Michael Reilly

Founder Chief Executive Officer @Foodshed Capital

Charlottesville, VA, US

The mission of Foodshed Capital is to build a more equitable and regenerative local food economy through affordable, flexible financing and zero-cost business support.Foodshed Capital was certified as a Community Development Financial Institution in 2020. At Foodshed Capital, we\'re changing the face of farm finance and making food systems more equitable and more regenerative from the ground up. We prioritize those who have been underserved by historically extractive and discriminatory lending practices, specifically Black and Indigenous people of color, immigrants, women and non-binary people, and those with low-income or limited assets.Access to capital is consistently one of the biggest barriers to success for small farmers, but we believe most of the financial \"solutions\" presented are simply reinventing the wheel—new iterations of extractive models that force farmers to offer a return of and return on investment. The stress of those returns, coupled with the unpredictability of a changing climate, means farmers are forced to carry an inequitable portion of risk. To support the long-term viability of food businesses rather than short-term profits from loans, lenders must truly move outside the box of traditional financial models. And that\'s exactly what we\'re doing.

Yale University

BA, History

Columbia University

MS, Media & Journalism