helped grow the company from $7 million to $476 million in revenue. We created the dominant online lending exchange and disrupted the mortgage industry along the way.
Energy Executive
- I took my finance experience to the energy industry to help address a global issue: climate change. At the time I thought climate was all about decarbonization.
- With Duke Energy, I launched Joules Accelerator, one of the earliest clean technology accelerators in the United States and now the largest in the Southeast. To date, Joules startups have raised more than $2.6 billion in venture funding, and 19 portfolio companies have reached an exit.
- The startups mattered, but the more durable outcome was the ecosystem: the investor relationships, corporate pilots, and talent pipeline that continue to support ventures years later. Ecosystems do not emerge on their own.
Climate resilience investment
- I pursued a Master's in Carbon Management at the University of Edinburgh in 2016, expecting to deepen my work on clean energy. But instead I discovered the huge need for solutions to climate impacts that cross every sector, not just energy.
- What the adaptation market requires is the capital formation models, investor frameworks, and venture pipelines that clean energy now takes for granted. That gap is my work.
Ecosystem Development
- Since 2017 I’ve co-authored or contributed to a dozen reports on climate adaptation investment with global organizations. I’m the lead author of the 2024 report The Unavoidable Opportunity which lays out the growing investment case for climate resilience, published by the Global Adaptation and Resilience Investment Group (GARI) in partnership with the The Lightsmith Group, MSCI Institute, Bezos Earth Fund, and ClimateWorks Foundation.
- As a strategic advisor to GARI, I play a leading role in advancing the organization’s climate resilience investment research, strategic partnerships, and investor engagement efforts, thanks to grant funding from the World Bank.
Private Sector Focus
- Today I’m also an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School and lead the resilience track for the Climate Circle at the Harvard Innovation Labs, working with founders building adaptation ventures and with the investors who will back them.
- I came to climate from private sector finance, and I think that matters. Adaptation will not scale on urgency alone. It scales through market demand for solutions, innovative technology, and market returns on investment. Please join me to identify emerging climate technologies, connect to investors and build the market for adaptation.
Affiliations
Global advocacy for a cleaner, more resilient world.
President's Council member
Climate resilience leader
Global Adaptation & Resilience Investment (GARI) group to catalyze private sector investment in resilience. Strategic advisor.
Seeks to invest in companies positioned to drive massive impact in curbing global climate change. Impact Leader.
Largest cleantech accelerator in the Southeast. Founding Executive Director. Cohort advisor.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Environmental Financial Advisory Board (EFAB). Appointed to three-year term.
Advances the wind industry across 11 states to achieve economic benefits to industry, utilities, ratepayers, and citizens of the Southeastern U.S. Board member.
Advancing women's leadership worldwide through 7,500 women leaders in 50 nations. Member - Carolinas, Massachusetts