Susan H. Mac Cormac

Susan H. Mac Cormac chairs three of Morrison Foerster LLP's practice groups: environmental, social and governance; social enterprise and impact investing; and energy.

She has devoted a lengthy career to finding ways, as she puts it, "to ensure that mainstream deals for investors and corporations can really have a positive impact."

Mac Cormac joined the firm in 1996. The light bulb went off in 2001 when she made partner amid the disruptions of the burst of the dot-com bubble. "I was now able to chart my own course and develop my own practice." The 1999 film "The Matrix" provided a metaphor. "I took the red pill," she said, looking for a fresh approach to her practice. "I thought, 'Ha!

Business is going to have to fundamentally change.' We were destroying the commons, and environmental degradation was going to catch up with us."

Her focus is on late-stage financings and other transactions for investors such as SoftBank and Temasek and on investments dedicated to impact for foundations, family offices and private equity funds. She co-led the drafting group for the first of the new corporate forms -- the Social Purpose Corporation in California -- and has created corporate structures that blend impact with traditional financial terms.

In one approach, Mac Cormac works with fund managers who aggregate capital. She leads the MoFo team advising San Francisco-based sustainable infrastructure investment and operating platform Generate Capital on more than 30 matters.

They include Generate's $2 billion fundraising effort from leading institutional investors to push deployment of sustainable infrastructure. Existing investors AustralianSuper and QIC led the round with new investments from Harbert Management Co., Aware Super and CBRE Caledon.

In December 2021, Generate, with Mac Cormac's counsel, converted to a public benefit corporation, formalizing its longtime commitment to sustainability and embodying its vision that there is no trade-off between financial performance and environmental impact.

"We also work to deploy capital to promote not just return, but impact," Mac Cormac said. As an example, she pointed to her role in advising Huck Capital Management, LLC and Schneider Electric SE in their investment in Uplight, Inc., which partners with energy providers transitioning to the clean energy ecosystem. The transaction valued Uplight at $1.5 billion.