Brien Walton

Dr. Walton is the CEO of Acadia Capital Management, L3C, a nationally certified Community Development Entity (CDE) and strategic advisory firm that works directly with government agencies, municipal leaders, and social impact funds on strategies that can eliminate poverty through sustainable job growth and permanent job creation in economically-distressed communities. In this role, he creates innovative funding pathways that enable communities to attract social impact investments through stackable, federal, state, and local risk mitigation incentives. He is also the director of the Richard E. Dyke Center for Family Business at Husson University, where he has led initiatives analyzing the challenges of Maine’s entrepreneurs and developed a collaborative innovation ecosystem between academia and the business community. In 2020, the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development invited Walton to speak to a national audience on leveraging public and private resources to maximize economic growth and permanent job creation in federally designated Opportunity Zones. A former corporate tax attorney, commercial banker, and real estate broker, he was the founding CEO of the first university-based EdTech venture capital fund in the U.S. at the University of Pennsylvania. There he created an award-wining shared space innovation hub in downtown Philadelphia, and more than half of the inaugural cohort was acquired by large or publicly traded companies within seven years. Brien earned his Doctorate of Education in Organizational Learning Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania with a concentration in Leadership Development at the Wharton School of Business; a Juris Doctorate in Law at the University of D.C., a Master of Science in Education in Workforce Development at the University of Pennsylvania; a Master of Arts in Educational Technologies at Harvard University; and a Master of Laws in Taxation at Georgetown University.