Shen Tong | |
|---|---|
| 沈彤 | |
 Shen Tong at 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Massacre in Washington, D.C. | |
| Born | 1968 (age 56–57) |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Education | Peking University (BA) Brandeis University (BS) Harvard University Boston University (PhD) |
| Occupation(s) | Investor, activist, author, philanthropist |
| Title |
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Shen Tong (Simplified Chinese: 沈彤;Hanyu Pinyin: Shěn Tóng; born 1968) is an American impact investor, activist, and writer. He founded business & Impact acceleratorsTheFutureCo in 2023, FoodFutureCo in 2015, and Food-X in 2014, recognized by Fast Company as one of "The World's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies of 2015 in Food".[1] He was a Chinesedissident who was exiled as one of the student leaders in thedemocracy movement at Tiananmen Square in 1989.[2] Shen was one of the People of the Year in Newsweek 1989,[citation needed] and he became a media, software, social entrepreneur, and impact investor in the late 1990s. He serves on multiple boards and advisory.
Shen Tong was born in 1968, in Beijing. He studiedbiology atPeking University (Beida 北大), from 1986 to 1989. Having witnessed the brutal crackdown of protestors in the avenue leading toTiananmen Square, he said that it accidentally made him one of the key student leaders during the1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.[3]
Upon fleeing China for the United States, Shen transferred toBrandeis University inWaltham, Massachusetts on aWien International Scholarship, where he finished aBachelor of Science degree inbotany andgenetics in 1991.[4] After graduating from Brandeis, Shen enrolled to the PhD programs inphilosophy atHarvard University, and insociology atBoston University, studying with mentors such asHarvey Mansfield,Peter Berger,Daniel Bell,Samuel P. Huntington, andMichael Sandel.
Shen Tong is a serial entrepreneur since 1990s and impact investor with more than a couple of hundred investments in health wellness & consciousness (HWC), regenerative agriculture, healthy food, media, education, Web3, community, and deep tech ventures. After moving to New York City from Massachusetts in 2000, he focused on business ventures with impact and purpose focusing on consciousness.[5][6] He has several dozen publicly known commercial andimpact investments.[7][8] Collaborating with renowned figures such asDan Barber,Dorothy Cann Hamilton,Michael Moss, andMichel Nischan, he founded Food-X in 2014, astartup accelerator that supported businesses with a positive impact on the food sector, running 11 cohorts until it ceased operations in 2020. In 2015, Shen also founded and served as the managing partner of FoodFutureCo, another business accelerator and impact investment firm which focuses on scale-up stage food, agriculture, social, and environmental entrepreneurship; followed by TheFutureCo (TFC) which expand into Web3 in 2021, and HWC in 2023.
Shen’s portfolio of good food and sustainable agriculture holdings includes over 100 investments in dozens of impact companies and not-for-profit organizations. His other social entrepreneurship portfolio includes companies such asWeFunder. His thesis of elevating individual and collective consciousness, cultivating tasty, sustainable, healthy, accessible, and affordable food and agriculture businesses is explained in hisTEDx Talk in addition to numerous speeches at Fancy Food Show, Esca Bona, Vitagora, Concordia, James Beard Foundation, Food Tank, Seed to Chips, Harvard Business School, BevNet, etc. The companies Shen has founded or co-founded have had numerous financial exits including VFinity, DCF, B&B Media, and GA Media. Two other financial exits came from his venture investments. He works with social entrepreneurs to build financially sustainable and impactful businesses.
In 2021, Shen became the advisor and mentor of the Vietnamese studio Sky Mavis forAxie Infinity, a Pokémon-inspirednon-fungible token-based online video game where anyone can earn tokens through skilled gameplay and contributions to the ecosystem.[9] The early unique aspect of Axie Infinity is the space that created called "Play to Earn". All art assets and Axie genetic data are also readily available to third parties, enabling community to create diverse experiences within theAxie Infinity universe. Shen's Web3FutureCo made other Web3 and Blockchain investments with activities in the Philippines and the US.[10]
Shen was the founder and president of the now defunctVFinity,[11] company which made software tools and web applications for multimedia and multilingual search, media production, archiving, and media distribution. The founding idea was based on two patents.[12][13] He is known for his promotion of "Context Media" partially due to his keynote speech at a super session ofNational Association of Broadcasters in Las Vegas, 2007.[14] He founded the TV production company B&B Media Production and invested in bookstores and publishing inBeijing. B&B Media Production had created and produced several highly circulated and acclaimed TV programs, including the national weekend primetime show Tell It Like It Is during its first season.[15][16]
Shen co-chaired the committee on dialogue with the government during the 1989 pro-democracy movement in China. He was on Changan Avenue when Chinese troops opened fire on the students. He had earlier obtained a Chinese passport to study biology atBrandeis University in the United States, so even though he was wanted by the Chinese government he was able to board a plane six days after the massacre on June 4, 1989. He was able to walk undisguised through police and security officials in the Beijing airport, possibly indicating broader support for the student democracy movement than the Chinese government contended at the time. Some of the biographical works about Shen Tong areTiananmen Exiles[17] andStandoff at Tiananmen.[18]
Shortly after his arrival in the United States, Shen held a press conference at the Walker Center for Ecumenical Exchange inNewton, Massachusetts, giving the first detailed eye-witness account by a student leader of the Tiananmen Square massacre and of the events that led up to it.
During his studies in Massachusetts, he founded the Democracy for China Fund[19] to support democratic movements in China and to promote ideas of political freedom and human rights. Shen Tong also helped establishedRadio Free Asia with bipartisan efforts led by then SenatorJoe Biden in the 1990s. American NGO activist Marshall Strauss and program coordinator Juanita Scheyett-Cheng helped Shen found and operate the Fund.Coretta Scott King,[20]John Kerry,Jeane Kirkpatrick,Nancy Pelosi,Kerry Kennedy, among other Western political and NGO figures and sinologists, were associated with Shen's organization in the 1990s. The Congressional Human Rights Delegation to China in 1991 headed by Nancy Pelosi and Republican congressmanJohn R. Miller was organized by the Democracy for China Fund with the help and funding from Hong Kong Democrats. His 1992 trip back to China led to his and his associates' arrest.[21] He was released and immediately exiled after two months of imprisonment under mounting international pressure, particularly from the US Congress, the Presidential Campaign ofBill Clinton, theVatican, and European governments.[22][23] In May 1993, days before the renewal of China'sMost Favored Nation trading status by the US government, Shen was scheduled to give a speech at the United Nations press club,[24] but was barred by UN Secretary-GeneralBoutros Boutros-Ghali due to strong protest from the Chinese government. He is known to be also associated with Chinese dissident activists and writersLiu Xiaobo,Wu'er Kaixi, Hu Ping,Ma Jian, Shi Tao, the Tibetan exile leaderDalai Lama, and the Taiwanese politicianMa Yingjiu. He is one of the narrators of the 2019 documentaryTiananmen: The People Versus the Party by PBS, BBC, and continental European TV networks.[25] The documentary is a 2-hour show special about 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, "uncover[ing] the true story of the seven-week period that changed China forever".
In 2011, Shen supported theOccupy Wall Street movement.[26] He is considered a main proponent of nonviolence,[27] social media movement,[28] nationally coordinated organization working with broad alliances,[29] and strategic messaging.[30] Believing in the power of a decentralized movement to combat the social and economic injustices that contribute to a dysfunctional democracy, he held planning meetings with protesters in his Broadway office.
When theCOVID-19 pandemic reached New York,The New York Times reported Shen's "just-in-time" relief efforts during the first weeks of the pandemic outbreak in New York through his private networks in March 2020.[31]
| External videos | |
|---|---|
 Booknotes interview with Shen Tong onAlmost a Revolution, December 16, 1990,C-SPAN |
Shen served on the board of two non-profit organizations:Food Tank since 2015[32] and Poets & Writers from 2008 to 2014. Shen also founded a higher education and culture-focused NGO in the mid-1990s: a center in Budapest for liberal scholars, journalists, writers, and educators studying transitional society with funding fromOpen Society Institute andCentral European University ofGeorge Soros, as well as a literature review magazine with Chinese dissident poets and writers with support fromAllen Ginsberg,Susan Sontag, andElie Wiesel.
Shen Tong is on Omnicom'ssparks&honey Influencer Advisory Board, in addition to serving on boards and advisory boards forThe Good Food Institute and being a member of NEXUS Global Summit. He also served as a venture partner of SOSV, a global multi-stage venture capital fund, after acting as general partner.
In films and television, Shen has been an actor, producer, and film festival sponsor and speaker (includingTribeca Film Festival).[33] Shen appeared in the 2022 documentaryThe Exiles, a documentary film which tracked down three exiled dissidents from the Tiananmen Square massacre. It won the Grand Jury Prize in Sundance 2022. Shen also appeared as one of the main subjects in PBS DocumentaryTiananmen: The People Versus the Party[34] in 2019. He also starred inOut of Exile[35] with co-starSharif Atkins in 2000.[36]
He worked withArte,ABC News andJean-François Bizot'sActuel magazine[37] to produceClandestins en Chine, including interviews withJane Birkin, which premiered in a Paris theater and on Arte in 1992.[38] He co-starred with actress Hu Zongwen in a made-for-TV two parts movie,[39] which received the 6th Fei Tian National Award in 1986.[citation needed]
Shen’s work has been profiled by major media around the world in several languages byThe New York Times,The Wall Street Journal,The Washington Post, ABC, CNN, BBC, CBS, NHK, TVB,The Guardian,Le Monde, Fortune, among others.
As a writer, Shen co-authored the bookAlmost a Revolution, published in 1990, a memoir of his life growing up in China and his experiences at the Tiananmen Square democracy movement. He carried on a diverse writing career with political commentary, scholarly essays, film critics, literary prose, and movie scripts in English and in Chinese,[40] including publications in China under the pseudonym Rong Di.[41][42]
He holds an honorary Ph.D. in 1991 fromSt. Ambrose University.[43]
He lives in New York City along with his three children.[44] His father and sisterShen Qing both went toPeking University, and his mother is a medical doctor.
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