Meet Alexandra (Ali) Cooley, Nuveen Green Capital CEO & CIO

Leadership Spotlight – Alexandra (Ali) Cooley

Our latest Leadership Spotlight shines a light on Ali Cooley, who recently transitioned from Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer to the dual role of CEO and CIO in October 2025. Our entrepreneurial CEO has successfully led Nuveen Green Capital (NGC) through numerous market cycles, guiding the firm to pivot strategically when needed while continuously innovating and finding ways to sustain the firm’s incredible growth. Learn more about Ali’s path and vision for NGC’s future below:

Where are you from?

I was born in San Francisco, where both my parents were home goods buyers at Macy's. We moved to Westport, Connecticut, when I was five after my dad got a job as the GM for Caldor, which was one of the original discount retail concepts.

Describe your current role and how it has evolved

Currently, I’m the CEO and Chief Investment Officer of NGC. This means I’m responsible for synthesizing insights resulting from internal and external factors to set our investment positioning and overall business strategy.

What makes working at NGC unique and meaningful to you?

Since co-founding our original predecessor firm, Greenworks Lending, I've always been intentional about creating opportunities for others that are both personally and professionally meaningful. When I was coming out of school, I struggled to find value-aligned roles where I could go to work every day with genuine purpose. That experience drives me to ensure NGC is the type of place where talented people can build careers that matter—working on investments that contribute to a more sustainable future on behalf of investment partners and delivering attractive returns to retirees and families.

How has your definition of successful leadership evolved from when you first started to where you are today?

Before starting a business, I had this sense that leadership was about having the brilliant idea and then working with a team to execute on it. Those lightbulb moments do happen sometimes, but they are a lot rarer and generally less important day-to-day than I initially thought. What I've learned as we've grown is that the most effective leadership moments have come from quieter moments: listening to what the team is experiencing, paying attention to shifts small and large in our organization and external markets, and making incremental adjustments before small issues become big problems that require dramatic solutions.

I've come to realize that good leadership is less about having all the answers and more about creating the conditions where the best ideas can bubble up. I've leaned more into curiosity, listening, and observation, and sometimes knowing when to get out of the way and create space. I guess you could say my definition has gotten quieter and softer.

What accomplishment(s) during your work so far at NGC makes you the most proud and why?

Conceiving of and leading the implementation of our fund series. Despite being met with a lot of resistance up front, I just had the sense we could be doing things a lot more efficiently by aligning the interests of the residual interests with the senior note purchasers, and it would enable us to scale our program at that time. What I am most proud of, though, is how the initiative brought together an ad hoc, scrappy team both within NGC and broader Nuveen to make it happen. The collaboration, creativity, and sheer determination of this group were focused and extraordinary. It's honestly one of the best team initiatives I've ever been a part of. Some of our Nuveen partners have called it "magical," and I think that captures the group dynamic well. While the results speak for themselves—at over $2 billion raised over the last three years—it's really the shared mission and experience that stands out to me.

What led you to an interest in a career that incorporates environmental impact and clean energy? How does working at NGC fulfill that interest for you?

Growing up, I spent a lot of time outdoors, and when I was graduating college, the climate crisis was just becoming part of the zeitgeist. I actually wrote a senior honors thesis in 2007 about how critical private sector business models were for addressing the climate crisis and would stay up late feeling both anxious and hopeless. I pretty quickly realized the main resource I had to help was my time. Because my career was the biggest consumer of my time, I set out to find a role that contributed positively to the environment. So, while I never directly articulated starting a business to do just that, it was the general direction I set off in when I graduated.

When I met Jessica Bailey and learned about C-PACE five years later, the wheels started turning on the exact manifestation of that direction. I actually love that in our day-to-day at NGC we rarely appeal to the climate-positive impact of our work because, to me, that is true, sustainable impact. Few people are doing C-PACE or giving us money because we are green—they are doing it because it makes sense for them and their goals. The climate impact of our work has become a positive externality. Businesses like ours are the only way we as a society can combat the massive externalities that are causing the climate crisis.

Where do you see NGC going in the future and what are you most excited about being a part of as the company evolves and grows?

Before agreeing to take on this new role, I spent a lot of time thinking about how we continue this incredible tear we've been on. I'm genuinely excited about the growth potential in front of us and see three primary areas for us to create significant value:

First, there are tremendous opportunities for our continued domination in the C-PACE space. While we're seeing competition intensify, I see substantial untapped potential and know that our team's expertise and culture are unparalleled, keeping our place as the industry's largest market share holder. I also see opportunity to push our product in ways that make it meet our investor and borrower demand—finding ways to increase leverage and continue to adapt our products.

Second, our expanded presence in the new infrastructure vertical opens up new possibilities for adjacent areas to connect institutional capital with projects needing long-term capital. There's more exploration to come here, and it's part of what makes our platform exciting; we're still building. Whether it's different asset classes, new financing structures, or innovative partnerships, this will be our opportunity to take what we've learned building NGC and apply it to grow new verticals.

Last, I'm particularly energized by our international expansion potential, both in terms of expanding territories for lending and introducing our platform to global investors.

What excites me most is that each of these areas builds on our core competencies while pushing us into new territories. That combination of leveraging proven capabilities while embracing a changing landscape with meaningful challenges feels like the sweet spot for sustained growth.