Shen Tong

Shen Tong (Simplified Chinese: 沈彤; Hanyu Pinyin: Shěn Tóng) (born 1968) is an American impact investor, activist, and writer.

Shen Tong was born in 1968, in Beijing.

He studied biology at Peking University (Beida 北大), from 1986 to 1989.

He was a Chinese dissident who was exiled as one of the student leaders in the democracy movement at Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Shen was one of the People of the Year in Newsweek 1989, and he became a media, software, social entrepreneur, and investor in the late 1990s.

He serves on the board of Food Tank.

Having witnessed the brutal crackdown of protestors in the avenue leading to Tiananmen Square, he said that it accidentally made him one of the key student leaders during the June Fourth Incident in 1989.

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 at Brandeis 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 are Tiananmen Exiles and Standoff at Tiananmen.

Shortly after his arrival in the United States, Shen held a press conference at the Walker Center for Ecumenical Exchange in Newton, 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 to support democratic movements in China and to promote ideas of political freedom and human rights.

Shen Tong is a serial entrepreneur since 1990s and impact investor with more than fifty investments in food, media, and other high-tech ventures.

Shen Tong also helped established Radio Free Asia with bipartisan efforts led by then Senator Joe 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, 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.

Upon fleeing China for the United States, Shen transferred to Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts on a Wien International Scholarship, where he finished a Bachelor of Science degree in botany and genetics in 1991.

After graduating from Brandeis, Shen enrolled to the PhD programs in philosophy at Harvard University, and in sociology at Boston University, studying with mentors such as Harvey Mansfield, Peter Berger, Daniel Bell, Samuel P. Huntington, and Michael Sandel.

The Congressional Human Rights Delegation to China in 1991 headed by Nancy Pelosi and Republican congressman John 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.

He was released and immediately exiled after two months of imprisonment under mounting international pressure, particularly from the US Congress, the Presidential Campaign of Bill Clinton, the Vatican, and European governments.

After moving to New York City from Massachusetts in 2000, he focused on business ventures with impact and purpose related to food, media, and high-tech industries.

He has several dozen publicly known commercial and impact investments.

He is known for his promotion of "Context Media" partially due to his keynote speech at a super session of National Association of Broadcasters in Las Vegas, 2007.

He founded the TV production company B&B Media Production and invested in bookstores and publishing in Beijing.

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.

In 2021, Shen became the advisor and mentor of the Vietnamese studio Sky Mavis for Axie Infinity, a Pokémon-inspired non-fungible token-based online video game where anyone can earn tokens through skilled gameplay and contributions to the ecosystem.

The unique aspect of Axie Infinity is that all art assets and Axie genetic data are readily available to third parties, enabling community developers to craft their own tools and create diverse experiences within the Axie Infinity universe.

Collaborating with renowned figures such as Dan Barber, Dorothy Cann Hamilton, Michael Moss, and Michel Nischan, he founded Food-X in 2014, a startup accelerator that supported businesses with a positive impact on the food sector, running 11 cohorts until it ceased operations in 2020.

He founded business accelerators FoodFutureCo in 2015 and Food-X in 2014, the latter of which is recognized by Fast Company as one of "The World's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies of 2015 in Food".

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.

Shen’s portfolio of good food and sustainable agriculture holdings includes over 50 investments in 40 companies and continues to grow.

His other social entrepreneurship portfolio includes companies such as WeFunder.

His thesis of cultivating tasty, sustainable, healthy, accessible, and affordable food and agriculture businesses is explained in his TEDx 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.

Shen was the founder and president of the now defunct VFinity, 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.