Nancy Pfund

Founder and Managing Partner

As a pio­neer and lead­ing play­er in impact invest­ing, DBL has helped to reveal the pow­er of ven­ture cap­i­tal to pro­mote social change and envi­ron­men­tal improve­ment. In this con­text, Nan­cy writes and speaks fre­quent­ly on the field of impact invest­ing, sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture and nature-based solu­tions to cli­mate change. She cur­rent­ly spon­sors or sits on the board of direc­tors of sev­er­al com­pa­nies, includ­ing: Farmer’s Busi­ness Net­work (FBN), Bell­wether Cof­fee, Spa­tial, Wynd, Drone­Seed and, pri­or to their pub­lic offer­ings, Tes­la Motors, SolarCi­ty and Pan­do­ra. She also served on SolarCity’s audit and com­pen­sa­tion com­mit­tees as well as the chair of the cor­po­rate gov­er­nance com­mit­tee, from 2008 through its IPO in 2012 and acqui­si­tion by Tes­la in Decem­ber 2016. Pri­or to found­ing DBL, Nan­cy was a Man­ag­ing Direc­tor in Ven­ture Cap­i­tal at JPMor­gan, hav­ing start­ed her invest­ment career at Ham­brecht & Quist in 1984. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Nan­cy worked at Intel Cor­po­ra­tion, the State of Cal­i­for­nia, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, and the Sier­ra Club.

Nan­cy was rec­og­nized by the San Fran­cis­co Busi­ness Times as one of the Bay Area’s 100 Most Influ­en­tial Busi­ness Lead­ers in 2023 and by the Finan­cial Women of San Fran­cis­co as the Finan­cial Woman of the Year in 2022. In Sep­tem­ber 2020, Nan­cy was named to the FORBES 2020 Impact 50 List of the most notable impact investors. She was also a recip­i­ent of The Com­mon­wealth Club 2018 Dis­tin­guished Cit­i­zen Award and the Earth Day Net­work 2018 Cli­mate Vision­ary Award. She was fea­tured #17 in the 2014 FORTUNE Inau­gur­al World’s Top 25 Eco-Inno­va­tors and appeared on Fast Company’s 2016 List of Most Cre­ative Peo­ple in Business.

Nan­cy serves as a mem­ber of the Board of Trustees of the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Soci­ety. She is a mem­ber and for­mer Chap­ter Chair of the Sil­i­con Val­ley Women Cor­po­rate Direc­tors Foun­da­tion. She is a mem­ber and for­mer chair of the Advi­so­ry Coun­cil of the Bill Lane Cen­ter for the Amer­i­can West at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty; an advi­sor to the UC Davis Cen­ter for Ener­gy Effi­cien­cy; and co-chairs the Yale School of Man­age­ment Pro­gram on Entrepreneurship.

She has been a lec­tur­er in man­age­ment at the Stan­ford Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness and the Yale School of Man­age­ment and is a past mem­ber of the C3E Ambas­sador to the U.S. Clean Ener­gy Edu­ca­tion and Empow­er­ment Pro­gram, led by the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy. From 2001–2019, she was also a found­ing offi­cer and direc­tor of ABC2, a foun­da­tion aimed at accel­er­at­ing a cure for brain can­cer. She was also a found­ing mem­ber of the Cal­i­for­nia Clean Ener­gy Fund from 2005 to 2012. She served as an Advi­so­ry Board mem­ber of Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry (Berke­ley Lab) and Cyclotron Road, its Clean Ener­gy Incu­ba­tor from 2014 to 2019.

Nan­cy received her BA and MA in anthro­pol­o­gy from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, and her MBA from the Yale School of Management.