Jeremy Coller

The Coller Institute of Private Equity at London Business School (2008–2016) sprang from a significant donation to London Business School by the Jeremy Coller Foundation in 2008.[18]

The Institute focused on private equity education and research, and was influential in building bridges between academia and the global private equity industry. The institute also published Private Equity Findings, a digest of international private equity-related research. (This publication is now published directly by Coller Capital.)

The Coller Institute of Venture was established at Tel Aviv University in 2013, with a mission to advance the venture ecosystem globally.[19] The Institute pursues three objectives:

• To identify the conditions that will lead to compelling venture capital returns for long-term capital providers (e.g., pension plans, charitable foundations, and sovereign wealth funds)
• To investigate and communicate best practice in 'technology translation' – the creation of new businesses from IP owned by governments, universities and corporates
• To promote innovation in venture policy-making and planning, encouraging governments to adopt best practices in legal frameworks, fiscal incentives, behavioural economics, and other areas of public policy.

The Institute produces the Coller Venture Review (previously known as Venture Findings) – a publication aimed at deepening understanding of innovation and the venture ecosystem.

The Coller School of Management at Tel Aviv University was established in 2016, following a major donation from the Jeremy Coller Foundation. The donation renamed, and boosted the capacities of, Israel's leading business school, which has been educating undergraduates, graduates, business managers, and entrepreneurs for over 50 years.

The Coller School is one of the world's leading management schools in the area of venture and entrepreneurship; its graduates are more successful at attracting venture capital funding than those of many other well-known business schools – ranking the Coller School number 11 globally in this area.

The Jeremy Coller Foundation funds the School to recruit fresh faculty, expand its research, and diversify and internationalise its student body.

The Coller School of Management aspires to be one of the leading places in the world for aspiring innovators to build the skills, the know-how, and the networks for success in the world of venture – a mission that will be greatly facilitated by the School's base in Tel Aviv, which has been recognised by Startup Genome as having the world's best start-up ecosystem outside Silicon Valley.

The School hosts the Coller Startup Competition, a $100,000 prize awarded annually to startups focused on the future of food, specifically on replacing animals in the human food supply chain.[20] The 2019 winner was Solutum Ltd, which develops water-soluble plastic-like bags.[21]

The Jeremy Coller Foundation looks at the consequences of factory farming for global sustainability.[22]

FAIRR is a collaborative investor network that raises awareness of the material ESG risks and opportunities caused by intensive livestock production.[23] Launched by the Jeremy Coller Foundation in 2015, FAIRR believes that intensive livestock production poses material risks to the global financial system and hinders sustainable development. Its mission is to build a global network of investors who are focused and engaged on the risks and opportunities linked to animal factory farming. As of August 2019, FAIRR's membership and wider supporting network comprises institutional investors managing over $16 trillion in combined assets.[24][25] FAIRR also runs collaborative investor engagements with global food companies to improve performance on selected ESG issues in the sector.

The Foundation is supporting activities to address the human health consequences of factory farming, with a focus on one of the most pressing public health issues today: antibiotic resistance.[10]

The Foundation coordinates epidemiological research with governments and the public and private sectors to provide an evidential basis for the link between antibiotic misuse on factory farms and antibiotic resistance in humans, to project future resistance patterns, and to contribute to a global public health action plan. In parallel, the Foundation works with the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics[26] and other NGOs to promote legislation for the appropriate use of antibiotics in farm animals.

The Foundation seeks to highlight the animal welfare impacts of factory farming.[10] As concern among consumers about the way in which animals are treated in the course of producing meat, dairy or egg products increases, farm animal welfare is also growing in importance for investors in the food industry. Higher standards of welfare are not only important to meeting consumer expectations but can also have a beneficial effect on business efficiency, profitability and long-term market value when health risks are taken into account.

As part of this programme, the Foundation supports the Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare (BBFAW),[27] a tool for investors to assess corporate animal welfare policies and performance and to integrate this into their investment decision making and engagement.

In July 2020, Coller announced the Coller Prize for Interspecies Conversation, a $1m award in support of research into AI-augmented human-animal communication. The prize was announced by Interspecies I/O, a forum of leading figures in inter-species communication; its members include Peter Gabriel, Vint Cerf, Diana Reiss and Neil Gershenfeld. At the same forum, he also announced the Coller Hall of Fame and Young Leaders Circle, for leading interspecies thinkers, as well as the creation of a digital hub in support of interspecies research.[28]

Commenting on advances in machine learning, Coller said his aim was to “…seek out the conversation algorithm that will unlock in ourselves a greater sense of respect for those other animals with whom we share our planet, so we no longer see them simply as objects and possessions.”