Evan Delahanty

Evan Delahanty is social good entrepreneur who just wants to be king of the jungle (or at least make sure it and the people who live there stick around).

As the CEO and Founder of Peaceful Fruits LLC, a snack startup on a sustainability mission, Evan has been pushing this dream since May of 2014. Peaceful Fruits makes wild acai fruit snacks tied to supporting locally-driven economic development and conservation in the Amazon Rainforest and creating jobs for people with developmental disabilities. Long term, his goal is to help expand the wild fruit industry in South America – particularly into the little country (big jungle) of Suriname.

Before launching Peaceful Fruits, Evan lived in Suriname (on the coast of South America just northeast of Brazil) as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  Focusing on community economic development, he worked with a small village in the heart of the Surinamese Amazon. He particularly focused on helping community organizations and small businesses become more sustainable environmentally and financially. One of his largest projects involved helping to jumpstart the market for small solar energy systems in the region.

Evan joined the Peace Corps after 4 years of climbing the corporate ladder at a large industrial company, where he followed a management track that took him through finance, sales, operations, and internal consulting. The fast pace and responsibility of the corporate world appealed, but he decided that he’d just as soon bang his head against problems where solutions had a larger positive impact on the world.  That’s what lead him to his Peace Corps-detour to the Amazon.

Now, as a mission-driven entrepreneur Evan lives in the space between standard business and the nonprofit/NGO world. His soap box, when he finds himself standing on one, is that environmental sustainability and community economic empowerment can absolutely be positive contributors to a for profit business looking for an edge in the competitive marketplace.