About
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Christopher Gergen has over 25 years experience building, scaling, and supporting systems-based solutions in communities globally. With a growing passion for the positive impact that food can have on our local economies, the health of families, and our warming climate, Christopher has joined the team at 4P Foods as its Chief Growth Officer to help build out a scalable, regional food system. He is the founder of Forward Impact that works with policy makers, philanthropists, investors, and innovators seeking to deploy capital into high-impact scalable solutions to address systemic economic inequities. To date, Forward Impact has helped direct over $30M in public/private capital to place-based systems change efforts. 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 past CEO of Forward Cities – a national nonprofit that has worked with over 30 cities to strengthen their equitable entrepreneurial ecosystems and founding partner of Raleigh Founded, an entrepreneurial co-working community in North Carolina with more than 400 member companies, as well as Founding Chairman of BlueCo, a co-warehousing company based in Raleigh. Additionally, Christopher is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, a Senior Advisor with the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Foundation and 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 co-author of the nationally acclaimed book Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (Jossey-Bass, 2008), and has started and scaled several social ventures including co-founding SMARTHINKING - an online tutoring company that served 1,000 universities and colleges before being acquired by Pearson Education. Christopher graduated with honors from Duke University and has an MPP from George Washington University and an MBA from Georgetown. He 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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