UNC Clean Tech Speaker

Mark Laabs

Biography

Mark Laabs is an entrepreneur with a strong conviction that outsized social impact and outsized financial returns can go hand in hand. He has participated as a founder, advisor, and/or builder of a wide range of organizations which seek to address critical social and environmental problems on five continents.

Mark currently serves as Managing Director of Modern Energy, a private equity firm that invests in and through businesses that bring distributed energy innovations to market. Mark also serves as Chairman of Faro Energy, a Latin American distributed energy finance company, and Chairman of the Rare Cancer Research Foundation, which seeks to accelerate innovation in cancer research.

Previously, Mark served as Chief Operating Officer of Soligent Holdings Inc, the largest solar distributor in the Americas. He also helped to build and later sold Climate Bridge, a clean energy finance company and one of the largest players in the global carbon markets with offices in Europe, Asia, and Oceania. He also served as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he worked from the Atlanta, San Francisco, and London offices.

Mark has contributed to the work of a large number of social mission organizations including the Paradigm Fellowship, Nourish International, StartingBloc, Slow Food Shanghai, Serial Suppers, and SEEDS. He is an outspoken advocate of social enterprise and speaks has spoken on the topic at institutions including Oxford, London Business School, Tufts University, and CEIBS.

Mark graduated as a Robertson Scholar from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University with a dual degree in International Studies and the Dynamics of Social Change.