Management Team / Advisory Board Bios
Burt Hamner
Founder and President
Burt Hamner is the founder and majority investor in SCPE. He is a pioneer, trainer, professor and author in Environmental Management Accounting (EMA) with 25 years of global experience. He studied marine biology at Harvard and became a government environmental planner in Seattle in 1985. He obtained Masters’ degrees in Business Administration and in Marine Affairs from the University of Washington in 1988. In 1991 he was hired by the Washington Department of Ecology in its new Pollution Prevention program to help companies reduce their waste with better management and technology. He helped over 100 organizations, from very big (Boeing, US Navy) to very small (auto repair, medical offices etc), prepare and implement plans for pollution reduction. This was a big part of the the beginnings of business sustainability.Because he was the only person in the Pollution Prevention program who had a MBA, Burt wrote the State’s first guidance on environmental management accounting, in partnership with Boeing and the University of Washington Foster School of Business. He advised the US EPA and other agencies and he taught MBA students. In 1994 he taught a course on EMA for the Washington Society of CPAs. He published a seminal article, “Management Accounting and Environmental Compliance Costs” in the Journal of Cost Management in 1995. In 1995 Burt was hired by the US Agency for International Development to teach Asian countries the same methods. He moved with his family to the Philippines and taught business environmental management in Asian business schools and industry organizations. He designed and taught a CPE course on EMA for the Philippines Institute of CPAs, which became one of their most popular courses within 2 years. He also networked around the world with academics and industry and government leaders and helped the United Nations partner with the International Federation of Accountants to develop their first guidance on environmental management accounting. Burt became a regular professor at the Asian Institute of Management in Manila, where he taught the full MBA Operations Management course as well as the first Environmental Management course. He led the Institute to apply the principles to its own operations and in 1999 the Institute became the first business school in the world to have a certified Environmental Management System. In 2001 Burt and his family moved to Lima, Peru where he became a Professor of Accounting and of Environmental Management at the Universidad del Pacifico. He was a consultant to the national Pension Fund to develop sustainable investing policies and practices and taught many large national companies. He helped the Peru association of CPAs develop their own environmental curriculum. He also consulted to the US Agency for International Development in Peru and Honduras and lectured at universities in Chile and Ecuador. In 2006 Burt returned to Seattle and started a renewable energy company making turbines for tidal power generation. He raised $3 million from angel investors and built a team of 12 people who launched 8 different turbine models. The company was sold to some of its investors in 2012. In 2013 Burt started a new company, Hydrobee SPC, to make personal-scale renewable energy generators making power from wind, water currents, fire and sun. In July 2019 Burt offered a one-hour live webinar course on Sustainability Accounting in partnership with the Washington Society of CPAs. It was promoted through the WSCPA website. 298 CPAs registered and attended the course. The online evaluation (required by all) averaged 4.99 stars out of 5. The only concern expressed was that there was not enough time to take in all the information.The Washington Society of CPAs proposed a webinar CPE series on Sustainability Accounting. Burt decided this is an opportunity for a new business and he founded Sustainability CPE Inc. Two of his respected professional friends, Fred Whittlesey and Nancy Reid, understood the potential for this new venture and stepped up to make it happen. Fred and Nancy are now co-founders, shareholders and Advisors to SCPE. Together the team is set to create the leading company in Sustainability CPE and to create a new way, through accounting education, to focus the minds of capitalism on a better future.
Nancy Reid
Board of Advisers - Impact Investing
Nancy Reid is a founding investor in SCPE and Chair of the Board of Advisors. She believes that capitalism is one of the most powerful forces humanity has ever unleashed, and that thoughtful investors have an opportunity to use its tools to influence the world around them in positive ways. She also believes that wealth is the last taboo in American society, which creates lots of opportunity for learning. Her work is designed to clarify the short- and long-term effects of the many choices people face as investors, allowing them to better fulfill their visions for their families, communities, and the future. Nancy holds a BA from Yale University, an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and a Grand Diplôme from the French Culinary Institute. She holds a CTFA (Certified Trust and Financial Advisor) designation from the American Bankers Association. She is a past board member of the MCO Foundation and the Blade Foundation, and was appointed in 2006-2007 by the President of Dartmouth College to serve on the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility for the Dartmouth College endowment. She has worked in and around the investment ecosystem since 2007—at Lehman Brothers, Barclays Wealth Americas, TIGER 21, the Seattle Impact Investing Group, and Canopy. The most important part of her education has been independent travel in over 40 countries, and her time spent living in Spain, Ecuador, and the UK. She lives with her husband Will and her two small but powerful children in Seattle.
