News & Analysis

B Capital bolsters climate team with two hires

Rich Lesser is the former CEO of Boston Consulting Group and Jeff Johnson was most recently a managing director at Temasek.

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B Capital has expanded its climate investment platform with two new leadership hires. It brought Jeff Johnson on board as general partner to lead the climate investment team and Rich Lesser as an advisor and vice-chair of climate and sustainability.

Photo of Jeff Johnson, GP, B Capital
Jeff Johnson, B Capital

Johnson was previously a managing director at Temasek. Before that, he co-founded and was on the board of Xpansiv.

Lesser is the former CEO of Boston Consulting Group and serves as global chair of BCG. He also serves as chief advisor to the World Economic Forum’s Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders.

“As more businesses integrate climate into their strategies, Rich’s strategic direction and Jeff’s investment leadership will help us partner with and back the industry’s leading climate entrepreneurs,” B Capital co-CEO Eduardo Saverin said in a statement. “We are particularly excited that like many of us here at B Capital, Jeff brings deep experience as an investor and entrepreneur in scaling growth companies.”

Photo of Rich Lesser of B Capital.
Rich Lesser, B Capital

The addition of Johnson and Lesser follows the hiring of Don Wood as a venture partner focused on climate in May 2023. Other climate team members include Karan Mohla, a general partner on B Capital’s Asia team, and Karly Wentz, climate senior principal.

B Capital has made several recent climate investments, including Patch Technologies, a platform offering a suite of APIs and developer tools to connect buyers and sellers of carbon credits, and Accacia, a provider of AI-enabled decarbonisation solutions to the real estate industry.

B Capital is a multi-stage investment firm, participating in deals from seed to late-stage venture growth investments, and primarily focuses on the technology, healthcare and climate sectors.

Founded in 2015, B Capital has nine locations in the US and Asia, including headquarters in New York. The firm has more than $6 billion in assets under management. In March, the firm announced it had closed its second opportunities fund on $750 million, raising more than twice the amount of its first opportunity vehicle.