Our Team
Kate Barron-Alicante (she/her)
Kate is a co-creator of capital J, a catalytic strategy consulting collective that supports individuals and organizations who, inside our current capitalist system, seek authentic and intentional approaches to align their justice-centered values, their legacy and their financial practices. Along with her clients, Kate has always shared a passion for strategically leveraging money for climate justice at this moment in history.
Kate is a board member of Taproot Earth, a global climate justice organization that centers the leadership of the Black Diaspora and frontline communities in climate solutions. She is also a founding member and inaugural steering crew member of Radical Planners, organizing progressive financial advisors and coaches to better support a Just Transition. For over half a dozen years Kate has strategically worked inside the financial services industry, from Financial Advisor, Relationship manager, Director of Impact and Board Member within a $3B B financial advisory firm and B Corp.
Prior to her career in finance, Kate spent 15 years in social justice & social change work in non-governmental organizations and academia throughout the US, Europe and South America. This work included working as a part of Oxfam America’s first US disaster recovery team in post-Katrina South Louisiana, land where her ancestors have lived for nine generations.
Kate holds an MsC in International Development from the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London, a BA in International Relations from Boston University and is a Certified Financial Planner™. She lives in Philadelphia with her family.
leo freeman (he/they)
leo freeman is a co-creator of capital J, a catalytic strategy consulting collective that supports individuals and organizations who, inside our current capitalist system, seek authentic and intentional approaches to align their justice-centered values, their legacies and their financial practices. he is a passionate advocate for intersectional justice and brings a systems change approach to his work with philanthropic orgs, institutional and individual investors and financial advisors, planners and coaches.
leo is a thinker and a tinkerer with a musician’s brain and an activist’s heart. for the past eight years, leo has worked inside of the financial services industrial complex as a traditional financial advisor (learning the master’s tools), then as a social justice financial advisor with adasina social capital (weilding the master’s tools in service of social justice movements), and most recently as the director of fund development with seed commons, (building a necessary element of the regenerative economy through raising a long-term and stable capital pool for non-extractive loans to worker-owned cooperatives).
leo is a founding member and inaugural steering crew member of radical planners, organizing progressive financial advisors and coaches around a post-capitalist, abolitionist vision for society to further a just transition. leo is the co-founder and co-director of (re)define, a diversified solidarity economy fund of funds project that seeks to support and capitalize investments in right relationship with community members and movements by democratizing investment decision-making power, increasing investor access, and leveraging a non-extractive and relationship-based due diligence process. leo is a just economy institute fellow, serving alongside fellow financial activists working to shift the flow of capital and power to solve social and environmental problems. leo is a member of the transformative 25 (t25) committee, building a regular list of funds, banks and initiatives transforming finance for people and planet.
prior to their career in radical finance, leo taught music (trumpet), ran kids summer camps in the bay area, worked in construction, in a shipping warehouse, as a barista, a bartender, as a salesperson for apple, inc., and managed a bike shop. all of these working-class experiences offer them an acute and experiential view to the inequities alive under capitalism, and fuel their systems change work for a just and equitable society.
leo’s not big on formal education and academia, but he does hold a few bachelor’s degrees from california state university, sacramento in jazz pedagogy and music education. he is an accredited investment fiduciary, certified through fi360, and hold a series 65 license.
leo lives in berkeley, ca with their dog. leo is an anticapitalist, abolitionist, vegan, feminist, activist, non-zionist, anarcho-utopianist who reads a ton of queer theory and liberation lit and is focused, these days, on building and deepening community relationships and dreaming the world to come.
leo has collaborated and consulted around strategy with comrades at activest, centro para la reconstrucción del hábitat puerto rico, chordata capital, the good ancestor movement and obran cooperative