Brian Trelstad

Brian is a Partner at Bridges in the U.S. Sustainable Growth Fund, a director of the Bridges Impact Foundation in the U.S., and a leader of our impact advisory activities.

Brian has nearly 20 years of impact investing experience, having written the business plan for Acumen in 2000 and served until 2012 as the Chief Investment Officer, where he oversaw $55m of investments into companies that were delivering health, water, energy, and agriculture services to economic base of the pyramid in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. As CIO, he was a member of Acumen’s management team and helped build out the network of country operations that worked closely with the entrepreneurs. Brian was also a co-founding board member of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) and was one of the principal architects of impact management software tool, Pulse, and the Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS). Prior to Acumen Fund, Brian worked as a health care consultant at McKinsey & Company, was a lead environmental staff person at the Corporation for National Service, and has been involved in starting and advising a range of non-profit and for-profit start-ups.

Brian has an undergraduate degree from Harvard University, an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and an MA in City & Regional Planning from the University of California at Berkeley. He also teaches social entrepreneurship to at Harvard Business School. Brian was the first impact investor to go through the Kauffman Fellows Program of the Center for Venture Education, and is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute.