Joe Watt

VP and Managing Director

Joe grew up in the rural Midwest, where he was inspired daily by his mother’s commitment to educating others, going above and beyond to reach her students, especially those who came from difficult family circumstances. After graduating high school with a class of 40 students, then joining a student body of more than 40,000 at the University of Illinois, and finally completing graduate school at Duke University, he has experienced firsthand the wide variations, challenges and ultimately, the transformative impact of education across a multitude of learning environments.

Shortly after joining ECMC Group, Joe co-led the creation of the Education Impact Fund, driven by the opportunity to utilize patient, impact-aligned capital to propel transformative educational outcomes. By investing in scalable ventures that are addressing educational inequities and empowering underserved and overlooked groups, Joe aims to further demonstrate the strong correlation between long-term impact and outsized financial returns, thereby, inspiring increased investment in impactful educational change.

Before ECMC Group, Joe’s experience spans corporate strategy, M&A, private equity and investments within the technology and education sectors. He is a graduate of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, where he was an Impact Investing Fellow, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He lives outside of Durham, North Carolina, with his wife, son and dog.

Get to Know Me

• Tried changing his major to architecture freshman year but couldn’t enroll in the pre-requisite course while staying on track to graduate on time
• Aspiring hobby farmer; can be found most weekends on a tractor or in the dirt
• Fanatical music lover; wears a lot of concert T-shirts; wishes he never gave up the trombone in high school