ABOUT NICK COONEY:

Nick Cooney is the Founder and Managing Partner at Lever VC, an early-stage venture capital fund with $150 AUM that invests in sustainable Food, FoodTech and AgTech companies. Lever VC’s areas of interest include plant-based foods, seed and animal genetics, functional ingredients and inputs, machinery, pet, cultivated and fermentation-derived animal proteins, disease detection, software, feed inputs, service providers, and more. Lever VC is one of the most active global investors in the Food and AgTech sectors, and its work has been covered by hundreds of media outlets including CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and others. Over the past decade Nick has led or co-led investments in nearly 100 deals and currently serves on the boards of a number of portfolio companies. You can follow Nick’s investment work on his LinkedIn page and follow Lever VC’s investments on Pitchbook and Crunchbase.

In addition to his work in the investment sector Nick has been actively involved in the non-profit space for over twenty years, with a focus on advancing sustainable food and reducing animal suffering. Most recently, he founded and serves as Board Chair at the Lever Foundation, a 501(c)3 public charity that works to advance sustainable food supply chains in Asia. He previously founded and ran the animal protection charity The Humane League, and was the Co-Founder and former Board Chair of the Good Food Institute, the world’s largest non-governmental organization working to grow the alternative protein space. You can follow Nick’s personal Twitter and Facebook accounts for occasional posts from this area of work, or visit his charity website NickCooney.org.

Nick Cooney has also written four books on effective philanthropy and effective charity work. His most recent, What We Don’t Do: Inaction in the Face of Suffering and the Drive to Do More, is published by Regalo Press and distributed by Simon & Schuster. His previous titles include How To Be Great At Doing Good: Why Results Are What Count and How Smart Charity Can Change the World and Change Of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change. You can read more about his books on his profile pages with GoodReads and Amazon, or listen to audio samples at Audible or Soundcloud.