Ecotrust president leaving to run wide-reaching social impact group

Portland-based Ecotrust’s president is leaving the group’s top post.

However Astrid Scholz isn’t going far. Scholz announced Wednesday she’ll resign to run the Resilience Exchange, a “global initiative to accelerate the pace of social change” that she actually started.

The group consists of 10 social change organizations that seek to address issues throughout the world. Along with Ecotrust, the Exchange includes Blue Solutions, Context Partners, Development Alternatives, Forest Trends, Grameen Foundation, Island Institute, Mercy Corps, Oxfam America and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Thanks to backing from the latter group, the Exchange is working on ways to allow social change companies better share ideas with their peers. To that end, the group is releasing a technology platform this fall.

“The question motivating the Resilience Exchange is how do we achieve not the economics, but rather the communities of scale to address the urgent challenges facing us in the 21st Century,” Scholz said. It is time to roll up my sleeves and put the rich lessons from my time at Ecotrust to work to in this new capacity.”

Scholz took over the group’s top slot two years after serving as Ecotrust’s executive vice president. Under her watch, Ecotrust created Point 97, which provides clean ocean ideas to clients worldwide. The group is also creating a food production hub in Southeast Portland.

“Astrid is a powerful woman of the world who will make enormous contributions to the fields of conservation and development for a long time to come,” Beebe said. “We are all excited about the opportunities she has created, grateful to her for her leadership over the years at Ecotrust, and enthusiastic about the potential of the Resilience Exchange as a global platform for social change in which Ecotrust can both learn and share ideas emerging from our experience in the rain forests of home.”

This article was originally published online at Portland Business Journal