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John O'Donnell

@johnodonnell

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Impact investing in the future of Gulf Coast communities. Sometimes an athlete. Forever a Dog Dad 🐾

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Once upon a time, I had a beer in a bar in Cairo with a guy I didn’t really get along with. We were finishing our drinks when a group of Japanese businessmen walked in.

“I’ve always wanted to drink with Japanese salarymen,” he said.

“Me too,” I said.

We played their drinking games until the sun came up. “Japanese Station Name”. There was a real language barrier. It didn’t matter.

Later, we noticed our security detail was looking to the two of us to decide when the group was ready to move. We made those decisions together. We became brothers. Almost 20 years later and we have been brothers ever since.

Today @kmiseles is the civic champion of Lake Charles, and one of the best leaders in downtown development and smart growth we have in Louisiana. Lake Charles is lucky to have him. Turns out people have been looking to him to lead for a long time.

Happy birthday, my friend. Love you, brother. by @johnodonnell

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a day ago

A little bit of Honey lately. I realized she’s grown a lot since she made the grid last. She’s a very good girl. She loves going to school/day care at @lsuvetmed, playing in the pool at the Raising Cains dog park, watching YouTube, going for walks, going to her job at @thrivefitnesslc, and relaxing with @lizodonnell13_ and I. She still destroys things when she gets bored, or lonely, but maybe she gets that from me. Idk. taken in Baton Rouge, Louisiana by @johnodonnell

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2 days ago

Portland was good for the soul. 🌲
I spent last week with community foundation folks from all over the country at the Community Foundation Climate Collaborative convening. I co-chair its Community Resilience Action Network, which is (in short) a group of foundations trying to get money moving before disasters instead of after.
Best nerd conversation: how do you debt finance stuff like wetlands and retention ponds that save cities a ton of money but never send anyone a check? How do we underwrite nature based solutions? Stay tuned.
Cool cover moment: hard hats on, touring Willamette Falls with former Oregon Governor Kate Brown. It’s the second-biggest waterfall in the country by volume, and it’s been closed off to the public for 150+ years. Now they’re working with four tribal nations to give it back to people. And we saw a sea otter.
Bringing it all home

#climatefinance #WillametteFalls #Portland taken in Willamette Falls by @johnodonnell

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3 days ago

I was at a conference in Portland this week and managed to get away one evening to visit the Portland Japanese Gardens. I was completely unprepared by how beautiful and peaceful the gardens were. Situated within Washington Park, and hailed as one of the most complete Japanese gardens outside of Japan, the garden was built in the 50’s as a sign of peace between Portland and her sister city in Japan, Sapporo, easing the tensions of WW2.
Next door was the International Rose Test Garden (I love roses) that has more than 10,000 individual rose bushes representing over 610 distinct varieties. It was originally established during World War I as a safe haven to preserve hybrid rose varieties sent from Europe that were at risk of being destroyed by bombings.
It was an incredible imagining and use of public space and something we could learn a lot from as we seek to connect nature to, and within, our communities. taken in Portland Japanese Garden by @johnodonnell

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7 days ago

@lizodonnell13_ s first LSU game was a proper time with “proper tickets”. Thanks to our friends old and new for making sure we had all the fun, and especially to @sarahssoawesome for watching @honeytheauskie who cannot be left alone for fear of the assured destruction of everything. And it was great to have @ben.isaac.dup with us for the weekend! taken in Death Valley - Tiger Stadium by @johnodonnell

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14 days ago

Pretty cool to be interviewed by a magazine I grew up reading as a little boy. @popularmechanics September/October issue features a story on “Natech” disasters: when a natural hazard triggers an industrial failure. In Lake Charles after Hurricane Laura, that meant a chlorine fire at BioLab on top of a Category 4 storm.

Laura tore open the plant’s roof and rain hit the trichlor inside, a chemical that can heat up and ignite when it gets wet. With the power out, the fire pumps failed. A chlorine fire burned for more than a day, spewing a toxic cloud of the same gas used as a chemical weapon in WWI over an area just hit by a storm tied for the strongest on record in Louisiana. These disasters don’t just happen at once. They compound.

The cost doesn’t stay “inside the fence line.” Households pay in mold and longer displacement. Communities pay in rising insurance costs, people who leave and don’t come back, and a harder pitch to new industries, talent, and tourism during recovery.

Industry is still Calcasieu Parish’s biggest taxpayer, so the sector creating the risk also funds a big share of the government managing it. At the same time, ITEP exempts nearly as much in property taxes in Calcasieu as the parish actually levies. That’s a structural problem, not a villain story.

Hazards are natural. Disasters are the result of policy choices, which means they’re preventable. In many ways we got lucky with the BioLab incident. It could have been much worse. And three years later, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board’s recommendation that Louisiana require chemical plants in hurricane zones to evaluate storm hazards and put safeguards in place is still open.

I’m glad this conversation is happening, so that for communities like ours, the next hurricane is just a hurricane. by @johnodonnell

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a month ago

We had a blast at Thunder Over Louisiana Air Show this weekend. Mom wanted to get out of the house and that woman cannot be stopped, pouring rain and all. Blue Angels were incredible, and early estimates put the economic impact at around $15 million for the region. I’ve been on my economic diversification soapbox in SWLA for 20 years now, and it was great to see it in practice. Big kudos to the medical team too, saw them responding to multiple heat incidents and they were on it. taken in Chennault International Airport by @johnodonnell

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2 months ago

What if doing good for Louisiana paid for itself?

Impact investing is a simple idea: use a financial instrument to drive positive, measurable social and environmental impact alongside a financial return.

Our team, accompanied by @honeytheauskie , brought that message to the Future Louisiana Conference last month.

The dollars go to work, drive real outcomes, and come back with interest to be used again.

That’s what we’re building at Pelican Community Capital, the community development lending arm of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation.

We’ve seeded it with $10 million, put a dedicated board and investment committee around it, and we’re putting that capital to work in energy efficiency and resilience, community facilities, and affordable housing across the state, including one of Louisiana’s first community solar projects (not industrial solar 😎), built to cut energy bills for hundreds of families.

Louisiana has no shortage of good projects. What it’s been short on is capital that stays home and works for the people here.

That’s changing. If you’ve got a project that needs mission-driven capital, my inbox is open. Let’s talk.

#ImpactInvesting #CommunityDevelopment #Louisiana taken in L'Auberge Casino Resort Lake Charles by @johnodonnell

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2 months ago

Six years ago this morning, Hurricane Laura destroyed my house and my community. Here is what six years taught me. Help comes. Money doesn’t.

Laura was the first of four federally declared disasters we endured in nine months, during the pandemic. The help that showed up first was people. Neighbors. Churches. NGOs that drove in from out of state because someone asked them to.

I spent four years rebuilding housing in Southwest Louisiana for families the system had no path for. I have been in this fight since day one, and I’m still in it.

Emergency assistance came fast: tarps, debris removal, a FEMA check. The money it takes to actually rebuild a house is a different thing. From Louisiana’s own recovery plan and federal records: 40,388 housing units damaged. Calcasieu Parish absorbed 59% of them.

Three quarters of homeowners who applied to FEMA for wind damage had no hazard insurance, in a state deep in an insurance crisis.

Katrina got supplemental federal aid in 10 days. Andrew in 34. Sandy in 98. Lake Charles was still waiting at 340. Our mayor called it the longest wait for supplemental disaster aid in American history.

Congress appropriated the funds in September 2021. HUD published the allocation in February 2022. Louisiana’s action plan was finalized in July 2022, 23 months after the storm.
Delta hit six weeks after Laura, thirteen miles from where Laura landed, with more than 8,000 blue tarps still on roofs.
The next storm arrives before the last recovery finishes. The delay stops being an inconvenience and becomes permanent.

By July 2021 the Census Bureau had Calcasieu Parish down more than 11,000 people, one of the steepest declines in the country. Those are the people who used to live on my street.

So here is what I believe. If we do not fight for ourselves and build our own protections, we stay somebody else’s product. A place to extract from, not a place worth underwriting.

That means organizing. It means owning the capital. It is why I spend my days now getting financing to projects on this coast that conventional lending won’t touch.
If you are building something here that money won’t reach, find me. Six years later. Still fighting. by @johnodonnell

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2 months ago

“What about that shadowy place?”
“That’s Sasol, Honey. That’s beyond our borders.”
🦁👑 taken in Lake Charles, Louisiana by @johnodonnell

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2 months ago

Happy birthday to the woman of my dreams. The one who never says no to an adventure, and laughs with me when it goes sideways.

Dog mom to our beasts. Boss of her own empire. The most fun person in every room. Strongest person I know, in more ways than one. My favorite place to land, no matter where the day took us.

Here’s to another year of chasing it all with you. I love you. @lizodonnell13_ by @johnodonnell

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3 months ago

We celebrated America’s 250th birthday by visiting one of her oldest cities with friends and family. We’re often in New Orleans for work, but it was great to be a tourist for once. We took a riverboat cruise, took a Cajun/creole cooking class, visited the National WW2 Museum, spent some time on Bourbon and had a great time. It was amazing seeing the city during Essence Fest, and there was even an explosion! taken in New Orleans, Louisiana by @johnodonnell

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3 months ago