Bill has been involved in social finance and values-based investing personally since the early 1990s and professionally since 2006. His work is centered on reforging the tools of finance to create opportunity, build equity, and support self-determination for individuals and communities.
After founding the values-based advisory firm NorthFork Financial (now NorthFork Advisors), in 2015 he began working with clients who wanted to pursue direct investments in regenerative agriculture, affordable housing, BIPOC entrepreneurs, and Indigenous communities. To provide the capacity to support these direct investments and as a follow on to his experience with the Just Economy Institute’s inaugural Integrated Capital Fellowship, he launched 45North Partners in 2019 to provide consulting and advisory services to develop unique direct debt and equity investment opportunities for his clients that align with their values.
Bill is also the co-founder of HomeStake.com, which started with a pilot project in 2017 to address the related problems of access to friendly, patient capital for businesses, small to medium-sized companies’ need for advanced technical assistance, and the interest of investors to find community-centered alternatives to Wall Street. HomeStake is deploying its second fund in the Northern Rockies and is engaging with other communities throughout the country as a “community capital organizer” to help them launch their own versions of community-centered investment opportunities.
Bill is engaged with several networks, including Confluence Philanthropy, Funders of Regenerative Agriculture (FORA), the Mountain Plains Regional CDFI Coalition, SOCAP, Social Venture Network, and the Just Economy Institute.
Bill graduated from Cornell University with a B.A. in History in 1989, obtained his M.A. in History at Montana State University in 1996 and spent nine years teaching AP U.S. History and Government at Bozeman High School before shifting his attention to the role that finance plays in relationship to community. Beyond work and volunteering on several nonprofit boards, as well as his role on the board of Seek Labs, a HomeStake portfolio company, he spends as much time as possible adventuring outdoors.