Episode 6 - Robyn O’Brien, rePlant Capital

“The current farming and financial systems are extractive industries”, states Robyn O’Brien, co-founder and director of partnerships at rePlant Capital. 

Robyn cut her teeth as a financial analyst studying the food industry — she shares how food companies in the 1990s were boasting about swapping in artificial ingredients to reduce costs with no examination of the long-term impacts. Learn how Robyn awakened to the effects of our chemical intensive food system for each of us and for our planet. A journey that led her to write The Unhealthy Truth as she investigated the impacts of food production on the health of American families.  Paralleling her own awakening, Robyn digs into the roots of  the consumer push for clean food and transparency based on the dramatically rising diseases in our children. 

The food and financial industry failures to address these systemic issues spurred Robyn and her partners to create a financial services firm focused on financial resilience for farmers, building soil health, and drawing down carbon. rePlant is pushing the financial industry beyond outdated metrics of farm yield and corporate quarterly earnings.  We get specific about the types of project rePlant funds, digging into how they partner with farmers and their families. And we get a behind the curtain glimpse into the highly personal motivations of corporate leadership to drive change. 

Venture with us beyond farming and finance into a candid dialogue on how Robyn fuels her entrepreneurial creativity. We are talking about working through fear, learning from failure, and building the daily discipline of self-care. Robyn’s perspective on how the twists in our career paths weave together is honest and full of practical wisdom. 

Robyn is the first to say that rePlant is one company looking for a whole industry to grow around regenerative capital. We’re talking about the long game for farmers and for investors. Robyn’s advice to industry: embrace radical transparency as 21st century leadership. Robyn is telling us what this transparency looks like—and how consumers are critical to the shift.