Paul Zofnass

Paul Zofnass founded the Environmental Financial Consulting Group (EFCG) in 1990 after 17 years in finance at Citibank and Oppenheimer, where he was a Managing Director in Investment Banking. EFCG describes him as a leading strategic and financial advisor to CEOs in the environmental and infrastructure engineering and consulting industry for more than 30 years.

He is an alumnus of Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Business School. Harvard’s own coverage identifies him as Paul Zofnass A.B. ’69, M.B.A. ’73 and notes that he established a sustainability initiative at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2008 with a $500,000 gift.

In 2019, EFCG announced an ownership transition to Rebecca Zofnass, Jessica Zofnass Barclay, and Julie Hasiba. Paul continued as Chairman, lending industry experience to EFCG clients and leading the firm’s sustainability and environmental commitments.

His environmental work includes initiating Harvard’s Environmental Studies Program in the 1990s, creating the Zofnass Family Preserve/Westchester Wilderness Walk in Pound Ridge, New York, donating the Zofnass Tree Identification Program to Central Park, and creating the Zofnass Infrastructure Sustainability Program at Harvard. That program helped develop Envision, a sustainability framework for civil infrastructure now managed by the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure.

• Public sources do not verify Paul Zofnass as an active startup angel investor, nor do they disclose a personal seed-stage check size.
• His investing-related platform is best supported as EFCG’s AEC M&A and strategic advisory work, focused on firms where financial performance, ownership transition, and sustainability affect enterprise value.
• EFCG says its mission is to provide “a data-driven and strategic edge” to AEC firms and advance the innovation, sustainability, and success of the industry.
• EFCG has advised more than 550 AEC firms, completed more than 250 M&A transactions, and works with financial sponsors seeking to invest in the AEC industry.
• Zofnass’s sustainability thesis centers on measurable impact in infrastructure. Harvard quoted him saying, “you cannot improve something unless you have the means to measure it.”
• For infrastructure and sustainability work, he has emphasized that projects should be evaluated not only financially but also for environmental, economic, and community benefits.