Our Team
Skip Wyer
Skip is RuralWorks’ Chief Investment Officer and member of the Investment Committee. Skip brings over 35 years of finance and investment management experience, creating and deploying a broad range of debt and equity investment structures across numerous industries, markets and cycles. Skip founded and ran Linea Capital where he supported businesses in the sustainable agriculture, clean tech and real estate sectors. Skip was earlier a portfolio manager at Värde Partners where he managed a $600 million private equity portfolio and before that a member of Cargill’s venture capital division where he focused in food and agriculture related technology investments. Skip lives and works in rural Vermont.
Louisa Schibli
Louisa is RuralWorks’ Director of Impact and Engagement and a member of the Investment Committee. She is the co-founder of Milk Money Vermont, an online equity crowdfunding platform connecting everyday Vermonters to Vermont businesses looking to raise capital. She was a 2019/2020 fellow at the Just Economy Institute, focusing on the support of financial activists and use of different forms of financial, social and natural capital to generate positive social and environmental change. She’s also a founding member of the Vermont Women’s Investor Network (VTWIN) that supports female investors, founders and local innovation ecosystems. She was a 2021 Vermont Leadership Institute graduate While living in Switzerland for 12 years and earlier in her career, she worked in physical commodities trading at Glencore. Louisa lives and works in rural Vermont.
Andria Ronne
Andria Ronne is a Senior Associate at RuralWorks, bringing a diverse background in engineering, product management, startup consulting, and entrepreneurship. Andria holds a BS from Cornell University and an MBA in Sustainability from the University of Vermont. She has been actively involved in the Wharton Impact Investing Program and the Capital Innovation Lab, showcasing her commitment to driving sustainable and impactful investments. Andria’s multifaceted experience and academic background position her as a valuable asset in fostering innovation and growth within the organization.
Ryan Teksten
Ryan is an adviser for RuralWorks Partners. As an economist and engineer, he brings a deep technical understanding to business model development and market strategy. As an angel and institutional investor, and now part of RuralWorks, his global perspective ensures that we always consider the complexities, nuance, and influence of cultural and regional diversity, but work to isolate and focus on the actionable. He is an expert in the use of emerging technologies to pioneer new business models within the financial, energy, and agricultural ecosystems.
Ryan holds a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from Tufts University and a Bachelor of Science in mathematical economics from the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Robert Zulkoski
Bob is a founding partner, Board Member and Investment Committee Member of RuralWorks. He brings over 40 years of global finance and fiduciary investment management experience. As a leader, Bob has held executive positions at large firms such as Kidder, Peabody & Co, GE Capital, Colony Capital, and Oaktree Capital. As an innovator, Bob has been a founder of investment firms such as Conduit Capital, Conduit Connect, and Pangaea Capital Management Pte. Ltd. And as an entrepreneur/mentor, Bob has played a lead role in a number of other successful business start-ups as a personal investor, advisor and/or board member.
Investment Committee & Board Members
Alexis Dishman
Investment Committee and Board Member
Melissa Obegi
Board Member
As President of Conduit Capital, Melissa is responsible for launch and execution of fund products and oversight of corporate and fund operations. With over thirty years of experience, Melissa brings a depth of understanding of the global investment management business. As Asia General Counsel at Bain Capital, Melissa oversaw fund and joint venture formation, transactional, portfolio and operational legal and risk management matters for the Asia Pacific region. Her work was recognized by the Financial Times Innovative Lawyers award for Strategic and Risk Advice, Corporate Law Departments, Asia Pacific, 2020.
At Oaktree Capital, she served as Associate General Counsel in Los Angeles, and as Asia Regional Counsel and Managing Director, Asia Principal Opportunities in Hong Kong. She also held various roles at the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a US government agency supporting emerging markets private sector investment. As Chair of the Advisory Committee of the Salzburg Global Seminar on Corporate Governance, Melissa has led programs that inspire directors to address the changing expectations for responsible corporate leadership.
Paul Tremewan
Board Member
As CRF’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Paul Tremewan is responsible for the organization’s financial assets and directs and manages the decisions and actions that affect and maximize the financial value of CRF and its subsidiaries.
Tremewan has been with CRF since 2016 and manages the organization’s finance and accounting team, including financial reporting, capital, and financial compliance reporting for CRF and its subsidiaries. Tremewan is also responsible for overseeing financial and capital planning, forecasting, and modeling of new products and programs.
Advisory Council
Anne Gates
Advisory Council
In 2017, Anne Gates retired as president of MGA Entertainment, the largest privately held global toy company in the United States. Prior to that she spent more than twenty years at the Walt Disney Company, in various roles including Executive Vice President and CFO of the Consumer Products Division, based in Los Angeles, and Managing Director for Consumer Products Europe and Emerging Markets, based in London. In 2010, Anne Gates was named to the Power List of Britain’s 100 most influential Black people. Earlier in her career she worked in both the US and Europe for PepsiCo, Bear Stearns (Investment Banking), AT&T (Marketing) and Bell Labs (Research).
Currently, Anne Gates is an active board director, spanning diverse industries. She is Chair of the Board at Tapestry, Inc. She is currently Chair of the Audit Committee at Kroger. As an audit committee financial expert, she also serves on the Audit and Risk Committee at Raymond James Financial and is Chair of the Governance Committee. Additionally, she serves on the Governance Committee at Kroger and is chair of the Governance and Nominations Committee at Tapestry, Inc.
Anne Gates is personally committed to the not-for-profit sector, focusing on improving education, equity, inclusion, and effective nonprofit financial stewardship. She engages with multiple nonprofit boards aligned with these goals.
Anne Gates received her B.A. in Applied Mathematics from UC Berkeley and her M.S. Industrial Engineering and Operations Research and post-graduate work at Columbia University. She serves on the University of California, Berkeley Foundation Board of Trustees and Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education Advisory Board, and the Board of the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University.
Ben Fenton
Advisory Council
Ben Fenton is an Investment Partner at Galway Sustainable Capital. Galway is a specialty finance company with a mandate to support and finance businesses, projects and assets that are accelerating the transition to a sustainable economy. Key investment areas are renewable energy, energy efficiency and green buildings, goods & services, sustainable agriculture/land/water, carbon markets and transportation. We look for real, impactful environmental and social solutions.
Ben is an avid (and amateur) landscape photographer, runner, cyclist and former triathlete. Ben resides in Boulder, CO with his wife, their 2 sons and two dogs. Ben received a B.A. in economics from Duke University, where he was also a member of the Men’s Lacrosse team. Ben is originally from Philadelphia, PA.
Patricia Reinhardt
Advisory Council
Patricia Reinhardt has nearly 30 years of experience in M&A, operational transformations, and middle-market advisory. Known for her calm leadership in complex situations, she specializes in manufacturing, consumer products, food & beverage, packaging, and hard goods.
She has been a Managing Director at G2 Capital and Huron, completing over 75 mandates for healthy and distressed companies, particularly in New England. Her past roles include Managing Partner at Reinhardt Lippincott & Co., Managing Director at DRS Capital, CEO of Digi-Block, and President of BOTEC Analysis Corporation.
Patricia serves as Director and Compensation Chair at ELM Electrical, Inc., where she contributed to its 2024 ESOP transition. She has also held board positions at KLD Research & Analytics, Package Machinery, and Circle Furniture. She has advised Champlain College’s board and currently serves on the Massachusetts’s board of Tina’s Wish, supporting ovarian cancer research.
An active advisor to RuralWorks, Patricia is passionate about driving impact investments into communities that need them most. She holds a master’s in public administration from Harvard Kennedy School and a bachelor’s in economics from the University of Mary Washington.
Locations: Middlebury, VT | Minneapolis, MN
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