David Bennell
Managing Director
TIFS
David Bennell is a leading Sustainability professional with over 25 years of experience with corporations and investors, as well as with many of the world’s top NGOs and philanthropic foundations. He’s a managing director the $28 billion Transformational Investing in Food Systems Initiative and an investor in start-ups focused on digital climate solutions and ag bioscience.
He worked in the corporate sector for three prominent corporations leading R&D, leadership development and sustainability programs and held a 5-year appointment at MIT as adjunct faculty in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. David helped co-found the for-profit social enterprise company CottonConnect (a 2012 finalist for World’s Most Ethical Company), helped launch a multimillion-dollar USA impact investing fund focused on rural economic development, and led the global apparel industry standards non-profit Textile Exchange.
David wrote and presents one of the world’s most watched sustainability education courses viewable on Linked In Learning (titled Sustainability Strategies) named the #1 global course for impact investors. His new course "The Importance of Biodiversity to Business" will be released in mid-2024.
He serves on the board at Wolfe’s Neck Center, home of the global agriculture technology platform OpenTEAM, and is a board director at American Forests, the USA’s oldest forest conservation organization founded in 1876.