William J. Barber III currently serves as the Director of Equitable Investment and Energy Justice at the Coalition for Green Capital and the CEO of Rural Beacon Initiative, LLC.  Possessing over a decade of social justice organizing experience and deep academic training in the history, science, and law behind environmental and climate issues, William is committed to connecting policymakers, grassroots leaders, faith leaders, and corporations to ensure we are collaborating on climate solutions that are equitable for all.

Barber’s background includes extensive experience as a social justice organizer and environmental justice advocate, working with the North Carolina NAACP, the Poor People’s Campaign, the Climate Reality Project, and numerous other organizations. Barber’s work focuses on increasing the self-determination of communities through responsible finance. With a bachelor’s in Environmental Physics from North Carolina Central University, and a J.D. in Environmental Law and Policy from UNC School of Law, Barber also sits on the board of the Croatan Institute. 

As CEO of Rural Beacon Initiative, LLC, Barber has collaborated with Croatan Institute to acquire a farm in the historic Free Black community of Piney Woods, NC, using innovative financing in partnership with Foodshed Capital. 

Skya Ducheneaux is the Executive Director of Akiptan and is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. She spent her first 18 years of life on a cattle ranch on the CRST Reservation in South Dakota. She then pursued a Bachelors and Masters Degree in Business Administration while working at a county FSA office and buffalo meat processing plant. After returning home to work for the Intertribal Agriculture Council, she was tasked with creating the first Native CDFI dedicated to serving Native Agriculture producers all across Indian Country. Akiptan began lending in January of 2019 and has grown rapidly over the years.

In addition to Akiptan, Skya has served on many advisory committees and is currently the Board Chair of the Mountain Plains CDC. In her role as Executive Director, she is a part of several CDFI coalitions, advocates locally and federally and presents at conferences to share the mission of Akiptan. 

Indy joined in January 2020 as Foodshed’s first formal employee. She has played an integral role in designing and refining our loan process, while collaborating with other staff as the organization has grown to embed business support services into our process. She continues to take the lead on our operational strategy as we expand lending and business support to new regions.

While completing her degree in Global Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Virginia, Indy worked as a Senior Associate at the Charlottesville Angel Network (CAN). There she gained experience vetting potential investments and working with companies on their business models. Indy worked previously at the Charlottesville Business Innovation Council, managing educational programming and assisting with operations as the Deputy Director.

During the spring of 2018, Indy spent 5 months studying Spanish language and culture in Cordoba, Argentina and is now fluent in Spanish. After graduating from UVA in May of 2019, Indy set out for the cloud forests of Northern Ecuador for three months with two colleagues and $21,000 in grant funding. There she worked with provincial governments, NGOs, and community stakeholders to support sustainable development and economic alternatives to open-pit mining. This included creating and instituting a US-Ecuador small farm coffee trade relationship, negotiating the purchase of equipment for a women’s plantain flour cooperative, and establishing an ongoing partnership with UVA’s global studies department. From 2021-2023, Indy honed her farming skills by volunteering weekly at Real Roots Food Systems in Richmond.

Christi Electris is the Executive Director and co-founder of Croatan Institute, a research and action institute working at the intersections of food, fiber, forestry, and finance. She has done consulting and research on a variety of environmental and social issues, including projects on energy, climate, agriculture, well-being, sustainability indicators, and corporate redesign. A computer scientist and quantitative policy analyst by training, she has designed policy scenario analyses with environmental and social impacts. While at Tellus Institute, she analyzed company practices and policies in worker equity at large public and private food and agriculture companies, helping develop a new framework for social and environmental impact investing across asset classes, known as Total Portfolio Activation. 

At Croatan Institute, she regularly contributes to the thematic application of the Total Portfolio Activation framework to the Institute’s work on sustainable food and regenerative agriculture. Christi is a trained Climate Reality Leader, and also serves on the CDFA Food System Advisory Council. She is based in Brookline, Massachusetts.