Rose Maizner

Rose Maizner is a Partner at RenewableTech Ventures, a Salt Lake City–based early-stage cleantech venture fund founded by Todd Stevens (previously founder of EPIC Ventures and manager of Zions Bank Venture Capital). She has spent roughly a dozen years as an investment professional focused on climate, gender-lens, and impact investing. Maizner came into venture capital from the nonprofit world, where she worked in a development (fundraising) capacity; Stevens hired her on the strength of that background and her enthusiasm for impact investing, and she became a partner at the firm after completing her MBA.

She earned a Master of Business Administration for Executives (EMBA) from the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business (Class of 2017), commuting from Utah to California for weekend classes and week-long immersions. During the program she did an independent study with Professor Kellie McElhaney examining female entrepreneurs' access to capital — research that found only about 2% of venture dollars were going to women at the time. Her undergraduate work was in Multicultural Psychology and Hispanic Studies at Wheaton College (Massachusetts). She has also served on the Women's Advisory Council of Wells Fargo and the Investor Advisory Board of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Today Maizner is Director of Investments at Heading for Change, working closely with Jacki Zehner (founder of SheMoney), where she manages Zehner's direct and fund investment portfolios and builds resources and strategies to unlock more capital for women and other underestimated founders and fund managers. She is also co-founder of Womenpreneurs, a professional collective launched around 2015 that is dedicated to closing the gender wealth gap by helping women build and fund their businesses, and she advises and coaches early-stage female-founded companies.

• Invests at the early/seed stage in cleantech and hard-tech companies across water treatment, advanced materials, AgTech, and renewable energy — plus transportation, energy, manufacturing, infrastructure, and agriculture.
• Runs a two-lens screen: a "cleantech lens" (does it solve a real environmental problem?) and a "venture lens" (does it have viable venture economics and return potential?).
• Core belief in her own words: *"it is possible to invest in really exciting opportunities that have the potential for tremendous environmental and often social impact, while also generating strong financial returns."* The firm frames itself as an IRR-driven impact fund.
• Resilient revenue is a hard requirement — companies "cannot depend on tax incentives, subsidies, or specific regulatory environments" to succeed; she cites this discipline as what separates the firm's approach from the failed cleantech boom of the 2000s.
• Team over technology: consistent with standard venture principles, she favors "mediocre technology with a phenomenal team" over "phenomenal technology with a mediocre team," which she views as especially important in cleantech given commercialization complexity.
• Geography as edge: targets regions underserved by VC (Rocky Mountain, western/central U.S., Canada) for lower valuations, stronger local relationships, and less deal competition.
• Personal gender-lens focus: actively works to direct more capital to women and underestimated founders.