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Christopher Gergen has over 25 years experience building, scaling, and supporting systems-based solutions in communities globally. He is the Founding Partner of Forward Impact - a for-benefit advisory firm that works with policy makers, philanthropists, investors, and innovators seeking to deploy capital into high-impact scalable solutions to address systemic economic inequities. Christopher is also co-host of Moving the Needle featuring guests driving innovative solutions to address economic inequities and create generational wealth. He is the co-founder and recent CEO of Forward Cities – a national nonprofit that helps cities and regions strengthen their equitable entrepreneurial ecosystems. Since launching in 2014, Forward Cities has worked with over 30 cities, grown to a team of 25, negotiated a successful merger with CEOs for Cities, and developed a national cross-city learning collaborative as well as regional economic initiatives in North Carolina and Ohio. Christopher is also a founding partner of Raleigh Founded, a B-Corp that is the largest entrepreneurial co-working community in North Carolina. Additionally, Christopher has been a fellow and faculty member with Duke University’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship initiative, the Innovator in Residence at the Center for Creative Leadership, and a regular columnist for the Raleigh News & Observer. He is also co-author of the nationally acclaimed book Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives, an alum of Leadership North Carolina and a 2013 Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute where he was named a Braddock Scholar. Other entrepreneurial endeavors for Christopher include co-founding SMARTHINKING, a venture-backed online tutoring company that grew to over 1,000 universities before being acquired by Pearson in 2011, launching the Entrepreneurs Corps that placed 400 AmeriCorps*VISTA volunteers into 96 nonprofits for a year of capacity building support, and starting Café Nunoa – a bar, restaurant, live music venue in Santiago, Chile that Christopher started when he was 24. Christopher currently serves on the Governor’s NC Works Commission in North Carolina and lives with his wife and two children in Durham, NC.
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