About
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Alex Forrester is Co-Founder and Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer of Rising Tide Capital (www.RisingTideCapital.org), a Jersey City-based non-profit organization committed to the economic empowerment of low-income families and communities through entrepreneurship. Alex graduated from Harvard University in 2004 with an accelerated Bachelor of Arts in Postmodern Philosophy and Theology. Driven by an interest in social justice, entrepreneurship, and micro-finance, Alex co-founded Rising Tide Capital in May 2004 with his fellow Harvard classmate, Alfa Demmellash.
Rising Tide Capital has since achieved national recognition for its approach to economic empowerment through entrepreneurship, including selection as a CNN Hero and recognition by Forbes, the White House, and the World Economic Forum, among others. The organization now works with over 1,000 entrepreneurs per year across six cities in New Jersey and has recently launched a national replication initiative to license its model for use by other organizations in cities across the US.
As Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer, Alex is driven by an interest in the characteristics of high-performing social enterprises. He is passionate about organizational infrastructure, systems architecture, and outcome measurement, as well as the role that values and culture play in creating long-term systems change. Behind these interests, however, is a core passion for the role that ideas play in changing history, for the intersection of faith and social justice, and for the use of strategic philanthropy and social entrepreneurship to address systemic oppression. As much as addressing the inherited problems of the past, Alex sees these issues as being as urgent as ever in responding to the challenges of social equity, environmental sustainability, and inclusive economic opportunity in the new, automated economy of the 21st century.
