Kathleen Simpson

Kathleen Simpson is Chief Executive Officer of The Russell Family Foundation (TRFF), a family foundation founded by George and Jane Russell in 1999. In her current role, she works with TRFF’s board on strategy and deploys the foundation’s resources across grantmaking, impact investing, and partnerships to support environmental sustainability, climate action, and resilient communities.

Simpson has more than 20 years of experience across accounting, investment operations, and governance in multi-entity organizations. TRFF says she first joined the foundation as Chief Financial Officer and later became CEO. During her tenure, she helped move the foundation’s investment portfolio from 7% to nearly 95% values-aligned and has led its net-zero and Catalytic Climate Finance work.

Before TRFF, Simpson was Director of Finance for an independent wealth-management firm advising individuals, multigenerational families, and foundations. She also founded and led a public accounting firm for more than a decade, providing outsourced CFO services to high-net-worth families, privately held businesses, and nonprofit organizations.

She is a Certified Public Accountant and holds an MBA. TRFF also lists her as a board member of the Bainum Family Foundation and the Sierra Club Foundation, a member of the Investment Advisory Committee for the Children’s Equity Fund, and a member of both the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Washington State Society of Certified Public Accountants.

• Simpson’s investing work is not a typical angel-investor model; it is foundation-led impact investing using TRFF’s endowment, grants, partnerships, and public voice.
• TRFF’s stated impact-investing approach is to generate positive social and environmental impact alongside financial return, using “mission-aligned” and “impact” investing across asset classes.
• The foundation’s climate investment strategy focuses on two main themes: decarbonization technologies and nature-based solutions.
• TRFF invests in decarbonization across energy and power, industry, transportation, and the built environment.
• Nature-based solutions include forestry, regenerative agriculture, farming-practice improvements, and nature-based carbon credits.
• TRFF uses a five-level “Spectrum of Impact,” ranging from negative screening and shareholder engagement to thematic/place-based investing and catalytic/program-related investments.
• The most catalytic portion of the portfolio includes first-time funds, direct investments, and new business models that advance social and environmental goals, even where risk is higher or short-term return expectations are lower.
• Simpson has framed the opportunity as early climate action: “the opportunity lies in the time value of carbon.”
• TRFF has a 2030 net-zero portfolio goal and says it plans to have at least 75% of assets under management invested in climate solutions by 2030.