Leadership Team

Co-Chairs

Peter Gill Case is a co-founder and co-chair of BankFWD, and a sustainable architect and developer living in Providence, RI. He is a trustee of the Rockefeller Family Fund (having served from 2007-2014 as the chairperson) and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. Peter is co-founder of the Equation Campaign, engaged in supporting the climate movement and the just transition to a clean energy economy. Closer to home, Peter is the vice-chair of the RI Energy Efficiency and Resource Management Council. He has an MArch from Rhode Island School of Design, M.Ed from Harvard University and a BA from Brown University in Urban Studies.

 

Valerie Rockefeller chairs the Board of Directors of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, a nonprofit philanthropic services organization that helps accelerate philanthropy for a just world. She also co-chairs BankFWD, a network dedicated to persuading banks to phase out financing for fossil fuels and fund clean energy. Her professional background is as a middle school special education teacher for adolescents with learning differences and emotional disabilities. Valerie has a M.Ed. in Special Education from the Bank Street College of Education and a MAT in Social Studies from Teachers College, Columbia University. She majored in International Relations at Stanford University and worked at the U.S. Department of Education during the first Clinton administration. She serves as a trustee on the boards of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Achievement First, the Asian Cultural Council, the Collaborative for Spirituality in Education, Columbia University’s Teachers College, Greenwich Academy, and The Trust for Mutual Understanding. She was a trustee of Spelman College and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Aspen Institute K12 Climate Action Commission, and the Generosity Commission.

Valerie lives with her daughters Percy and Lucy and son Davis in Old Greenwich, CT.

 



Executive Director

Vanessa Fajans-Turner serves as Founding Principal with Investable Oceans, and an advisor to the City of Ithaca’s Green New Deal. She was previously the SDG Financing Director for the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the Associate Director for James Cameron’s Avatar Alliance Foundation, and a producer for Seasons 1 and 2 of National Geographic’s Emmy Award-winning documentary series, Years of Living Dangerously. She is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Venture Partners for Hatziememos Libby, as well as a CNN Opinion contributor, siting on the advisory boards of The Resolution Project, William, Jeff and Jennifer Gross Family Foundation, and Amazon Watch. She has an MA from Johns Hopkins-SAIS and a BA from Harvard. 



Founding Co-Chair
Daniel Growald

Daniel Growald serves as a founder, investor, and partner to people and organizations working to align the power of capital with the intelligence of nature. He has previously founded startups in the circular economy, digital media, and carbon-negative power finance; worked alongside renowned social entrepreneur Paul Polak to commercialize ventures in safe drinking water and village-scale renewable energy in India; and conducted scientific fieldwork on the intersection of land use, bioenergy, and climate change in Central America. Daniel is a Trustee of the David Rockefeller Fund, a former trustee of the Growald Climate Fund, and a Morris K. Udall Scholar. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a BA in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Daniel served as founding co-chair of BankFWD from its inception in November 2019 through April 2021, when he moved on to pursue the development of climate-centered banking solutions that can effectively serve the needs of high-net-wealth clients and increase the incentives for progress among the existing major banks.



Advisors and Staff

Kwan Graw previously worked for Bank of America on the Mortgage Backed Securities trading desk. There, she experienced the disconnect between the actions of the world’s largest banks to address climate change and the reality of what science tells us is needed to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. She aims to bridge this divide in her work with BankFWD. Kwan is a graduate of Penn State with a degree in finance and economics.