As a pio­neer and lead­ing play­er in impact invest­ing, DBL has helped to reveal the pow­er of ven­ture cap­i­tal to pro­mote social change and envi­ron­men­tal improve­ment. In this con­text, Nan­cy writes and speaks fre­quent­ly on the field of impact invest­ing. She spon­sors or sits on the board of direc­tors of sev­er­al com­pa­nies, includ­ing: Zola Elec­tric, Bell­wether Cof­fee, Rain, Mast Refor­esta­tion, Farm­ers Busi­ness Net­work, Spa­tial, and, pri­or to their pub­lic offer­ings, Tes­la Motors, SolarCi­ty, and Pan­do­ra. Pri­or to found­ing DBL, Nan­cy was a Man­ag­ing Direc­tor in Ven­ture Cap­i­tal at JPMor­gan, hav­ing start­ed her invest­ment career at Ham­brecht & Quist in 1984. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Nan­cy worked at Intel Cor­po­ra­tion, the State of Cal­i­for­nia, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, and the Sier­ra Club.

In 2024, Nan­cy was award­ed the dis­tin­guished Impact Lead­er­ship award from Impact Cap­i­tal Man­agers, the country’s lead­ing orga­ni­za­tion of Impact Invest­ing pro­fes­sion­als. In 2023, she was rec­og­nized by the Forbes Women 50 Over 50: Invest­ment list, and by the San Fran­cis­co Busi­ness Times as one of the Bay Area’s 100 Most Influ­en­tial Busi­ness Lead­ers. Among oth­er awards, Nan­cy was pre­vi­ous­ly named the 2022 Finan­cial Woman of the Year by the Finan­cial Women of San Fran­cis­co and to the Forbes 2020 Impact 50 List of the most notable impact investors. She was also a recip­i­ent of The Com­mon­wealth Club 2018 Dis­tin­guished Cit­i­zen Award, the Earth Day Net­work 2018 Cli­mate Vision­ary Award, and appeared on Fast Company’s 2016 List of Most Cre­ative Peo­ple in Business.

Nan­cy serves as a mem­ber of the Board of Trustees of the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Soci­ety, where she chairs the Com­pen­sa­tion Com­mit­tee and sits on the Finance, Invest­ment, and Gov­er­nance Com­mit­tees. She is a mem­ber and for­mer Chap­ter Chair of the Sil­i­con Val­ley Women Cor­po­rate Direc­tors Foun­da­tion. She is a mem­ber and for­mer chair of the Advi­so­ry Coun­cil of the Bill Lane Cen­ter for the Amer­i­can West at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty; an advi­sor to the UC Davis Cen­ter for Ener­gy Effi­cien­cy; and co-chairs the Yale School of Man­age­ment Pro­gram on Entre­pre­neur­ship. She also serves on the Invest­ment Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee of Prime Coali­tion, a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that steers and influ­ences cap­i­tal to sup­port scal­able solu­tions to cli­mate change.

She is a fre­quent lec­tur­er on impact invest­ing at the Stan­ford Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness and the Yale School of Man­age­ment and is a past mem­ber of the C3E Ambas­sador to the U.S. Clean Ener­gy Edu­ca­tion and Empow­er­ment Pro­gram, led by the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy. From 2001–2019, she was also a found­ing offi­cer and direc­tor of ABC2, a foun­da­tion aimed at accel­er­at­ing a cure for brain can­cer. She was also a found­ing mem­ber of the Cal­i­for­nia Clean Ener­gy Fund from 2005 to 2012. She served as an Advi­so­ry Board mem­ber of Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry (Berke­ley Lab) and Cyclotron Road, its Clean Ener­gy Incu­ba­tor from 2014 to 2019.

Nan­cy received her BA and MA in anthro­pol­o­gy from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, and her MBA from the Yale School of Management.