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Less than 1% of philanthropic capital goes to ocean causes, and the funding gap for a healthy ocean runs at least $150 billion. Laura Francis, Founder of Sea Forward Fund, is closing that gap with a collaborative multi donor fund now invested in 12 ocean health funds that span roughly 200 companies across 53 countries. After 27 years at NOAA and a career as a kelp forest ecologist, she built a model where a $250 donation and a $2 million donation both matter, returns cycle back through a donor advised fund, and everyday people learn how ocean impact investing works.
Chapters:
00:03 Welcome to Green Shoots and Big Shifts
00:53 Falling in love with the ocean at 11 years olf
02:26 From UC Santa Barbara to 27 years at NOAA
03:53 Move into impact investing
06:12 The ocean funding gap and SDG 14
08:41 Inside Sea Forward Fund: 12 funds, 200 companies, 53 countries
09:26 Choosing science based fund managers and measuring impact
11:40 Why a $250 donation matters as much as $2 million
13:12 Impact Investing without a donor advised fund through CataCap
14:46 The living laboratory and the Ever Blue model
16:22 Ripple: community, webinars and newsletters
17:53 California Ocean Summit in Santa Barbara, December 2026
19:27 Lessons on mobilizing small donors for big impact
21:44 The ocean as a financial ecosystem
22:28 What's next: new platforms, field trips and growing to 15 funds
24:43 A science to finance pathway for students
25:35 Closing on resilience and hope
You can follow Laura Francis here:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauraannfrancis/
Learn more about Sea Forward Fund:
- Sea Forward Fund Website - https://seaforwardfund.org
- Sea Forward Fund on Catacap: https://catacap.org/investments/seaforward
Follow the Green Shoots & Big Shifts Podcast here:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/green-shoots-big-shifts/
Green Shoots & Big Shifts is hosted by Reetu Gupta, who started the show to have open, hopeful conversations about what it really takes to make sustainability part of how we live, lead, and work.
Each week, she talks with people doing innovative, meaningful work, turning ideas into action. From startup founders and corporate change-makers to community leaders - reimagining how business, society, and the planet can thrive together.
These are stories about innovation, collaboration, possibility, and the everyday shifts that move us toward a more abundant and resilient future.
[00:03] you're listening to Green Shoots and Big Shifts the show that spotlights the people and ideas transforming our world for the better I'm your host Reetu Gupta in every episode I'll be talking with innovators and trailblazers who are reimagining our relationship with our planet earth whether it's a small spark of innovation or a sweeping shift in how we live and work we'll explore the stories that give us hope and the actions making a difference together we are planting seeds of change and driving big shifts for a healthier abundant sustainable future hi welcome everyone this is your host Reetu Gupta for the Green Shoots and Big Shifts podcast today with me is Laura Francis and she's the founder of Sea Forward Fund
[00:53] welcome Laura it is so exciting to have you on the podcast it's a pleasure to be here thanks so much for inviting me yeah I've been excited about recording this ever since we first talked so you know our audience like this is you know a conversational kind of podcast our audience loves to know the background of our guest so if you could walk us through you have had an illustrious career at Noah you start to see forward fun like walk us through that journey and what maybe also what at a personal level what you what first drew you to the ocean sure yeah I fell in love with the ocean when I was 11 years old I was on a field trip out to the Channel Islands with my sixth grade class and the divers were bringing up all kinds of amazing
[01:42] marine life from kelp and nudibranchs to I specifically remember mermaid's purse which is a a baby shark egg case and the teeny little baby shark wriggling inside and these were things I had never imagined even existed and it really sparked my curiosity and I just knew somehow I wanted to stay connected to the ocean for the rest of my life even though my family then moved to Missouri and Wisconsin and Michigan all over the place I always felt that pull to get back to the sea and I I did my undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley in zoology I did a year abroad in Australia and got to do some really fun field studies marking sea cucumbers to see how far they move and at one day and they don't move very often at all
[02:26] they pretty much stay in the same place I thought that was pretty interesting I went to grad school at UC Santa Barbara and was able to study the deep sea life in the hydrothermal vents 9,000 feet down in the ocean and I even had a chance to go down in the Alvin submersible which was an amazing opportunity and after that I really wanted something that was that was more applied and a little more close to shore and I became a kelp forest ecologist and diver for the Channel Islands National Park and then I started work at the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary where I stayed for 27 years and there's a kind of a full circle piece um between college and grad school I taught at an environmental
[03:05] science camp on Catalina Island and the 6th grade teacher who took me out on the trip initially and got me inspired uh his school came out to Catalina Island and I wrote to the teacher that had taken me turned out he was still still teaching and I told him I thanked him for sparking my interest in the ocean and my whole career and he wrote back and offered me a job and then I worked as a teacher for a couple of years like in between time before working at Noah so I I feel like very very connected the ocean has been this thread running through my entire life what a beautiful like I'm sure that teacher when they they got that note they were like they were I'm sure they were very happy you know not many people write back
[03:49] so good for you for writing back
[03:53] tell us more about how did you go from Noah to starting your fund the C Forward Fund and I I understand you started doing some impact investing etcetera so yeah just walk us through a through your journey for from from Noah to the fund yeah the the honest answer is that a life event really opened that door for me and I have so much gratitude for that we had a family software company that was acquired about a decade ago and so for the first time in my life I had resources and freedom to step back from working full time and start to think about how I might have an impact on the ocean from a different lens and I was able to move half time to Noah at that point and then put the other half of my time in
[04:40] learning about impact investing I was just so curious about that and didn't know much about finance but knew a lot about the ocean and I started a donor advised fund at Impact Assets and began making grants to non profits I joined a global impact investing network called tonic I had some really amazing mentors and that's where I Learned about something that I didn't really know was possible that you can use philanthropic dollars invest them into funds and companies working on ocean health and then when the returns come back they go back to the donor advised fund and then you can put them to work again and reinvest so create you almost an endowment for a cause or the ocean which is the cause I care most about
[05:23] through the Stoner advised fund and so I made my first impact investment in 2018 through impact assets and then when I fully retired from Noah a few years later that experiment had kind of found its shape and it grew into this collaborative multi donor fund that we have now yeah thank you thank you for sharing it like yeah obviously I understand like how investing is important in any space to to make sure that there are solutions that are coming out but when you think about oceans specifically can you and maybe it's just anecdotal or maybe there are numbers like can you give us a sense of like if there was enough funding and if what is maybe there's a number like X billion X trillion what what kind of potential we have to make an impact
[06:12] as far as the ocean is concerned because I'm asking is about this because although ocean is 70% of of the planet I don't I don't like we don't think about the ocean everyday we think about the ocean when we go to the beach but we're not thinking about it as we think about the green economy or the blue economy or this transition right so I was just curious about how how you think about it and why and where I'm trying to get to is like why investing our worst is doing something something else yeah there well there's about well less than 1% of philanthropic capital is donated to ocean causes and less less than I think it's like point o one percent of of investments and investable capital goes towards ocean specific projects
[07:01] so and we're at least $150 billion short on ocean funding to really fund solutions for a sustainable healthy ocean and blue economy so there's definitely a gap and SDG Sustainable Development Goal 14 is the of the of the UN goals is the least funded of all the Sustainable Development Goals so there's this this huge need to support ocean health and I feel like we can really do that by investing in companies and funds that are having a big impact with nature based solutions and decarbonizing the ocean economy and you know finding alternatives to plastics and alternative energy sources and you know that are that are not fossil fuel based so there are a lot of really great opportunities in the ocean
[07:53] it's our most you know underappreciated underutilized investible asset I feel like and and just yeah so much opportunity there so part of what we try to do at C Forward is educate people about the opportunity and you know hopefully it won't be like the ocean in the Silo as a separate investment in the future hopefully the ocean people will realize that a healthy ocean is part of a healthy economy and that our livelihoods are dependent on a healthy ocean for food for transportation for climate security and all of those things that make living on this planet so special so so that's that's the goal and education is a big piece of that I couldn't agree more so yeah you know let's dive deep can you give us an overview of C Forward Fund
[08:41] you know where do you invest I know you've touched upon it a little bit what's your model of framework of thinking about these are the areas you should you wanna invest and even within that what's a good investment that you would like to put your money like put the funds money in yeah so we are a collaborative multi donor fund through a donor advised fund at impact assets and so that means we have lots of people participating at all levels and I bring really this science framework and and background to the investment decisions and I also have a small team now we're currently invested in 12 ocean health funds that span about 200 companies in 53 countries and so it's a big broad range of funds
[09:26] and that's intentional and part of it's intentional and part of it is what was available to us at the time when we first started investing in 2018 there were two ocean funds that were investable and now they're over 50 and so so the field has grown as we as we have have grown I really look for for fund managers that that have a science based approach and that their their funds have links to real impact measurement of of the the intervention or the solution that they have will truly have an impact on the ocean that's positive and not you know not just purely financial return one example is the Hatch Blue Revolution Fund partners with the Nature Conservancy to independently track its ocean impact
[10:11] and so so they have this third party that's you know giving them a yay or nay on like actually they know this investment isn't gonna have a positive impact or it is and they track it over time and and having having that or having an affiliation with the university you know some sort of partner with expertise that can that can help the fund invest in a way that's that's really meaningful and we really invest across categories like everything from aquaculture sustainable aquaculture circular economy nature based solutions electrification we're invested in a fund called superorganism which is the first venture fund dedicated to biodiversity and so so we really we're intentionally broad but we're very we're also very intentional about
[10:57] making sure our fund managers are evaluating and measuring impact and we we're a partner with the Thousand Ocean Startups Coalition which is a global network that has developed a common framework for how to measure ocean impact and that's one of our criteria for investing a fund that they're reporting to the Thousand Ocean Startups Coalition and using that common framework and common language to report out on impact thank you one thing you said it's it's a do it's be it's a donor advised fund and people can can invest like a wide range of money like from a few hundred from what I understand a few hundred dollars to like millions of dollars why was it important for you to structure it that way
[11:40] like this is you know giving accessibility for people to invest at any level that they were comfortable why was it important to have that is one of your pillars yeah it's really personal for me when I first started doing impact investing I felt like I had been LED into this world that's you know normally closed off or open to only accredited investors and and not everyone can participate and I kept thinking about how all the people like me biologists and teachers and people with regular jobs who want to support and and be activated in ocean health have never been invited in and so c forward it's all funded through philanthropy and then that philanthropy goes into the impact investments that then return to the donor advised fund
[12:27] and we really wanted to have it be open to somebody coming in with their 250 dollar donation are as welcome as somebody with their two million dollar donation they're both important and we really wanted to create a learning community around impact investing so you can dip your toe in and and understand how it works and then you know all of these people are we're not just gathering capital we're inspiring people to become advocates and bring other people along in terms of taking care of our ocean so it's really important to me to be very inclusive and accessible that's that's wonderful and if someone wants like if someone doesn't have a donor advised fund and they wanna make a contribution can they still do that
[13:12] or they do they have to have a donor advised fund no you don't need to have one there's a a crowd sourcing platform that we work with that N C Forward is on there called catacat and I don't know if you have resources we can share at the end of the episode C a t a C a P catacap.org and they basically provide the opportunity for somebody to set up a mini donor advised fund just with a couple of clicks and a couple hundred dollars and people will create their donor advised fund for say you know $200 or $1,000 and then they could invest that into C Forward or or any other fund or company of their choosing and then they can track that investment over time and actually get a return to their mini donor advised fund
[13:58] and then at the end of the funding cycle so they can reinvest see forward or grant it out to a non profit or reinvest it in something else and so it allows that you know that full accessibility to to people who wouldn't normally be able to or or know about even setting up a donor advised fund so that is great and then definitely we can share these links in in the episode description so yeah we can put resources in in there definitely for for anyone in the audience who's interested I know when we talked you had you had referred to the fund as a living laboratory or lab for the ocean finance and I also heard this term called ever blue model can you talk about those terms and how you think about them
[14:46] yeah for sure yeah I I love the word living laboratory cause it kind of reflects you know my my science background and we're really trying to test whether a small collaborative science grounded fund of funds can move meaningful capital and show measurable ocean outcomes like not just in theory but with real numbers and we publish openly about everything the parts that work and the parts that don't work and we're also testing a bigger idea that you know everyday donor advised fund holders once they're organized and connected can have a big impact for the ocean and you know there are there are billions hundreds of billions of dollars sitting in donor advised and people are just becoming familiar with the idea that you can do impact
[15:34] investing and direct those investments from the donor and it's relatively newer and there are resources like DAF Commons donor advised fund commons that help people learn about how to do impact investing with their donor advised funds so so that's the living laboratory very part and then the the ever blue model for impact investing I I just love this idea and it it's all all focused on kind of ocean ocean terms so we pool capital from multiple donors and then we channel that into ocean investments and then when returns come back they upwell like an upwelling of the ocean nutrients to the surface and then we re we can reinvest them you know and it's this regenerative system that's creating an endowment for the ocean
[16:22] and then the final piece is ripple and that's where we bring people together we do women and Ocean Impact webinars where we organize conferences speak on panels and try to be you know very out in the community we have we have a newsletter and we're we're always available to talk about ocean and ocean health and impact investing and how to unlock that that capital so that's that's part of the part of it as well it's built in community not just the Capital Park I love the references to the ocean and I Learned about upwelling only like two weeks ago from my daughter so I was like yeah I know what that means for those who don't do you wanna explain Laura what an app appelling is so appelling is when
[17:05] when you have winds pushing surface waters across the ocean and then nutrients and cold water will upwell to the surface and that feeds the ecosystem with you know healthy nutrients and and we have a lot of upwelling like on the West Coast of the United States and you can create you know this thriving ocean environments kelp forests love upwelled water because it's cool and rich in nutrients so yeah we like that we like that term for our ever blue ever blue model and then you have a conference coming up right in Santa Santa Barbara or some in December yeah yeah we are helping to co host and organize a California Ocean Summit in Santa Barbara December 9th through 11th 2026 and we have a website at cal ocean.org
[17:53] and the whole idea of the summit is to bring together investors and entrepreneurs and scientists and policy makers and non profits and really think about collective impact for the ocean from all of these different lenses and we have a really amazing organizing committee and we've got some incredible scientists involved as key notes for the panel and we're we're really really looking forward to it and we just opened registration for that so there's opportunities to to get involved and it'll include everything from you know ocean data to policy discussions to blue finance we have a Blue Innovation Showcase where startups can come and and show what they're working on for Ocean Health Solutions
[18:40] and we're showing the David Attenborough film ocean along with the Santa Barbara Symphony and that's that's being done in partnership with Arts and lectures at UC Santa Barbara they're actually hosting that but our conference attendees will be able to participate at well so in that as well so it's the arts and culture as well as all of these other elements and how can we all work together for for Ocean Action and really create an ocean action agenda for California mm hmm I love that sounds so lovely yeah and again we can include the link in the episode so if anyone is interested they can access the link and you know go go go to the conference so changing topics a little bit now that you've been doing this investing on your own
[19:27] with you know a group of friends and then through the fund are there any learnings that have come from that work are there any learnings around impact investing and what can be maybe you know evolved or changed or done better if if there is anything to make it more powerful because as you said so much millions of dollars are sitting in these dafts would be curious to see if there are things that can make it more like actually make more impact through that money well I I think that there is a little bit of a misconception that that only the institutional investors are gonna make a difference and I think that if you know if we bring together you know that small checks don't matter but if we bring together you know
[20:15] hundreds and thousands of small donors that can add up to big impact and also those people are going to be very engaged and they really care about the investments and the outcomes of the investments and and these people can also make a difference in their everyday lives to to help the ocean with other actions that they can take so it's it's this collective impact piece and I think we really need that to see the changes that we need to make to have a livable planet in the future so institutional checks as are really important but meaningful participation can happen at any level and I think you know by creating opportunities and structures you can get these hundreds and thousands of small DAF holders
[20:58] and investors and philanthropists to participate and you know that there is this great wealth transfer coming up where also soon there will be trillions of dollars sitting in donor advised funds and if we can mobilize that capital and have it not just you know sitting there on the sidelines but get actively invested into ocean health that's gonna make a tremendous difference and have a tremendous positive yeah and that I agree and I as you were talking I was also thinking like you know even even for young people even if they don't have thousands of dollars to in their accounts this can be like a dual journey into you know they could you know invest $50 hundred dollars $200 they can afford it a dual journey into investing
[21:44] but also you know learning about the ocean so I really love the framework love the intention behind that yeah and I mean one thing that one thing that I just to follow on with that that I've been thinking a lot about is I'm I'm picturing this whole thing being like an ocean ecosystem so a healthy ocean isn't just all the the top predators and the you know the lead institutional investment it's the small plankton it's the fish it's the whole web it's every organism and it's role and so you need the person giving $250 you need the grant maker you need the debt provider you need you know everyone kind of doing their own thing to create this this cohesive and healthy system and when everyone's playing their role
[22:28] this whole system gets healthier it can't just be the sharks it can't just be the plankton but it's got to be everything working together so if if our ocean finance system could look like a real ocean system I think we'd make a lot of progress mm hmm yeah I I love that analogy what are you like for the next maybe one to three years what what what's next for C Forward what are you excited about I'm excited about just the the opportunities for collaboration I feel like the ocean ecosystem is incredibly collaborative and there are opportunities through this Thousand Ocean Startups coalition that are that are growing and people are engaging I I think there's I think what I'm hoping will come in the future
[23:15] are some new platforms where you can engage a a donor investor kind of at any level of where they are and line up opportunities that would allow them to invest with their values and their interests so if they're interested in in kelp forest you know they could sort of take a kelp forest path and learn about well here's here's some grant opportunities with kelp forest here's a way to get out and get in the water with with the kelp and here are some opportunities to invest and we're we're starting to do more investor field trips and engagement and the reason I used Caltech as an example is we're doing an investor engagement at Catalina Island the same place where I worked and where I reconnected with my teacher
[23:58] we're doing an investor field trip there to really connect people with the place and with the ocean and learn about a kelp forest restoration project out there so well I'm excited about the field trips yeah I'm excited about the California Ocean Summit and I'm really excited about this whole DAF Commons movement of bringing it's this peer to peer network of people coming together around how to invest with their dads so and and growing the team and and growing our investments and our funds we're at we're at 12 funds right now we're hoping to be invested in 15 funds by the end of the year and that you know that's real that's real progress it's like I feel you know we were in two years ago we were in seven times
[24:43] so uh huh so it's meaningful yeah yeah thank you for sharing that so as we come towards the you know end of our time together is there anything else you wanna share I one thing that I have hasn't come up yet in this conversation but I think is really important is we work with a lot of students we work with a brand school of Environmental Science at UCSD and have an internship program for the graduate students where science students can come through and learn learn finance and you know do ocean impact reporting and be part of our team and we had our so providing that pathway from science to finance is really important we had a student our very first intern Virginia is a perfect example she started in in her science career
[25:35] and she now she worked on our impact data and now she's with Swan Blue Ocean which is a a based in France and it's a fund that we just invested in and so that's happening for other students as well and it's you know it it's not every student will go from science to finance but being able to provide that pathway and open those doors is really important and then I guess another thing that I would like people to take away with to take away is that it's hope like the ocean is is resilient we're resilient and you don't have to be a scientist or have a fortune to make a difference so anything you can do or give or action you can take matters and you know all of this will create that resilient system
[26:19] so I know there's a lot of you know troubling news in the world and it's just I feel like coming back to the ocean really grounds me and it really gives me hope in in the future of our our planet and how we you know something that we can all gather around and work together uh to to make a positive difference I love that I asked my guest if there was one word they wanted to leave the audience with I'll take hope from you I'll take that word because I think we need to be hopeful and going back to one of the words that you talked about to create that ripple effect right if a lot of hope generates more hope and hope generates action so to more hope and to the ripple effect for a healthier ocean
[27:03] so with that Laura I want to thank you so much for being on the podcast this was a pleasure and I enjoyed it very much and thank you to our audience thank you so much