Tao Zhang

Tao Zhang is founder and managing director of Dao Ventures, a crossborder 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 specialises in supporting environmental small and medium-sized enterprises (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). Prior to this, he was the Global COO of New Ventures, the centre of environmental entrepreneurship at the World Resources Institute. In this role, he successfully led New Ventures in Washington, D.C. and its local centres (Brazil, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia and Mexico) to double investments into New Ventures companies to nearly $400 million within two years. Before he entered impact investing, 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 BA 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.