Leadership Team

Geoff (Chester) Woolley, Chairman

Geoff has been active in private equity investing for over 25 years and has founded two successful venture funds in the United States and Europe. He pioneered the concept of venture debt and has invested in over 400 companies in his career including Ciena, Coinstar, Hotmail and Human Genome Science. He is a Founding Partner of Dominion Ventures, Inc. and European Venture Partners (now called Kreos Capital). For more than ten years, he shifted his interest to impact investing and non-profit activities relating to education and poverty. Recently, he became an advisor after a long Board tenure at Unitus Inc., a global microfinance network. Well known in the microfinance industry, he is a long time Board member of the world’s microfinance bank SKS along with smaller socially oriented banks including Samhita. He is co-founder of one of first microfinance equity funds, Unitus Equity Fund (now Elevar) and continues to invest in socially oriented investments as the Managing Director of Huntsman Gay Capital Impact. He remains active in education as an advisor to the University of Utah.  He founded and chairs University Venture Fund (UVF) the nation's largest and most successful student-led venture fund.  UVF recently created a new student run advisory fund for impact investing.  Geoff holds a B.S. in business management from Brigham Young University and an M.B.A. from the University of Utah. 

Terry Alan Farris, Chief Executive Officer

Terry joined Unitus Capital in early 2010 with over 23 years of diverse experience managing and advising privately held companies, multinationals, and individual entrepreneurs on their strategy, advisory, governance, and philanthropic initiatives around the world. Terry’s core expertise lies in philanthropy and fundraising in Asia, totaling to several billions of dollars over the course of his career. Recently, Terry was the Head of Philanthropy Services for the Asia-Pacific region at UBS, based in Singapore, where he advised 225 family-owned companies and 150 non-profit clients in 12 countries. Earlier, Terry was head of Philanthropy Services for Asia-Pacific at MeesPierson (now Fortis MeesPierson). Terry has also been the Managing Partner of Farris Associates Limited in Hong Kong, the Executive Director at the Hong Kong Adventist Hospital Foundation, and the Director at the University of Hawaii Foundation. He has been instrumental in establishing associations, organizations, and resource programs that help build community capacity throughout Asia-Pacific region. Terry has a Bachelors degree in Business Administration from Pacific Union College in California.

 Eric Savage, Managing Director

A founding team member of Unitus Capital, Eric transitioned from the Capital Markets team at Unitus, which he joined in 2007 in Bangalore, India. Previously, he directed Citigroup's Asia Power Investment banking group and helped secure and execute multiple landmark equity, debt and M&A transactions totaling many billions of dollars. Eric was based in Hong Kong for 12 years and worked for Citigroup/ Salomon Brothers for a total of 14 years. From 1996 to 1998, Eric was Head of Salomon's utilities sector equity research and was selected as a member of Institutional Investors' All-Asia research team. Eric is a graduate (cum laude) of Duke University and of Harvard's Kennedy School. From the Kennedy School, he received the Lucius N. Littauer Fellow Award, the program's top honour.

Kylie Charlton, Managing Director

A founding team member of Unitus Capital, Kylie led the capital markets strategy at Unitus for 4 years. In this role, she arranged debt for 12 Unitus MFI partners across 6 countries, provided capital structuring advice to the portfolio of Unitus MFI partners, advised investment funds and banks on their portfolio of microfinance loans, and played a leading role in the development and launch of the Unitus Equity Fund I, L.P. Previously, Kylie was Vice President in the Project and Structured Finance Group at Citigroup with 11 years experience in commercial and investment banking in Sydney and New York. Kylie holds a B.A. in Commerce (Banking and Finance) from the University of Canberra and an M.B.A from the Said Business School at Oxford University, where she was a founding member and student co-chair of the Oxford Business Network for Social Entrepreneurship.

Ann Short, Chief Operating Officer

Ann has more than 23 years of broad-based experience in the global securities industry. She has provided financial and strategic advice to a wide range of corporate and governmental entities globally and has managed the execution of complex securities offerings in the US and international capital markets. Most recently, she served as COO of Global Corporate and Investment Banking at Banc of America Securities. Previously, Ann was an Executive Vice President at NASD (now FINRA), where she launched a strategic initiative to support brokerage firm regulatory compliance activities. Ann began her career as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley, where she worked for 18 years. From 1994 to 1997, Ann was based in Hong Kong and Beijing, where her clients included the People’s Republic of China, as well as leading corporations throughout Asia, non-Japan. Upon her return from Asia, Ann joined Morgan Stanley’s Fixed Income Division as Head of Global High Yield Corporate Research. Ann has an M.S. in Management from the MIT Sloan School and a B.A. from Wellesley College.