The climate finance disruptor is shaking up philanthropy, challenging foundations to stop funding the climate crisis and put their full financial power behind solutions.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Dr. Ellen Dorsey, Executive Director of Wallace Global Fund (WGF) and a trailblazer in climate philanthropy, has been named to TIME’s 2026 TIME100 Climate list, its annual list of the 100 most influential leaders in climate.
Dorsey has spent more than a decade challenging foundations and other institutions to stop financing the industries driving the climate crisis and put their capital behind climate solutions. Her leadership has helped demonstrate that philanthropy can use its full financial power — from grantmaking and investments to advocacy and institutional influence — to challenge entrenched interests and accelerate a just energy transition.
In 2010, years before fossil-fuel divestment became mainstream, WGF moved its entire endowment out of fossil fuels and other harmful industries into a 100% mission-aligned portfolio. The approach achieved top-decile investment returns in its last full decade, challenging the argument that institutions must choose between financial performance and their climate commitments.
Dorsey took that work beyond WGF’s own portfolio, to catalyzing campaigning to divest from fossil fuels that grew into a global social movement. WGF invested in early organizing, convened student activists and helped seed and scale the movement’s infrastructure. Then she organized philanthropy itself as a sector of the growing fossil-fuel divestment movement. Today, more than 1,700 institutions, including hundreds of leading foundations, representing approximately $40 trillion in assets have made divestment commitments, demonstrating the power of coordinated action to challenge the fossil-fuel industry’s financial and political influence.
“The climate crisis is not just a technology problem. It is a power problem, and we cannot solve it while continuing to finance the industries driving it,” said Dorsey. “This recognition belongs to the organizers, advocates and frontline communities who have built a global movement challenging fossil-fuel power and fighting for a just transition. Philanthropy cannot declare a climate emergency while keeping its capital on the sidelines. We have the tools to accelerate change. The question is whether we are willing to use them.”
Central to Dorsey’s approach is the belief that lasting climate progress comes from the ground up. Frontline communities and grassroots organizers understand the challenges they face, know what solutions their communities need and have the power to drive change when given the resources to organize and act. Rather than simply funding solutions from the top down, Dorsey has championed philanthropy that invests in these leaders, strengthens movements and helps communities build the collective power to shape their own futures.
Under her leadership, WGF has put that philosophy into practice, supporting frontline organizations challenging fossil-fuel expansion, advancing climate justice and developing community-led clean-energy solutions.
That work includes SHINE Collab, a women-led and centered initiative advancing clean-energy access across Africa, and the Community Just Transition Centers and Fund in South Africa, which puts communities at the center of developing and financing locally driven energy-transition and climate-resilience solutions.
Dorsey has also challenged one of philanthropy’s most deeply held assumptions: that foundations should preserve their endowments indefinitely, even as the crises they seek to address accelerate. WGF increased its annual payout to 20% in 2020 and is now spending its entire endowment down to zero, directing its resources toward movements confronting threats to democracy, human rights and the planet.
With WGF’s strategic spend-out scheduled for completion in December 2026, Dorsey is preparing to launch Dorsey Advisors, a new advisory practice focused on the intersection of climate, capital, human rights and power. Building on her work at WGF, she will continue advising and collaborating with leaders and organizations working to shift public and private capital away from harmful industries and toward communities, workers and solutions that advance climate and social justice.
The next chapter carries forward a central principle of Dorsey’s work: philanthropy and finance must respond at the scale and speed of today’s challenges, using every tool at their disposal to build movements, challenge entrenched power and advance systemic change.
About Wallace Global Fund
Founded by former U.S. Vice President Henry A. Wallace, Wallace Global Fund supports people-powered movements working to advance human rights, defend democracy, and fight for a healthy planet. The Fund supports these movements through grantmaking, mission-aligned investing, and philanthropic advocacy.
About Dorsey Advisors
Dorsey Advisors is an emerging advisory practice led by Dr. Ellen Dorsey, working at the intersection of climate, capital, human rights and power. The practice focuses on how philanthropy, finance and movements can accelerate a just transition and drive systemic change. Its work includes strategic advising, publications, thought leadership, speaking and media engagement on climate action, fossil-fuel industry power, philanthropic strategy and mission-aligned investing, with an emphasis on redirecting public and private capital toward communities, workers and solutions that advance climate and social justice.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Kathleen Silverstein
On The Marc Media
kathleen@onthemarcmedia.com
(410) 963-2345
View original content:SOURCE Wallace Global Fund
