John Beatty has focused his career on building sustainable communities and leveraging innovation to address environmental, social, and economic obstacles facing our world, and he will work to ensure Harvard becomes and remains a leader in tackling these challenges as well.

 

While at Harvard, Beatty laid the groundwork for the group that later became Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard by co-founding the Harvard chapter of Students for a Just and Stable Future. In 2009, he served on Harvard’s Student Review Committee for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Implementation. 

 

After graduation, he worked as an analyst at New Island Capital, an impact investment firm focused on clean energy, sustainable agriculture, and local community development. He then worked at CDC Small Business Finance, one of the nation’s largest mission-driven small business real estate lenders, before attending the MIT Sloan School. He earned the Martin Trust Community Fellowship while at Sloan for founding the Community Finance Challenge, a case competition focused on improving access to capital for all communities.

 

Beatty lives in Seattle and works at Amazon, where he is a member of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice. He is also a founding member of Salish Sea Cooperative Finance, a cooperative focused on addressing the student debt crisis.