Hewson Baltzell
Hewson Baltzell has a wide variety of experience in real estate finance and development as a commercial and investment banker, covering most property types – office, retail, industrial, residential multi-family, single-family, hotels and resorts.
He was President and co-founder of Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, an internationally recognized investment research firm that originated the rating of Environmental, Social and Governance performance. He and his partners sold the company to RiskMetrics in 2009, with the plan to consolidate the field by acquiring other competitors. Six months later, they bought KLD Research & Analytics, and he served as Head of Product Development, working to integrate all legacy companies with a new research platform, client platform, and unified research. MSCI, Inc. acquired RiskMetrics in 2010, and Baltzell stayed on as Executive Director. MSCI's ESG Research Business, with over 500 clients and 150 staff, is now the leader in providing ESG research and ratings of equities, bonds and other financial instruments to institutional investors. The business evaluates 6,000 publicly-held companies, and over 200,000 private, public and sovereign bonds from an ESG perspective.
Hewson is co-chair of the Energy Efficiency Financing Group of the Alliance to Save Energy. He is on the board of the Global Impact Investing Network, a not-for-profit supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Omidyar Network, and is on the Standards Advisory Committee of the related Global Impact Investing Rating System. He is also on the board of Local Food Systems, a supply chain management company promoting the growth of the local and sustainable food market.
He holds an MBA in Finance from Wharton and a BA in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a frequent conference speaker and lecturer at institutions such as Wharton and Columbia.
