We Believe in the Future of Rural America

A Blueprint for Rural Renaissance

About RuralWorks

Introducing RuralWorks: A Source of Integrated Capital for Rural Businesses
The promised renaissance of rural America has been a long time coming, and the time is now. With nearly 60 million Americans living in rural communities and facing unique challenges, tremendous opportunities exist to grow rural economies while simultaneously benefiting the environment through investment and collaboration.

Rural America, as stewards of our land and food, is closely tied to our environment. These communities are fertile grounds for businesses that offer innovative solutions to climate change and other environmental challenges. Rural areas have a crucial role to play in addressing global environmental issues.

RuralWorks believes there is a path forward. We envision a future where Rural America thrives while maintaining a sustainable environment. We believe that by scaling rural businesses that are committed to protecting the environment, we can create a positive impact on local communities and the planet as a whole. The time to invest in these opportunities and build a more sustainable future is now.

We Have a Strategy to Help!
RuralWorks provides integrated capital to growth-oriented businesses operating in rural communities that are doing their part to protect our planet and generate community wealth and economic resilience. By creatively engaging a range of local and national resources and partners, RuralWorks aligns its investments with sustainable practices while creating value and outcomes rooted in local people, places and businesses.

When investing in a local business, RuralWorks is making an investment in the local community that surrounds it, bringing fresh sources of relevant experience, access to extensive networks of resources, and, of course, access to much needed equity capital. Engaging and supporting local businesses and the communities that surround them is our blueprint for a rural renaissance, a blueprint designed to grow businesses, build economic mobility and generate community wealth and resilience.

See our Guiding Principals

Investors

Appropriate Risk-Adjusted Returns

RuralWorks provides investors access to institutional-quality, growth-oriented climate smart investment opportunities in rural America, helping them diversify their portfolio, earn an appropriate risk-adjusted return and achieve their financial goals.

Achieve Impact Goals

RuralWorks helps investors achieve their mission-related objectives by investing in forward-leaning companies that (a) recognize that the creation of quality jobs and employee prosperity helps build better, more valuable businesses and stronger, more resilient local communities and (b) understand the importance of protecting the environment.

Institutional Investment, Operating and Impact Expertise

Our investors benefit from the private equity and community development and operating experience and skillsets of our team and our ability to appropriately balance and generate market-rate financial objectives and mission-critical social outcomes for both our portfolio companies and our institutional investors.

Rural businesses

Source of Integrated Capital

RuralWorks provides growth-oriented businesses operating in rural communities with access to equity capital for a range of needs including organic growth, the purchase of a business or material asset, the financing of an ownership transition, the restructuring of the balance sheet or any number of special situations that call for patient capital.

Vast Network of Resources

RuralWorks helps businesses grow and become better corporate citizens through sharing our own expertise and by leveraging local, national and international sources of expertise, networks and other resources tailored to the unique needs of each business.

Mission-aligned Partner

Like you, RuralWorks believes that offering your employees quality jobs that pay a living wage and an engaging and safe workplace makes for a better, more valuable business. Like you, RuralWorks is deeply committed to the communities that surround you. Also like you, RuralWorks believes that protecting the environment is necessary for the long term success of local and global communities That’s why we work hard to help you, your employees and your community build wealth and economic resilience over the long term while contributing to a healthier planet.

Carpenter working on computer

Communities

Collaboration

When RuralWorks invests in a rural business, we’re also investing in the local community. Accordingly, RuralWorks engages local partners to help us understand the unique attributes and needs of the community and help us design appropriate strategies, make critical connections, and deliver impactful resources that positively impact not only our investment but the surrounding community now and in the future.

Community Development Momentum

RuralWorks will support businesses having a commitment to good corporate citizenship and their local community development ecosystems, adding our resources – knowledge, networks and capital – to the mix of community assets needed for businesses to thrive.

Long-Term Impact

Directly and through our networks, we work to create connectivity between our rural businesses and their local communities in a manner that provides ongoing benefits to both local communities and the planet which helps to ensure that these businesses have a sustainable path to lasting growth within communities.

Climate

Support for sustainable solutions that address climate change and other environmental challenges has been growing since the Paris Accord became effective in 2016, with heightened attention from public and private interests over the past few years. We work to be part of the solution by scaling businesses that promote environmentally beneficial practices and/or solutions to climate change or other environmental challenges. We strive to contribute to a healthier planet.

OUR TEAM

Skip Wyer

Skip is RuralWorks’ Chief Investment Officer and member of the Investment Committee. Skip brings over 35 years of finance and investment management experience, creating and deploying a broad range of debt and equity investment structures across numerous industries, markets and cycles. Skip founded and ran Linea Capital where he supported businesses in the sustainable agriculture, clean tech and real estate sectors. Skip was earlier a portfolio manager at Värde Partners where he managed a $600 million private equity portfolio and before that a member of Cargill’s venture capital division where he focused in food and agriculture related technology investments. Skip lives and works in rural Vermont.

Robert Zulkoski

Bob is a founding partner, Board Member and Investment Committee Member of RuralWorks. He brings over 40 years of global finance and fiduciary investment management experience. As a leader, Bob has held executive positions at large firms such as Kidder, Peabody & Co, GE Capital, Colony Capital, and Oaktree Capital. As an innovator, Bob has been a founder of investment firms such as Conduit Capital, Conduit Connect, and Pangaea Capital Management Pte. Ltd. And as an entrepreneur/mentor, Bob has played a lead role in a number of other successful business start-ups as a personal investor, advisor and/or board member.

Louisa Schibli

Louisa is RuralWorks’ Director of Impact and Engagement and a member of the Investment Committee. She is the co-founder of Milk Money Vermont, an online equity crowdfunding platform connecting everyday Vermonters to Vermont businesses looking to raise capital. She was a 2019/2020 fellow at the Just Economy Institute, focusing on the support of financial activists and use of different forms of financial, social and natural capital to generate positive social and environmental change. She’s also a founding member of the Vermont Women’s Investor Network (VTWIN) that supports female investors, founders and local innovation ecosystems. She was a 2021 Vermont Leadership Institute graduate While living in Switzerland for 12 years and earlier in her career, she worked in physical commodities trading at Glencore. Louisa lives and works in rural Vermont.

Andria

Andria Ronne

Andria Ronne is a Senior Associate at RuralWorks, bringing a diverse background in engineering, product management, startup consulting, and entrepreneurship. Andria holds a BS from Cornell University and an MBA in Sustainability from the University of Vermont. She has been actively involved in the Wharton Impact Investing Program and the Capital Innovation Lab, showcasing her commitment to driving sustainable and impactful investments. Andria’s multifaceted experience and academic background position her as a valuable asset in fostering innovation and growth within the organization.

Investment committee & Board members

Jennifer Anderson

Jennifer Anderson

Investment Committee

Jennifer Anderson is a senior executive with over 30 years of professional experience in financial services. Ms. Anderson has worked in both the private and public sectors, serving as chief financial officer, enterprise leadership, treasurer, and investment professional. Ms. Anderson’s career path has focused on evolving, complex environments, both supporting the building and restructuring of organizations.

Ms. Anderson is currently serving as interim chief financial officer for CommonBond Communities, a regional affordable housing organization, with a vision that every person has a dignified, affordable home that supports independent and advancement within a flourishing community. Ms. Anderson is also a founding board director and investment committee member for RuralWorks Partners, LLC, a Rural Business Investment Company.

Previously, Ms. Anderson was chief financial officer and president of Community Reinvestment Fund (CRF), a national Community Development Financial Institution, with responsibility for its operations and financial health. Ms. Anderson led the five-year strategic growth plan and its successful execution increasing the organization’s impact across the communities it serves.

Prior to CRF, Ms. Anderson was vice president and treasurer at AgriBank, NCB, where she led the redesign of the liquidity strategy for the organization. Prior to AgriBank, Ms. Anderson spent several years with the predecessor organizations to Ally Financial. While there, Ms. Anderson led the growth strategy for new trading products and in 2005 she accepted an international assignment to lead the capital markets activity for three continental European countries. As a result of the global financial crisis, in 2007, Ms. Anderson was asked to lead the restructure of the European companies and to create an exit strategy on behalf of the U.S. parent company.

In the early part of her career, Ms. Anderson spent seven years at Bank of America, San Francisco, as a fixed income trader and financial analyst.

Ms. Anderson earned a B.S. in economics with a math emphasis and minors in math and international relations from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Alexis Dishman

Board Member

As CRF’s Small Business Chief Lending Officer, Dishman is responsible for managing all aspects of the organization’s small business lending function including expanding the technical assistance program for customers, management of the lending team, and managing organizational risk.

Dishman holds 20 years of corporate and nonprofit experience, including more than 14 years dedicated to small business lending. Prior to CRF, she served in leadership roles with Michigan Women, IFF, Bank of America, and Comerica Bank.

Dishman is a graduate of Michigan State University where she earned a degree in Finance, she also earned a master’s degree in business administration with a concentration in Finance from Wayne State University.

Melissa Obegi

Board Member

As President of Conduit Capital, Melissa is responsible for launch and execution of fund products and oversight of corporate and fund operations. With over thirty years of experience, Melissa brings a depth of understanding of the global investment management business. As Asia General Counsel at Bain Capital, Melissa oversaw fund and joint venture formation, transactional, portfolio and operational legal and risk management matters for the Asia Pacific region. Her work was recognized by the Financial Times Innovative Lawyers award for Strategic and Risk Advice, Corporate Law Departments, Asia Pacific, 2020.

At Oaktree Capital, she served as Associate General Counsel in Los Angeles, and as Asia Regional Counsel and Managing Director, Asia Principal Opportunities in Hong Kong. She also held various roles at the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a US government agency supporting emerging markets private sector investment. As Chair of the Advisory Committee of the Salzburg Global Seminar on Corporate Governance, Melissa has led programs that inspire directors to address the changing expectations for responsible corporate leadership.

Paul Tremewan

Paul Tremewan

Board Member

As CRF’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Paul Tremewan is responsible for the organization’s financial assets and directs and manages the decisions and actions that affect and maximize the financial value of CRF and its subsidiaries.

Tremewan has been with CRF since 2016 and manages the organization’s finance and accounting team, including financial reporting, capital, and financial compliance reporting for CRF and its subsidiaries. Tremewan is also responsible for overseeing financial and capital planning, forecasting, and modeling of new products and programs.

Advisory council members

Ben Fenton

Advisory Council
Ben Fenton is an Investment Partner at Galway Sustainable Capital.  Galway is a specialty finance company with a mandate to support and finance businesses, projects and assets that are accelerating the transition to a sustainable economy.  Key investment areas are renewable energy, energy efficiency and green buildings, goods & services, sustainable agriculture/land/water, carbon markets and transportation. We look for real, impactful environmental and social solutions. Ben is an avid (and amateur) landscape photographer, runner, cyclist and former triathlete.   Ben resides in Boulder, CO with his wife, their 2 sons and two dogs. Ben received a B.A. in economics from Duke University, where he was also a member of the Men’s Lacrosse team. Ben is originally from Philadelphia, PA.
Anne Gates

Anne Gates​

Advisory Council

In 2017, Anne Gates retired as president of MGA Entertainment, the largest privately held global toy company in the United States.  Prior to that she spent more than twenty years at the Walt Disney Company, in various roles including Executive Vice President and CFO of the Consumer Products Division, based in Los Angeles, and Managing Director for Consumer Products Europe and Emerging Markets, based in London. In 2010, Anne Gates was named to the Power List of Britain’s 100 most influential Black people. Earlier in her career she worked in both the US and Europe for PepsiCo, Bear Stearns (Investment Banking), AT&T (Marketing) and Bell Labs (Research).

Currently, Anne Gates is an active board director, spanning diverse industries. She is Chair of the Board at Tapestry, Inc. She is currently Chair of the Audit Committee at Kroger. As an audit committee financial expert, she also serves on the Audit and Risk Committee at Raymond James Financial and is Chair of the Governance Committee. Additionally, she serves on the Governance Committee at Kroger and is chair of the Governance and Nominations Committee at Tapestry, Inc. 

Anne Gates is personally committed to the not-for-profit sector, focusing on improving education, equity, inclusion, and effective nonprofit financial stewardship. She engages with multiple nonprofit boards aligned with these goals.

Anne Gates received her B.A. in Applied Mathematics from UC Berkeley and her M.S. Industrial Engineering and Operations Research and post-graduate work at Columbia University.  She serves on the University of California, Berkeley Foundation Board of Trustees and Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education Advisory Board, and the Board of the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University.

Patricia Reinhardt

Patricia Reinhardt​

Advisory Council

Patricia Reinhardt has almost 30 years of experience guiding financial turnarounds, as well as mergers/acquisitions, in both privately/family held and sponsor backed companies. She is known for bringing a calm voice to stressful situations and working with diverse stakeholders toward optimum outcomes.

Patricia brings in-depth advisory experience across a broad range of industries with a consistent focus on manufacturing:  consumer products, food & beverage and textiles and furniture. Additionally, she has advised professional service companies including staffing/executive search, government and educational institutions, and real estate finance and development.

Prior to joining Huron, Patricia spent almost 7 years as Managing Director at G2 Capital, LLC where she worked closely with a dedicated advisory team on 75 mandates focused on operational restructuring and M&A for healthy and distressed companies.

Patricia has been a Director for a number of industry partners. Most notably, she serves as a Director on the Board of ELM Electrical, Inc. a leading provider of electrical systems & services across the Mid-Atlantic. Patricia is also a special advisor to the Board of Directors at Champlain College, in Burlington Vermont.

Patricia has held Director seats at KLD Research & Analytics, a leading provider of risk management and corporate governance services, Package Machinery, a manufacturer of high-speed overwrapping machinery, and Circle Furniture, a New England family-owned retail business. As part of being a very active Director, Patricia was instrumental in all of their ultimate and successful acquisitions.

FAQs

WHAT IS RURALWORKS?

RuralWorks Partners is an impact investment firm that delivers much needed growth capital to rural businesses that are doing their part to protect our planet and generate community wealth and economic resilience. By investing in ready-to-scale rural businesses that create quality jobs and protect the environment, either by demonstrating a commitment to environmentally sustainable business practices or by providing solutions that address climate change or other environmental challenges, RuralWorks can deliver meaningful impact to both underserved rural communities and the environment.

WHO CREATED RURALWORKS?

RuralWorks was created by Community Reinvestment Fund, USA, a national non-profit Community Development Financial Institution with a mission to improve lives and strengthen communities through innovative financial solutions and Conduit Capital (USA), whose founding mission is to develop capital solutions focusing on some of the world’s pressing social and environmental challenges.

WHAT AREAS ARE SERVED?

RuralWorks targets businesses operating primarily in rural communities located in the Northeast and the Upper Midwest, though will consider investments anywhere in the USA. 

WHAT IS THE DEFINITION OF RURAL?

The USDA defines rural as an area outside a standard metropolitan statistical area or within a community with a population of 50,000 or less.

WHAT IS INTEGRATED CAPITAL?

The coordinated and collaborative use of financial, human and social capital in support of growing businesses committed to the creation of quality jobs and more prosperous rural communities.

WHO IS ELIGIBLE?

Eligible businesses should:

  • Growth-stage and transitioning businesses (including businesses contemplating or executing a company sale to management teams or employees (e.g., ESOPs)
  • Report $1,000,000 to $10,000,000+ of stable, recurring revenue
  • Cash flow positive (or highly visible)
  • Investment Size of $1,000,000 to $5,000,000
  • National in scope with regional focus of the Upper Midwest, Great Lake States, and Northeast
  • Commitment to employees, local community, and environmental sustainability

Which investment Sectors?

RuralWorks’ investments are generally focused on the agribusiness and food industry, including the following:

  • Sustainable and regenerative agriculture
  • Local and regional food systems
  • Waste upcycling / circular economy
  • Forest and fisheries
  • Other industries including rural power, electric distribution, water and waste disposal, communications

What is Climate-smart Agriculture?

Climate-Smart agriculture is an integrated approach to change current agri-food practices to ones that will transform the current system into one that is green and climate resilient. Typically, climate-smart businesses focus on sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes; adapting and creating resilience to climate change; and to the extent possible, reducing and/or removing greenhouse gas emissions.

Let's connect

Connect with us

Newsletter

Subscribe

Webinars

Watch