Christopher Gergen has over 25 years experience building, scaling, and supporting systems-based solutions in communities globally. He is a founder many times over, creating and leading organizations that address the whole of economic inequality. His recent ventures include:
- Forward Impact, an organization that works with policy makers, philanthropists, investors, and innovators seeking to deploy capital into high-impact scalable solutions to address systemic economic inequities. To date, Forward Impact has helped direct over $30M in public/private capital to place-based systems change efforts.
- Forward Cities a national nonprofit – sparked from his time as a Henry Crown Fellow – that has worked with over 30 cities to strengthen their equitable entrepreneurial ecosystems. He was named a Global Inclusive Growth Spark Grant Awardee by the Aspen Institute and Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth for the organization’s innovative approach.
- Raleigh Founded, a co-working company that supports over 400 companies across 150,000+ sq feet of space in the Triangle with affiliates in other markets through its subsidiary company Founded Communities.Recognizing the positive impact that thriving food systems can have on our local economies, the health of families, and our warming climate, this year, Christopher joined the team at 4P Foods as its Chief Growth Officer to help build out a scalable, regional food system. We sat down with him at the 2024 Resnick Aspen Action Forum to talk about what fuels his leadership and what it really takes to build systemic, sustainable solutions.
Christopher is a Henry Crown Fellow and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network at the Aspen Institute.
Answers have been edited for clarity and length.
You’ve spent your life building systems-change solutions to economic inequity. Some may say beginning to work on food systems is a bit of a shift. What inspired you to join the team at 4P Foods?
The inspiration stems from addressing systemic economic inequities and fostering generational wealth through community-driven approaches.
Initially, with the launch of Forward Cities, my Henry Crown project, the focus was on removing barriers to entrepreneurship and small business growth for underserved communities, emphasizing talent development, policy alignment, and measurable impact. And then ultimately amplifying the outcomes, so that you can get more people excited about it and start a flywheel for change.
As I stepped away from being CEO of Forward Cities, which is now being successfully led by a terrific woman named Fay Horowitt, I really started to turn my attention to this question of how do we do a better job deploying capital to address systemic change? Because if you look at the way capital is normally deployed, it tends to be deployed very programmatically and tends not to take a systemic approach.
In fact, one of my favorite sayings that I heard at one point at the [Resnick Aspen] Action Forum is that often what you’ll find in communities is that “communities are program rich but systems poor.” And the question is how do we actually help to enrich the systems that are helping to uplift and create more opportunity for more people around economic mobility and generational wealth creation? And through that work, I got introduced to 4P foods, which is doing systems change work at the food level. The goal expanded to deploying capital for systemic change in food systems. I was introduced to Tom McDougall, the founder and CEO of 4P Foods through a mutual friend. Tom is incidentally a Food Leaders Fellow, so we share an Aspen connection, which is great. And the more I came to realize what 4P Foods was doing, the more I came to appreciate the elegance of the model.
In short, 4P Foods is a food hub. By acting as a food hub, 4P Foods bridges economic opportunities for farmers and access to healthy, local food for food-insecure communities, addressing both economic and nutritional inequities. The “food is medicine” approach, an initiative by the Food and Society program at the Aspen Institute exemplifies this, linking local food sourcing to improved health outcomes and reduced healthcare costs, creating a sustainable, closed-loop system that benefits rural economies, farmers, and vulnerable populations alike.
Could you define systems change and systems thinking for us?
Systems change involves addressing complex challenges—like economic inequities or healthcare disparities—through multifaceted strategies rather than single programmatic solutions. It requires working closely with communities to identify their assets, agree on desired outcomes, and develop a comprehensive approach to bridge the gap between the current state and the goals.
Systems thinking underpins this process, emphasizing the interconnections between various elements. For example, in the food system, increasing economic opportunity for farmers while also addressing food insecurity in communities involves providing capital, technical assistance, and infrastructure to farmers, while simultaneously generating demand and working closely with the healthcare system to enroll participants into the program. We can then effectively aggregate and distribute that food and have the infrastructure of what’s called the missing middle, which is where 4P foods plays and measure outcomes.
These interconnected efforts ensure sustainability and scalability, creating a cohesive system that policymakers can support based on demonstrated benefits. Without addressing all these levers holistically, the system would fail to achieve meaningful, lasting change.
Lets go deeper on what you’re talking about when you say working with and alongside community. How has that approach influenced some of the decisions that you’ve made?
I’ve had a chance to work with a lot of students over the years, and one thing that often comes up is that they come in with a solution in search of a problem. One of the key things that it’s important to instill to any emerging changemaker is that if you are not going in within the community to really understand their needs and their lived experiences, then you will often end up in a direction that the community’s not bought into and will ultimately not lead to the outcomes that you’re striving for.
Often the most effective changemaking leaders are those that are doing work within communities they know incredibly well and they’re coming already from those lived experiences. It’s one of the things I really appreciate about a number of the Aspen Institute Fellows I’ve talked to – they come from a lived experience and have been able to channel that lived experience into some pretty remarkable changemaking work. The wisdom found within those communities needs to be harnessed and paid attention to.
Communities, while sometimes perceived as lacking resources, often possess significant social capital and relationships that can drive change. By focusing on these assets and collaboratively addressing barriers, leaders can help build the community’s capacity for economic and generational growth. This approach also attracts external resources, as well-organized communities with clear visions and strategies become compelling destinations for investment.
Sustainable impact stems from balancing self-awareness, authentic collaboration, and leveraging community strengths, ensuring outcomes are both meaningful and enduring.
What’s been your biggest leadership learning from doing impact-driven work?
The biggest leadership lesson in impact-driven work is balancing meaningful impact with personal well-being to sustain resilience over time.
One of the things I love to talk to my students about, and one of the things that I have really come to appreciate in my own journey, is this “XY axis” of how do I have meaningful impact in the world and how do I create a meaningful life for myself and for my family? And what can sustain a changemaker over time is actually thinking about both of those dimensions.Pursuing systemic change often involves resistance from the status quo, requiring you to maintain both personal and community resilience. By integrating action, reflection, and self-care, leaders can achieve a harmonious and enduring approach to change-making.
You were awarded a Global Inclusive Growth Spark Grant to fuel Forward Cities’ innovative approach to strengthening systems of support for currently under-connected, underestimated entrepreneurs and small business owners. Can you tell us a bit about the founding story of the organization and what the impact of the Spark Grant has been on the work?
As a Henry Crown Fellow, the idea for Forward Cities emerged from a commitment to inclusive economic development, addressing disparities in entrepreneurial growth and small business success among Black, Brown, and rural communities. The initiative focused on identifying and overcoming barriers to entrepreneurship in under-resourced areas, launching in four cities: Durham, New Orleans, Cleveland, and Detroit.
In that process, we actually were fortunate enough to be recognized for our work by the Spark Grant. And the Spark Grant has enabled me and now my successor, Fay Horowitt, to connect with an amazing group of fellow changemakers who are doing incredible work in their own right around economic inclusion, generational wealth creation, and are doing a lot of this work in this kind of place-based systems change way. So I learned a tremendous amount from our fellow grantees.
The second is that we’ve been able to deepen our partnership and relationship with the Aspen Institute and have the opportunity to be convened by Aspen. We’ve plugged into a number of amazing resources across the Institute that are increasingly committed to the work of economic mobility, generational wealth creation, and inclusive growth. And so even now being here in Colorado at the Action Forum, it’s been great to be able to be with my fellow Spark grantees, but also with this amazing community of fellow changemakers who are committed to doing this work. We give each other a lot of support when things are down, we give a lot of encouragement when things are up, and it’s just one of those communities that I feel like I will be part of from here on out and look forward to continuing to contribute to.
The Henry Crown Fellowship seeks to develop the next generation of community-spirited leaders, providing them with the tools to meet the challenges of the 21st century. It was established in 1997 to honor the life and career of Chicago industrialist Henry Crown (1896-1990) and was initially funded by the Henry and Gladys Crown Charitable Trust Fund. The program is the flagship Fellowship of the Aspen Institute and the founding Fellowship of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. For more information, visit http://www.aspeninstitute.org/crown.
About the Aspen Global Leadership Network: The Aspen Global Leadership Network (AGLN) is a dynamic, worldwide community of nearly 4,000 entrepreneurial leaders from over 60 countries. Spanning business, government, and the nonprofit sector, these leaders share a commitment to enlightened leadership and the drive to tackle the most pressing challenges of our times. Through transformative fellowships and gatherings like the Resnick Aspen Action Forum, AGLN Fellows have the unique opportunity to connect, collaborate, and challenge each other to grow and make a meaningful impact.
