Trends Watch: Climate Change

EisnerAmper’s Trends Watch is a weekly entry to our Alternative Investments Intelligence blog, featuring the views and insights of executives from alternative investment firms. If you’re interested in being featured, please contact Elana Margulies-Snyderman.  

This week, Elana talks with Tom Soto, Founder & Managing Partner, Diverse Communities Impact Fund (DCIF).  

As a private equity impact firm focused on reducing climate change, what are the greatest opportunities you see and why?

As a 74% Latinx-owned firm which seeks to improve quality of life by increasing access to better health care, education, banking and financial services leveraging technology in the fourth industrial revolution, we see endless opportunities to create a shift in the economic and social understanding of solutions to help address climate change. Specifically, there are several untapped or unrecognized industries and technologies including zero emissions hydrogen, biomass, air carbon and greenhouse gas capture that have been overlooked or dismissed that require examination and investment to help move us in the right direction to combat climate change.

What are the greatest challenges you face with solving climate change and why?

Finding the best technology and convincing the investors of their validity on a comprehensive level. I have been doing this a long time and I am actively involved with my companies to open them to opportunities. That requires a hands-on approach because a superficial or buzzword approach to impact will only make it harder for good operators to succeed and ultimately that will affect everyone downstream. It takes creativity. Not everyone is creative.

What inspires you to keep moving forward to address climate change?

I have a son. Making sure I leave him with a planet that he can thrive in is something positive for everyone. Children are concerned with the planet they will be inheriting because it seems we have gone beyond the point of no return. Whatever I do to help will not only benefit myself and my son, but the greater good. If I can generate alpha at the same time for investors who are passionate about climate change, then I am adding value to a whole new system of ESG. I am showing with DCIF and my other companies that what is good for the environment is also profitable. Now is the time to change the narrative about investing as it relates to the environment.

The views and opinions expressed above are of the interviewee only, and do not/are not intended to reflect the views of EisnerAmper.