Woody Tasch

Woody Tasch is Chairman and President of Slow Money, a 501(c)(3) formed in 2008 to catalyze the flow of investment capital to small food enterprises and promote new principles of fiduciary responsibility that support sustainable agriculture and the emergence of a restorative economy.

Tasch is chairman emeritus and former CEO of Investors' Circle, a network of angel investors, family offices, social purpose funds and foundations that since 1992 has invested $150 million in 230 early stage sustainability-promoting ventures and venture funds. During much of the 1990s, he was treasurer of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, where, as part of an innovative mission-related venture capital program, a substantial investment was made in Stonyfield Farm, now the world’s largest maker of organic yogurt.

He has worked as an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, board member and consultant with such organizations as Prince Ventures (a healthcare venture fund), Healthdata International, CERES (the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies), National Mentor, Greenway, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Northwest Area Foundation, CIMMYT (the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center), Chelsea Green Publishing and The Farmers Diner.

Woody's involvement in food dates back to 1979, when he developed a case study program at The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (home of Norman Borlaug's dwarf wheat and the Green Revolution); he co-authored Food Production and Public Policy in Developing Countries (Praeger Special Studies, 1983).

He has been founding Chairman of several NGOs: the Community Development Venture Capital Alliance (supporting over 100 small-scale venture funds that target economically disadvantaged regions), Sustainable Nantucket (environmentally responsible growth management on Nantucket Island) and the Nantucket Education Trust (affordable housing for teachers). Articles, interviews or profiles have appeared in Ode, Christian Science Monitor, Hemisphere, Green Money Journal, Amherst Alumni Magazine, Resurgence, Andover Review, Utne Reader, More Than Money, Il Sole-24 Ore (Italian financial press) and Steering Business Towards Sustainability (United Nations University Press). He is a frequent speaker on regional and national public radio programs and at various socially responsible business and sustainable agriculture venues, including Social Venture Network, SRI in the Rockies, Green Festival, Bioneers, BALLE, Slow Food and NYU’s Reynolds Program on Social Entrepreneurship. He is the author of the recently published Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered.

Woody graduated in 1973 Magna Cum Laude from Amherst College, where he won the Collin Armstrong Poetry Prize.