Stella Ervin, University of North Carolina at ChapellHill Economics Undergraduate, Class of 2026
The NC Clean Energy Fund welcomed Stella Ervin to the team during the summer of 2024 as a Health and Safety Intern to conduct important research that furthers our mission and goals.
Stella is a Will Froelich Honors Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill pursuing a B.S. in Economics with minors in Sustainability and Business Administration. Her collegiate endeavor highlights her interests in sustainable finance, impact investing, and emerging clean technologies. She expects to graduate in the spring of 2026 and plans to continue to delve into the green finance world along the way.
While attending UNC Chapel Hill, Stella has grown her passion for green finance through several internships that have combined her focus on cleantech and finance with her skills in communication and project management. As an Impact Investing Intern with the Ackerman Center for Excellence in Sustainability (ACES), Stella was an integral part of the team researching and designing UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School’s first undergraduate impact investing fund. In this role, Stella researched university impact investment funds across the globe and helped shape the eventual structure of KFBS’s own fund.
Stella’s role as a Cleantech Summit Intern for the UNC Institute for the Environment introduced her to the world of green banks. As an intern specializing in green finance, Stella researched green banks and interviewed leading green bank professionals. She delivered her research findings in the form of compelling articles for the UNC Cleantech Corner. Stella’s experience with a panel at the Cleantech Summit on Green Banking introduced her to the NC Clean Energy Fund and Co-Director Jennifer Weiss.
Earlier in 2024, Stella was chosen as a recipient of the Pavel Molchanov Scholarship. Molchanov Scholars receive funding to pursue research and internships in the cleantech space, and Stella was paired with NCCEF. As a Health & Safety intern at the NC Clean Energy Fund, she researches barriers across NC preventing low-wealth homes from accessing weatherization improvements– and their co-benefits of health and safety–provided by federal, state, and other organizations. This research includes interviews with practitioners, policymakers, and thought leaders in the energy efficiency and home safety space across NC. The data she collects will shape her final literature review and recommendations on ways to reduce barriers to accessing weatherization upgrades in NC. The hope is that this research can give NCCEF an estimate for what funding is needed to address this problem in NC, so that we can raise philanthropic capital to tackle the issue.
Stella is excited to explore new paths and opportunities in green finance in the coming years. Her passion for sustainability stems from learning about the staggering statistics that call for the immediate need for investment in climate change solutions. Although Stella is only half-way through her college career, she knows that she desires a long-term involvement in bridging the gap between where we need to be and where we are on the sustainability scale.