Tom Steyer

Tom Steyer Founder & Board Chair, Advanced Energy Economy Institute Business Leader & Investor

 
Tom Steyer is an active citizen. Before retiring from the private sector, he founded and was the Senior Managing Member of Farallon Capital Management. He also was a Managing Director and member of the Investment Committee at Hellman & Friedman. An avid Californian, Tom has worked to promote economic development and environmental protection in the state. In 2012, Tom served as chairman for Yes on Proposition 39, which closed a tax loophole for out-of-state corporations and created jobs in California. In 2010, Tom teamed with former Secretary of State George Shultz to defeat California’s Proposition 23, an effort by out-of-state oil companies to dismantle California’s groundbreaking clean energy law, AB 32.

Tom and his wife, Kat Taylor, joined Warren Buffett, Bill and Melinda Gates and other high-wealth Americans in the “Giving Pledge,” a promise to donate the majority of their wealth to charitable and nonprofit activities during their lifetimes. He and Kat created and funded the Oakland-based One PacificCoast Bank and Foundation, which provides loans and banking services to underserved small businesses, communities, and individuals in California and along the west coast.  At Stanford University, Tom serves on the Board of Trustees as Vice-Chair, and three years ago he and Kat founded two renewable energy research institutions there:  the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy and the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance. Tom founded Advanced Energy Economy to advance policy in the clean energy sector, Next Generation, which addresses climate and family policy, and NextGen Climate Action, which acts politically on climate issues. Tom served as a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions in 2004 and 2008 and is a board member of the Center for American Progress. Tom graduated Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Yale and received his MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.