August Ritter: “Do More, a Lot Better, and a Lot Faster”

This is a conversation with August Ritter, Managing Director of Global Portfolio Management at The Nature Conservancy, where he oversees a 150 million dollar global conservation fund across 79 countries. In 2021, August brought me on as Entrepreneur in Residence to lead an early-stage team working on a new strategy and bring modern innovation strategies to the table. August is a leading light in bringing modern innovation practices into big, complex organizations. And this isn’t just a widget factory. TNC is the world’s largest environmental organization. August launched TNC’s India program – an experience that was eye-opening from an innovation standpoint; we’ll get to that in a moment – he managed TNC’s partnership with the startup incubator TechStars, and is a founder of The Agility Lab, a TNC initiative to make its conservation teams more entrepreneurial and more effective. As August has said, conversation needs to, “do more, a lot better, and a lot faster.”