ADAM DAVIS has spent 35 years working to align business interests with environmental outcomes. As a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of EIP, Adam is involved in all aspects of the business, from investor relations to project implementation. Through helping to build a successful environmental investment business, he has contributed to establishing a model that delivers competitive risk-adjusted returns to institutional investors while bringing recognition to the value of what land does, not just what can be taken from it or built on it.

Adam developed his approach to incentive alignment in the recycling and composting industry, including work with the world’s largest solid waste company during the 1990s. His experience structuring contracts to reward environmental performance led him to ecosystem services—and to the question of how to get real people in real places paid for protecting and restoring natural systems.

At EIP, Adam led the company’s expansion into California and has been pivotal in shaping industry policy at both state and national levels. Adam helped found the California Ecological Restoration Business Association (CalERBA) and served on the Board of the National trade association, ERBA. He led policy initiatives that resulted in new Army Corps regulatory guidance standardizing credit releases from mitigation banks nationwide and he has also served as President of the Board for the Environmental Policy Innovation Center (EPIC).

Adam graduated from Cornell University with honors. He and his wife Sara live in San Rafael, California.

Q&A with Adam Davis

Tell us about your path to EIP. What interested you about this work?

A cross-country camping trip in 1971—7,000 miles in a station wagon with no A/C—gave me an early sense of America’s scale and ecological diversity. My first environmental job was with a composting company, where I learned firsthand that business could be a tool for environmental improvement, not just a source of harm.

What excites you about EIP’s impact in the world?

20 years ago, we introduced a private fund offering that enables institutional investors to add environmental restoration to their investment portfolios at scale. When the incentives are aligned correctly, doing more good and performing well for investors aren’t in tension—they reinforce each other. That kind of capacity will only become more important as the effects of climate change intensify.