Woody Tasch, Founder and Chairman, pioneered the integration of asset management and philanthropic purpose in the 1990s as treasurer of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and founding chairman of the Community Development Venture Capital Alliance. For ten years, through 2008, Tasch was chairman of Investors' Circle, a network of angel investors, family offices, and social purpose funds and foundations that has invested $150 million in 230 early stage sustainability-promoting ventures and venture funds, since 1992. Woody is the author of Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered (Chelsea Green).
Michael Bartner, Vice President, was the associate director of Investors' Circle from 2002 to 2008. Michael previously worked with the Carter Center's Global Development Initiative, SustainAbility in London, and Park Pride in Atlanta, where he taught urban gardening to underprivileged children. Michael has a B.A. in Environmental Science and Political Science from Emory University and the London School of Economics. He has an M.B.A. from Northeastern University.
David Corson-Knowles, Associate Director, earned his bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Yale University, where he also worked as a researcher for the Program on Agrarian Studies. While an undergraduate, David served on Yale’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility, charged with ethical oversight of the university’s multi-billion dollar endowment. Taking this responsibility seriously, he worked to increase the transparency and openness of the committee, to extend its purview from the 20% of the endowment in public stocks to include all assets, particularly private equity and foreign bonds, and to divest from oil companies operating in Sudan and Burma. His previous work experience ranges from forest conservation and grant administration to hands on work with mathematically gifted university students with disabilities. Most recently, David took administrative and operational responsibility for the start up of Gather Restaurant in Berkeley, California. David learned to hand code web pages from a 1998 course taught by the Library of Congress while he was a US Capitol intern, and he now maintains the Slow Money website.
Jake Bornstein, Senior Associate, worked as part of a small inner team of investment associates at the $130 billion hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, building out a systematic picture of the financial world, refining Bridgewater’s trading strategies and providing strategic advice to large institutional investors. Increasingly convinced of the need to change both the financial and socio-ecological systems, Jake embarked on a research journey across organic farms, forest gardens, eco-villages and transition towns, culminating in a permaculture design certificate from the Permaculture Institute of Italy. Prior to his career at Bridgewater, Jake graduated A.B. summa cum laude from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of public policy, with thesis work focused on the viability of microfinance in the United States, and a minor in continental philosophy.
Meghan French, Director of Development, worked in the major gifts department at Environmental Defense Fund from 2008 to 2013. Prior to her time at EDF, Meghan worked in the development department at Boulder County AIDS Project and as an English teacher in an economic free-trade zone in San Jose, Costa Rica. Meghan has a B.S. in Journalism and a B.A. in English from the University of Colorado. She obtained her M.B.A. in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School, where she studied the intersection of business and sustainability, focusing on how to use business as a catalyst to further environmental and social justice goals.
Cathy Berry, Board, is managing director and one of the founders of Baldwin Investment Group, LLC, a small boutique investment management firm with approximately $300 million under management. Since 1997, she has been the financial advisor and active participant of The Sandy River Charitable Foundation, a family foundation with assets of about $40 million.
Chris Lindstrom, Board, worked for the E.F. Schumacher Society, from 2003 to 2008, spearheading the launch of "BerkShares," the "local currency" of the Southern Berkshires in Massachusetts, referenced innumerable times in international press as a model for communities world-wide. Chris is co-founder of the Fund for Complementary Currencies. He has organized numerous conferences and events around the transformation of money. Chris is particularly motivated by the holistic redirection of money into sustainability, culture and consciousness.
Eliot Coleman, Board, has over 40 years’ experience as an organic farmer, including field vegetables, greenhouse vegetables, rotational grazing of livestock, and range poultry. He is the author of The New Organic Grower (Chelsea Green, rev. 1995), Four Season Harvest (Chelsea Green, rev. 1999), and The Winter Harvest Handbook (Chelsea Green, 2009). He has contributed chapters to three scientific books on organic agriculture and has written extensively on the subject since 1975. As a commercial market gardener, director of agricultural research projects, and teacher and lecturer on organic farming, he has studied and practiced all aspects of organic growing. He served for two years as Executive Director of IFOAM, the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, and was an advisor to the US Department of Agriculture during their landmark study, Report and Recommendations on Organic Farming. Eliot presently owns and operates Four Season Farm, a year-round market garden (winter greenhouse crops and summer field crops) in Harborside, Maine.
Leslie Barclay, Board, spent a good deal of her childhood on a family farm in Millbrook, NY. Her love of land began there and has continued to be the main focus of her life. As the founding chair of the Duchess Land Conservancy in 1985, she became increasingly involved in the national land trust movement and served on the board of the Land Trust Alliance for nearly a decade. She and her husband, Rutgers, currently live at Round the Bend Farm on the south coast of Massachusetts. They are deeply committed to the restoration of farmland and the production of natural, pastured raised meats and organic vegetables for local consumption.
