Highly sought-after ecosystem builder and innovation leader in North America, Yuan Shi, joins The51 as Food and AgTech Fund Principal.
$50M Venture Fund focused on underrepresented Food and AgTech founders and innovation, recruits a new, highly sought-after Principal to the team.
Calgary, Alberta, April 29, 2022 — Today The51 announces that Yuan Shi, former Creative Destruction Lab-Vancouver Director and M&A expert, has joined The51 as Principal for the Food and AgTech Fund.
Shi comes to The51 after five years of scaling the Creative Destruction Lab-Vancouver, (including founding & launching the inaugural Climate Stream), leading her team to reach over $3 billion of equity value creation from portfolio companies. Prior, Shi gained Global Banking and Markets experience with HSBC after a three-year senior role at Tesla.
Highly sought-after in her field, Shi was attracted to The51 because they’re “creating a future-fit venture capital platform and igniting a financial movement whose time has come.”
When it comes to portfolio building, relationship management, due diligence, fundraising and sourcing strategy, Shi is in a league of her own. As Principal for the Fund, Shi is responsible for ecosystem building, deal sourcing and due diligence, as well as leading portfolio management and acting as a representative of the Food and AgTech Fund for multiple stakeholders such as investors, entrepreneurs, accelerators, aligned academic and other venture capital funds and corporates.
“Yuan’s exceptional track record will amplify our Food and AgTech Fund efforts and add to The51’s leadership position in this sector,” says Alison Sunstrum, Food and AgTech Fund Managing Partner. “Her experience in climate technology acceleration and commercialization, global markets, and North American M&A is an integral addition to our Fund’s mission of identifying, funding and championing ventures that are building the world we want to live in.”
“As we are all very aware, food sustainability and agricultural scalability are global economic and social imperatives.” Sunstrum goes on to explain. “With Yuan’s leadership, we will advance our search for mission-aligned investors and ventures with deep science and technology and global ambitions that can create immense value and impact.”
Before immigrating to Canada at age 17, Shi was raised in a small village in Northern China where she saw first-hand how environmental concerns can be sacrificed for economic ones in times of poverty. After studying environmental engineering at the University of Alberta and management at the UBC Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia, Shi’s impressive career in ecosystem building has combined her research, experience, and passion for environmental and social justice.
“The51’s Food and AgTech Fund is a highly differentiated investment opportunity to address the challenges in our food and agriculture ecosystem,” says Shi. “Furthermore, The51 is an influential market leader; they are using investment to drive social and environmental change while providing a return for their investors. I was particularly drawn to the vision of democratizing access to capital for underrepresented founders.”
The Food and AgTech Fund is The51’s first sector-specific fund. This Fund is focused on investing in women and diverse founders from across Canada and the US and is particularly interested in companies that are early innovative startups with coachable, mission-driven diverse leadership teams that demonstrate a relentless drive to succeed and have the potential to scale massively on a global scale.
The Food and AgTech Fund is currently raising capital from retail and institutional investors and is set to begin deploying capital into ventures following the first close in Q2 2022. You can learn more about the Food and AgTech Fund by visiting the51.com/food-agtech-fund.
You can read a feature about Yuan Shi and the Food and AgTech Fund in Betakit through the link below:
About The51
The51 is a Financial Feminist™ platform where current and aspiring investors come together to democratize access to capital for women and underrepresented founders. By amplifying the impact of capital and commercialisation, The51’s platform creates mutual wealth and social/environmental impact, shares knowledge and experiences, practices intersectional feminism through financial action. Our community of influential feminist investors, innovators, partners, and consumers are building the Financial Feminist™ economy.
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