ENLIGHTENED CAPITALISTS

INVESTOR'S CIRCLE CONFERENCE TO FOCUS ON SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS


Speakers To Discuss Community Development, Food, Health, Media, Renewable Energy


(CSRwire) BOSTON, Mass. – Panel discussions on "Preserving and Restoring the Commons," presentations by the founder of the country’s leading brand of natural household products and the son of baseball great Jackie Robinson, and a venture fair are among the features of the Investors’ Circle (IC) 2005 National Conference, which will take place Nov. 1-3, 2005 at the Hyatt Regency Boston.

The conference, which will be based on the theme, "Patient Capital for a Sustainable Future," celebrates the investment of $100 million through the IC network. In collaboration with the popular PBS radio show eTown. Speakers at workshops on Nov. 3 will also discuss the state of double-bottom-line investing and enterprise creation in the context of community development, food and organics, health, media, mission-related investing and renewable energy.

Keynote speakers will include Jeffrey Hollender, CEO of Seventh Generation of Burlington, Vt., and David Robinson, Director Of Marketing for the Mshikamano Farmers Group in Tanzania. In addition to founding his successful household products company, Hollender is the founder of Network for Learning, an adult education program and audio publishing company, and author of How to Make the World a Better Place: A Guide for Doing Good.

Robinson, son of Jackie Robinson, formed United Harlem Growth Inc., a self-help housing development and renovation company, then moved to Tanzania in the 1980s and started a 29,000-tree coffee farm. He helped form the Mshikamano Farmers Group, a cooperative of coffee farmers and serves as its Director Of Marketing.

Some of the other scheduled speakers include Peter Barnes of the Tomales Bay Institute and Founder of Working Assets; Joan Bavaria, President of Trillium Asset Management; Connie Best, Managing Director, The Pacific Forest Trust; Mark Donohue of Expansion Capital Partners; Barbara Kibbe, Vice President for Program Effectiveness at The Skoll Foundation; David Kirkpatrick, Founding and Managing Director of SJF Ventures; David Robinson, founder of Sweet Unity Farms; Don Shaffer, National Coordinator of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies; Paul Shoemaker, Executive Director of Social Venture Partners International, and Greg Steltenpohl, founder of the Interra Project and co-founder and former CEO of Odwalla.

Thirty-four companies will be featured in a venture fair on Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2005, and two panels on Thursday, Nov. 3, 2005 will discuss the use of private capital and networks to enhance bioregional, cultural and economic health and diversity. The Investors’ Circle National Conference and Venture Fair is the premier meeting place for angel investors, professional venture capitalists, philanthropic investors and entrepreneurs who are using private capital to promote the transition to a sustainable future.

This year’s conference is supported with contributions from Health Care Without Harm, the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust, the Phoebe Haas Charitable Trust, the Skoll Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Investors’ Circle of Brookline, Mass. and San Francisco, Calif. is a leading social venture capital intermediary whose mission is to support early-stage, private companies that drive the transition to a sustainable economy. Founded in 1992, IC has become one of the nation’s largest investor networks, and the only one devoted specifically to sustainability. Its members and active affiliates are high net worth individuals, professional venture capitalists, family offices and foundations. In its first decade, network members invested over $100 million into 160 early stage private companies and venture funds working to deliver commercial solutions to social and environmental problems.

Buddha says; "If a man do something good, let him do it again and again. Let him find joy in his good work. Joyful is the accumulation of good work"