ABOUT

Developed through graduate research at Harvard University

The Wildfire Prevention Tax Credit framework was developed by Brandon Corcoran, CPA, as the capstone research project for a Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies (Sustainability) at Harvard University. The framework draws on firsthand experience with transferable tax credit investment markets — not only as described in policy literature, but as they operate in institutional capital markets.

Prior to his graduate research, Corcoran spent nearly a decade at ORIX Corporation USA in progressively senior roles focused on private equity and alternative asset management. He drove ORIX’s acquisitions of Boston Financial Investment Management and Boston Capital’s LIHTC fund platform — transactions that combined two of the nation’s largest LIHTC syndication businesses into a single platform managing approximately $15 billion in assets across nearly 190 funds. This experience informs the financial architecture and capital formation strategy underlying the WPTC framework.

Active engagement is underway with practitioners, funders, and land managers across the wildfire resilience and environmental finance communities. Current work spans economic modeling of how the credit would function across five active forest landscapes, development of measurement and verification standards, governance design for program administration, and building the stakeholder groundwork for a potential Colorado state-level pilot — a proposed step toward eventual federal authorization.