Adair Morse

I just returned from having served 2 years as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Capital Access at the Department of the Treasury.

University of California - Berkeley

Haas School of Business

Soloman P. Lee Chair in Business EthicsProfessor of FinanceInitiative Faculty Director Sustainable and Impact Finance

Berkeley Law School

Fellow, Center for Law and Business

I began my career as an entrepreneur and small business owner. I returned to graduate school, obtaining masters degrees in statistics and agricultural economics from Purdue University and a Ph.D. in finance from the University of Michigan.

I teach Sustainable Investment, Impact Investment and New Venture Finance/VC, now at Berkeley-Haas and previously at the University of Chicago. I also run the Haas Impact Fund and Sustainable Investment Fund curriculum at Berkeley-Haas, managing two endowment funds with the Haas MBAs and other Berkeley students.

Sustainable and Impact Finance Initiative

Adair Morse and Laura Tyson created the Sustainable and Impact Finance (SaIF) initiative at Berkeley-Haas in 2019. SaIF continues in the Berkeley tradition of thought leadership in using impact investing and sustainable finance to drive positive change and opportunities through research, education, engagement, and leadership.

Education: Adair developed Haas 3-semester MBA education pathways impact investing and in sustainable finance.
Research: Adair publishes research on the role of investment and asset management in affecting change, equity issues in financial services and algorithms, small business survival, and climate concerns in cryptomining.
Engagement: Adair serves on the Expert Panel for the Ministry of Finance, Norway, as oversight to the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, advising on issues of sustainability and innovation. She is also on the Governance and Advocacy Committee of the California Rebuilding Fund.
Leadership: Adair gives keynotes and lectures on sustainability and impact investment, discrimination policy, and algorithmic finance. She serves on the Executive Board of AFFECT, the advocacy committee for the status of women in the American Finance Association.

Supporting Small Businesses

California Rebuilding Fund ( a public-private partnership with the State of California), founding team member and Governance and Allocation Committee Member
Research on the PPP federal program to support small business.
Participation with the California Small Business Task Force in structuring and promoting a Loan Fund to leverage government and philanthropic funds as loss capital with private capital for small business. See Los Angeles Times article.
Creation of the SOS Loan Fund proposal to mobilize private capital for small businesses, leveraging up local government funds in a tranched loan fund. I am working with the City of Berkeley and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) to form a regional public-private partnership fund.
Small business loan & education support to the Cities of Oakland and Berkeley
- SAIF teams of MBAs are consulting with small businesses in Oakland, helping them in revenue generation ideas and cost reductions
- A SAIF team of MBAs is supporting with the City of Berkeley School District on research and saftey for remote education.
- Analysis the Oakland Small Business Needs COVID Survey, which the City of Oakland (with a lot of foresight) rolled out on March 13th, 2020.
- Judging of a small business idea Hackathon across MBA schools: Small Business School Challenge