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Will was previously an independent consultant focused on piloting novel solutions to stubborn social problems. He was involved in many realms of financial innovation and impact investing, and designed several catalytic applications of contingent lending programs in education, consumer, and small business finance. He is especially interested in projects related to poverty, housing, small business, community development, concessionary investing, and blended finance.
From 2016 to 2019, Will was a managing director at JFI, the applied research organization modeled on DARPA. He led a sprawling initiative on higher education finance, combining empirical research on lending and outcomes with the first large-scale effort to pilot a new financing model. He launched income share agreement pilots with 11 education organizations in seven states, drafted the first federal legislation regulating ISA contracts, oversaw the development of the first financial modeling infrastructure for ISAs, incubated an ISA originations and servicing company, and raised more than $20 million in grants and investments. Will also oversaw all of JFI’s fundraising and public policy work, contributing to projects on financial engineering, guaranteed income, and machine learning governance.
Will came to JFI from the Robin Hood Foundation, where he served as Chief of Staff. At the nation’s largest poverty-fighting organization, Will was tasked with sourcing, developing, and scaling promising new interventions in the lives of poor New Yorkers. He helped launch Robin Hood’s first major grassroots campaign, dedicated to dramatically increasing the number of eligible New Yorkers who enroll in SNAP, WIC, and the EITC; built a $50 million fund aimed at improving early learning resources for poor children; and devised No City Limits, a partnership with the Gates Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation that pairs breakthrough research on poverty with the practitioners who can implement it in their communities.
Prior to Robin Hood, Will had an eclectic career that took him from motion picture development and production to financial technology investments. He is enormously proud that his first job was for the United States Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions and its chairman, Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa — where Will organized over 350 binders of legislative recommendations during the (attempted) reauthorization of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, and drafted forceful but restrained letters to for-profit colleges and student loan servicers.