PORTLAND, Ore, March 22, 2016 — Ecotrust Founder and Executive Chair Spencer Beebe today named Jeremy Barnicle as the organization’s new Executive Director. “Ecotrust’s board and staff could not be more pleased to welcome Jeremy and bring his experience working on social change at the global scale to bear on challenges we face here in our bioregion,” Beebe said.

Barnicle has spent the last two decades working at the intersection of policy, philanthropy, and social change. For the last 11 years, he worked at the global humanitarian organization Mercy Corps, where he served most recently as Chief Development and Communications Officer. During his tenure at Mercy Corps, Barnicle and his teams raised over $300 million for the organization from hundreds of thousands of donors and a long list of companies and foundations. As a member of Mercy Corps’ executive team, Barnicle helped guide the organization’s global strategy and position the Portland-based nonprofit as one of the most respected humanitarian organizations in the world.

Prior to Mercy Corps, Barnicle worked for several consulting firms, served as a press officer for the State Department, ran a successful congressional campaign, and spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer. He earned a BA in Public Policy from Vanderbilt University and a Master of Public Affairs from Princeton University.

Barnicle commented on his new role: “How do we build a better model of development, one that manages our natural capital – farmland, fisheries, forests – in a way that creates jobs and preserves those resources for future generations? That’s the big question Ecotrust is answering, and I am thrilled to join that effort.”

As Executive Director, Barnicle will work with Beebe to lead the 25-year-old organization into its next era of conservation-based development initiatives across the region. With an annual budget of $12 million, a staff of 55, and $200 million in assets under management, Ecotrust is headquartered in Portland and works from California to Alaska to generate social, economic, and environmental benefit. Among other innovations, Ecotrust co-founded ShoreBank Pacific (now Beneficial State Bank), the world’s first environmental bank; created the world’s first ecosystem-based investment fund; and restored a 100-year-old warehouse in Portland’s Pearl District into a hub for social enterprise, triple-bottom-line investment, and green commerce. The organization’s latest venture, the Redd on Salmon Street, a two-block campus under development in Portland’s Central Eastside, will support the growth of a robust regional food system.

Barnicle has been working with Ecotrust as a consultant for the past six months and will take up his new post as Executive Director on April 15.

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Ecotrust, a regional organization that has been leading restoration-based economic development since 1991, works to create more resilient communities, economies, and ecosystems here and around the world. Ecotrust’s many innovations include cofounding an environmental bank, starting the world’s first ecosystem investment fund, creating a range of programs in fisheries, forestry, food, farms and indigenous affairs, and developing new scientific and information tools to improve social, economic, and environmental decision-making. Learn more at www.ecotrust.org or connect with @ecotrust.