William H. Dent

William H. Dent, a native of Washington DC, began his international career in the Peace Corps in Chile working in rural development and land reform. After earning a Master’s inEducation and an MBA in Finance at the University of Chicago, he began a career in banking focused on (a) project finance at the National Development Bank of Brazil (BNDES), Wells Fargo Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank, and (b) corporate finance with JP Morgan Chase handling major airline and IT accounts for them like IBM. At BNDES, Mr. Dent was co-founder of SEBRAE, today the largest Executive Business Education program in Latin America (www.sebrae.com.br).

In 2003, Mr. Dent founded the nonprofit Natural Partners to seek common ground between ‘conservationists’ and corporate leaders through joint projects serving common community interests to leave a better world for the ‘next generation’. This work in Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, initially with support of the World Wildlife Fund and later with Conversation International helped introduce ‘best practices’ to forest conservation and restoration of the Atlantic Rainforest, Brazil’s “other’ rainforest that runs along the Atlantic seaboard of Brazil.

In 2017, Mr. Dent co-founded L&W Global Innovations as a vehicle for identifying and disseminating new technologies that contribute significantly to more sustainable agriculture practices by reducing input uses (especially of water and fertilizer) and increase productivity at a time of growing water scarcity due to drought and exhaustion of groundwater sources. The firm now has representatives and sales agents in over a dozen major countries around the world, improving farmer bottom lines and the long-term sustainability of their farms for the next generation.

Mr. Dent has been a member of the Rotary Club of Washington DC for since 2000 and recently served as its President (2021 – 2022). His active participation in Rotary has allowed him to participate in many rewarding projects and programs, both local and international, and in the process provided him a worldwide network of professional contacts.