Stuart Barkoff

Stuart Barkoff is a Founding Partner of GEF Capital Partners, where he co-heads the U.S. investment practice from the firm's Washington, D.C. base. He focuses on lower middle-market growth equity and control investments in North America, concentrating on companies that scale climate-change mitigation and pollution-remediation solutions. He founded GEF Capital Partners in 2018 as a spin-out building on more than a decade of climate- and sustainability-focused private equity experience.

Barkoff joined Global Environment Fund as a Managing Director in 2008. Over his tenure there he took on expanding leadership responsibilities, serving as the firm's General Counsel beginning in 2011 and as Chief Operating Officer beginning in 2017, before founding GEF Capital Partners the following year. Prior to entering private equity, he practiced law as an attorney at Arnold & Porter LLP, an international law firm in Washington, D.C., where he worked principally with private equity and venture capital funds and their portfolio companies across a broad range of transactional and corporate matters.

He currently sits on the boards of several GEF portfolio companies, including Gro-Well Brands and EnviroMix, as well as a number of the firm's U.S. Climate Solutions Fund II investments. In April 2024, the firm he co-founded completed the final closing of its GEF US Climate Solutions Fund II at $325 million, exceeding its original $250 million target.

Barkoff earned an A.B. in English from Vassar College, and holds both a J.D. and an M.B.A. from Emory University, a combination that underpins his blended legal, operational, and investment leadership at the firm.

• Invests through GEF Capital Partners, a private equity manager focused on companies that "promote resource efficiency and that are building a more sustainable future."
• Stage/structure: Control investments and growth equity in lower middle-market companies — distinct from angel or seed investing.
• Fund vehicle: GEF US Climate Solutions Fund II, which makes control investments in U.S. and Canadian lower middle-market companies "to rapidly scale their climate change and pollution remediation solutions."
• Sectors: Clean energy, energy efficiency, electrification of transportation, waste/recycling, water, and broader resource efficiency.
• Geography: United States and Canada.
• What earns a "yes": Proven, scalable businesses with a tangible decarbonization or pollution-remediation impact where control capital plus operational/legal expertise can accelerate growth (e.g., roll-up/platform strategies like Civic Renewables).