About Us
What is Innovations for Impact?
Veteran investors Mike Dorsey and Charles Froland have decided to build upon their past careers and recent investment activity together to launch the Innovations for Impact Fund. The investment thesis of the fund is based upon three broad premises:
Impact Investing - Focused on social impact ventures that integrate financial and social objectives into new business models that offer sustainable approaches to achieving lasting social change.
DCI Community - The DCI extended community and dciX represents an unparalleled network of expertise and experience for mentoring social impact entrepreneurs.
Stanford Community - Stanford entrepreneurs and centers of research and innovation are creating a unique set of opportunities in social impact startups.
Who We Are
Mike Dorsey
General Partner
Mike has 17 years of experience in early stage impact investing, following 20 years of investment banking, primarily to technology and other emerging growth companies. Mike co-founded the Bay Area Equity Fund, now DBL Partners, and has managed venture capital funds investing primarily in sustainability and health care companies. Companies invested in include: Tesla, Solar City, Pandora, Revolution Foods, Five Prime Therapeutics, CareDx, Proterra, Amava and Shared-X. Mike currently serves on the Boards of Medicines 360, Bright Heart Health, and the Sand Hill Foundation, and on Advisory Boards at Stanford and Duke Universities and Benefunder.
He has also served as a guest lecturer at Stanford and an Adjunct Professor at Foothill College. Mike is married to Susan Ford Dorsey. They have 3 adult children and live in Woodside CA.
Mike received a BA from Stanford and an MBA from Yale School of Management.
Who We Are
Charles Froland
General Partner
Charles Froland has spent over 30 years in leadership positions in a wide variety of institutional investment management settings serving endowments, foundations and both public and private pension funds on a global basis. He was most recently CEO and CIO of Performance Equity Management, a private equity and venture capital investment firm which he founded and grew over a decade to $14 billion of capital under management, serving a world wide roster of premier clients. His prior roles included being a managing director of several major institutional funds including the Stanford University Endowment and the GM Pension. For the last several years, Charles has been an independent investor in real estate, buyouts and venture capital. He is an investor in Amava, Antora, Shared-X, and NE Capital.
Charles received his BA from the University of Washington, a Doctorate from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and an MBA from Stanford.
Why Us?
Major investors of the fund will be invited to participate in reviews of fund portfolio companies, ongoing deal flow and significant activities of Stanford's networks of innovation engaged with the fund.
