The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) announced that Dan Winters recently joined the organization as Senior Research Fellow for Business Strategy and Finance.

Winters, a 20-year veteran of real estate finance and one of the first LEED Accredited Professionals in the financial industry, is the previous recipient of the 2012 USGBC Mark Ginsberg Sustainability Fellowship. Now with USGBC as a full-time staff member, Winters will utilize his background in institutional real estate finance, alongside his capital market perspectives, to foster and strengthen the growing relationships between the green building and investment communities.

“Dan is one of the foremost minds among those who develop high-performance buildings, the commercial brokerage community and the institutional financiers who seek to incorporate sustainable properties into real estate investment portfolios,” said Chris Pyke, vice president of research, USGBC. “USGBC is fortunate to be working with Dan, who will help lead our efforts to bring Wall Street into the fold while helping institutional investors realize the benefits associated with green building ownership.”

Winters plays an important ongoing role in USGBC’s newly released Green Building Information Gateway (GBIG), a global platform for green building insights and innovation. Winters works to implement key features within GBIG while further uniting the investment community with USGBC’s existing stakeholder base. He also helped support USGBC’s efforts regarding the recently released National Academy of Sciences report that reviewed the U.S. Department of Defense’s use of green building rating systems and recommended the continued use of LEED.

“It is a tremendous honor to serve USGBC, an organization peerless in its industry leadership,” said Winters. “Developing advanced solutions such as GBIG drives market transparency, which can reduce information asymmetry and address capital market failures. Increasing engagement with the investment community allows USGBC to strengthen industry mindshare and further its mission.”

Prior to joining USGBC, Winters was founder of Evolution Partners, a real estate advisory firm specializing in the financial aspects of environmentally responsible real estate projects. He was primary author of the Green Building Financial Underwriting Standard on behalf of the Capital Markets Partnership, and he worked with North American real estate firms to maximize the financial return of their sustainability efforts.

Winters’ professional background includes tenure at Russell Investments, a world-class institutional investment advisory firm, where he served as an industry analyst in Russell’s real estate private equity group. In addition, he spent several years at CBRE’s top-producing Washington, D.C., office engaged in debt placement and underwriting for major real estate projects. He was a participant on the Washington, D.C., Green Building Task Force, which helped to pass the District’s Green Building Act of 2006, and he was previously vice chairman of the USGBC Maryland Chapter.

Winters holds a master’s degree in real estate finance and development from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, an MBA from Southern Methodist University and a bachelor’s degree in consumer behavior and real estate from the University of Wisconsin. He is also an adjunct faculty member at the University of Maryland’s Colvin Institute of Real Estate Development.