Bigger Than Us #82 Franz Hochstrasser, CEO and Co-founder of Raise Green
Franz Hochstrasser is CEO and Co-founder of Raise Green, and is also CEO and Co-founder of New Haven Community Solar which were both founded in 2018. He has been working at the intersection of policy, climate change, environmental and social issues for more than a decade. Prior to graduating from Yale School of the Environment with a focus on sustainable finance, clean energy and business in 2018, Franz served eight years in the Obama Administration.
Franz served as Senior Advisor to the Special Envoy for Climate Change at the U.S. Department of State, working on the team that successfully negotiated the Paris Agreement. Prior to that, he was Deputy Associate Director at the White House Council of Environmental Quality working on energy, environment and climate policy and public engagement; and a Confidential Assistant and Legislative Analyst at the U.S. Department of Agriculture working on conservation, energy, food security, science policy and open data. He also worked on both of Barack Obama’s successful presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012.
Franz holds a Masters of Environmental Management from Yale University; Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics and a Bachelor of Arts in Politics from the University of California, Santa Cruz.