William 'Bill' Burckart

For nearly 20 years William Burckart has explored how private capital can be used to change the world. Whether researching, writing, consulting with clients or gesticulating widely at podiums, he seeks to engage people who want to leverage the tools of finance for change.

William is the first to admit this field he has chosen is not well defined--he often describes it as the “island of misfit toys” from the 1964 classic “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” William is certainly a misfit toy himself, with degrees in policy, economics, and international affairs from George Washington University and Johns Hopkins University. His graduate work focused on how young venture capitalists from the dot.com boom era changed philanthropy. This led to a stint supporting impact performance analysis for Venture Philanthropy Partners (VPP).

At VPP, William was introduced to the discipline of systems dynamics, and the pioneering work of Donnella Meadows. The desire to learn more about systems pulled him back into research, allowing him to work on the New Frontiers of Philanthropy: A Guide to the New Tools and Actors that Are Reshaping Global Philanthropy and Social Investing. The book explored the edges of philanthropy and social investing and provided insights into this new era of socialpurpose finance.

Itching to play on the island of misfit toys once again, rather than just research it, William returned to consulting and applied research, founding or co-founding a series of impact investing practices and, in partnership with Steve Lydenberg, ultimately helped established The Investment Integration Project (TIIP). He began working with pension plans, private foundations, family offices, investment management firms, and major industry bodies to develop and implement big picture investment strategies that consider systemic risks and opportunities. In addition, he co-founded Colorful Capital with Megan Kashner, which is bringing capital support and scaffolding to enterprises founded and led by members of the broad LGBTQIA+ community.

Along the way, he has served as a visiting scholar to the US Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and as a member of the advisory council of the Investments & Wealth Institute’s WealthBoard 100. He has also tormented graduate students with his guest lectures on sustainable investing at Columbia University, Georgetown University and New York University.

His writing has been featured or covered in places like The Guardian, Forbes, Quartz, Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), ImpactAlpha, CSRwire, Alliance, The Chronicle of Philanthropy and at the first G8-level forum on impact investing. He has presented at the US Federal Reserve, the Money Management Institute (MMI), the Morningstar Sustainable Investment Forum, PRI in Person, the GIIN Investor Forum, and CFA Institute, to name a few.

He is a fellow of the High Meadows Institute and co-author of the book 21st Century Investing: Redirecting Financial Strategies to Drive Systems Change (Berrett-Koehler, 2021).

Education

• MA in Public Policy, Johns Hopkins University
• BA in International Affairs, George Washington University