George joined LISC in 2018 bringing over 20 years of finance and investment management experience. He currently serves a dual role as both President of LISC Fund Management and Managing Director of LISC Strategic Investments. In these roles, he has built several new business lines focused on the creation and deployment of private equity/private debt impact funds. Each of these funds pursues a range of high-impact real estate or business investments that create jobs, fuel small businesses, revitalize commercial areas, improve housing, expand local incomes and make communities safer and stronger. Since inception, the group has launched nine innovative impact funds with an aggregate value of over $900M on behalf of institutional investors, family offices, corporate citizens, and municipal stakeholders.
George previously served as Co-founder and President of Sol System, a Washington, D.C.-based renewable energy investment firm. There, he worked closely with multinational banks, insurers and energy providers on innovative funds and financial structures, deploying more than $1 billion in tax equity, cash equity and debt over the last decade into renewable energy projects. He also raised and deployed a combined $700 million in project-level debt funds, sponsor equity infrastructure funds and tax equity infrastructure funding. Prior to that, he spent seven years at Fannie Mae where he purchased portfolios of whole loan mortgages and traded mortgage-backed securities on behalf of the 50 large bank relationships he managed with transactions volumes totaling more than $50B in his last year with the firm.
In addition to his many professional accomplishments, Ashton volunteers his time for a variety of Washington, D.C.-area organizations, including the Washington Jesuit Academy and the HERO Initiative, both focused on youth education; Community Ministries of Rockville, which addresses the housing and financial needs of homeless and formerly incarcerated people; and Grid Alternatives, a non-profit providing free solar installations to families in need and training workers from underserved areas to install those systems.
