Schuyler Dalton
Schuyler Dalton
WWF
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Schuyler focuses on regenerative agriculture for the WWF Impact team. Schuyler collaborates with internal and external stakeholders to refine WWF Impact’s investment thesis and generate dealflow, ensuring the strategy grounded in science, aligned with the priorities of producers, and promotes WWF’s organizational goals.
Prior to WWF, Schuyler was the Director of Farmer Network and Entrepreneurship at AgLaunch, an agtech accelerator in Memphis, TN. She has worked on farms across the United States and the world. Schuyler has a B.S. in Agricultural Sciences with a concentration in sustainable agriculture from Cornell University and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
Briefly describe your work with agtech and explain what motivates you to invest your time in this work.
At WWF I manage an impact investing strategy for regenerative agriculture. The impact investing team works cross-functionally with the broader WWF organization, leveraging subject matter experts and regional footprints to develop tailored, targeted, and context-appropriate investment theses. We invest in early-stage agtech innovations (pre-seed through Series A) as a means to catalyze high-impact agtech sectors.
I work in agriculture innovation because I believe in the importance of farms and farmers – as land stewards, as drivers of rural economic development, and as key to the production of food and fiber. I think farms are beautiful, complex, and challenging, and I want to play a role in making farms more profitable and sustainable.
Briefly explain any commitments to sustainability that you or your organization bring to your work on agtech innovation. Be as specific as possible regarding what kinds of social and environmental impacts you aim to produce, and the relevant strategies you are pursuing.
Goals:
(1) Achieve zero land conversion of native habitat due to agricultural expansion in priority landscapes. (2) Ensure we produce enough food to nourish everyone in the world using regenerative, resilient, sustainble agroecosystems. (3) Reduce the environmental footprint of food systems, with a priority on animal protein and feed commodities. (4) Curtain global consumption of natural resources by ending loss, waste, and inefficiencies in the food system. (5) Ensure local people and Indigenous communities are supported and empowered to determine their own conservation future.
Initiatives:
Freshwater and Food – (a) Sustainable Protein Systems, (b) Food Loss and Waste, (c) Food Transformation.
Markets – (a) Next California, (b) Manure Challenge, (c) Farmers’ Post
Wildlife – (a) Northern Great Plains, (b) Sustainable Ranching Initiative
Briefly describe the way(s) in which you assess/measure social and environmental impact in your work on agtech innovation.
WWF evaluates all potential deals using an Environmental and Social Safeguards Framework. This highlights potential impact opportunities and risks in the due diligence process. Drawing from the results of an ESSF screen, we set individual impact targets for every portfolio company, rooted in the target sector, product, and business model of the startup. Overall, we want to see companies driving positive impact for social outcomes, economic outcomes, and environmental outcomes.