Vice President, Catalytic Capital

About Food System Innovations

Food System Innovations (FSI) is a philanthropy that builds, funds, and invests in market-based solutions to accelerate the transition to sustainable proteins. By advancing innovation across plant-based, fermentation-derived, cell-cultivated, and balanced protein technologies, FSI works to improve performance, reduce costs, strengthen markets, and accelerate the adoption of more sustainable foods. FSI pursues this work in furtherance of its broader charitable and educational mission to develop and advance innovative solutions that benefit people, animals, and the food system.

Position Summary

The sustainable protein sector is undergoing a significant capital reset. Valuations have fallen, investor participation has contracted, and promising companies and technologies face financing constraints even as the underlying science and commercial opportunities continue to advance. FSI believes this creates an unusual opportunity for patient, mission-driven capital.

FSI is seeking an experienced investor to build and lead its catalytic investment function. The Vice President, Catalytic Capital will develop FSI’s investment strategy and pipeline; source, evaluate, structure, and execute investments; and manage FSI’s portfolio following close. The VP will bring deep principal-investing experience and judgment to identify opportunities where FSI’s capital can have an outsized catalytic effect, particularly where conventional capital is not well positioned to meet the financing need.

Unlike a traditional investment mandate, FSI can invest across a wide range of risk profiles, time horizons, and capital structures, including equity, debt, guarantees, recoverable grants, and other catalytic structures. The initial strategy will emphasize balanced proteins, advanced fermentation, and cultivated meat, with a broader mandate to identify and address capital constraints limiting the sustainable protein transition.

For an experienced investor, this is an opportunity to build an investment function within a philanthropic organization, combining rigorous investment discipline with the flexibility to pursue catalytic and mission-driven outcomes. The VP will draw on FSI’s capabilities across science, technology, markets, philanthropy, and finance to develop strong investment theses, challenge assumptions, and identify opportunities that conventional capital may overlook.

Key Responsibilities

Investment Strategy, Sourcing & Pipeline Development
- Refine FSI's investment theses across priority areas and translate them into a robust pipeline of companies, technologies, infrastructure projects, and other investment opportunities.
- Proactively source and cultivate high-quality investment opportunities through FSI's network and the VP's own relationships across the sustainable protein and investment ecosystems.
- Identify financing gaps where patient, flexible, or catalytic capital from FSI could unlock progress that conventional sources of capital are unlikely to finance.
- Develop portfolio-level perspectives on how FSI should allocate capital across technologies, stages, risk profiles, and financing structures.

Investment Diligence & Underwriting
- Lead comprehensive diligence and underwriting of potential FSI investments, including assessment of management teams, technologies, markets, business models, commercialization pathways, unit economics, capitalization, valuation, financing needs, and key risks.
- Develop and oversee financial models and scenario analyses, assessing expected financial performance, catalytic impact, additionality, and mission alignment.
- Work with FSI's scientific and technical experts to assess technology readiness, scale-up challenges, techno-economics, manufacturing feasibility, and pathways to cost competitiveness.
- Translate diligence into clear investment recommendations and rigorous investment memoranda for FSI leadership.

Investment Execution & Portfolio Management