NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Tao Zhang is founder and managing director of Dao Ventures, a cross-border impact investment, advisory and accelerator group with co-headquartered offices in both China and the US that primarily consist of ACBridge Global Advisors, China Impact Fund (CIF), and New Ventures Global. CIF is considered China’s first impact fund that specializes in supporting environmental SMEs, including companies with an environmental value proposition for the country’s Base of Pyramid (BoP) population. Under Tao’s leadership, Dao Ventures has worked with over 1,000 environmental and social SMEs in and outside China, along with its philanthropic affiliate Green Startups Accelerator (formerly New Ventures China). Tao is also a co-founder of Dao Foods International, Inc., a cross-border impact venture established to introduce plant-based and clean meat in China, which has been selected as one of 15 startups disrupting the global meat industry by The Grocer. Prior to this, he was the Global COO of New Ventures, the center of environmental entrepreneurship at the World Resources Institute. In this role, he successfully led New Ventures in Washington, D.C. and its local centers (Brazil, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia, and Mexico) to double investments into New Ventures companies to nearly $400 million within two years. Before he entered the impact investing space, Tao had accumulated extensive investment and operational experience at several telecom and high-tech companies, as well as journalism and policy analysis experience at China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency.

Tao received a B.A. from Beijing Foreign Studies University, an MBA from Wake Forest University, and an MPA from Harvard University as a Mason Fellow. Tao was a columnist for the Wall Street Journal Chinese, with a focus on how to leverage investing to cure environmental and social ills. Tao is a China Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.