Ted Geier is a lifelong New Yorker and serial social entrepreneur who grew up during the 1960’s and 70’s, five short blocks from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, in a time and place where all good things seemed possible, a universe where the most powerful voices were people like Pete Seeger and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
When he was five, Ted’s parents founded the nation’s first entrepreneurship training organization, the Workshop In Business Opportunities (WIBO), partnering with Inner City Broadcasting General Counsel Mal Woolfolk and collaborating with, among others, The Black Panthers.
Ted’s folks included him in volunteer activities such as packing boxes of food for starving children in Biafra (a briefly independent region of Nigeria), recycling cans and bottles, boycotting grapes and lettuce to support striking farm workers, and accompanied him to Washington DC to protest the Vietnam War.
Following in his parents’ footsteps, Ted eventually discovered he was a serial entrepreneur, creating enterprises such as a traveling softball team at age ten (thanks for the transport, Mom!), a band at age 15, and a series of social ventures at age 20, beginning with the Concert for A Non-Nuclear Decade featuring Don McLean and nine others at Town Hall in New York City in 1980.
That event was co-produced by Jeff Trachtman, after the two became lifelong friends and activists at age twelve and proceeded to collaborate on projects in school politics, journalism, arts, and volunteering on the political campaigns of George McGovern, Ramsey Clark, and Carol Bellamy.
The 1980 concert led to them founding the nonprofit capacity-building organization Cause Effective in 1981, which Ted led through 1995, providing consultation and training to more than 2,000 nonprofits, publishing three books on nonprofit special events, and producing more than 500 special events, including seven annual New York Folk Festivals.
After fifteen years building and running Cause Effective, in 1995, at the dawn of the US transition to high definition video, Ted moved on to another social venture, creating a unique model for distributing video content from BBC, Discovery, and others to museums and science centers, and serving as Executive Producer of a suite of films for Grounds for Sculpture, including the award-winning Voices of Sculpture.
Ted and his wife, the actress, writer, director, and Unity Stage founder Sofia Landon, had two daughters, M.J. born in 1989, and Hallie, born in 1992.
M.J. is now President of Ticking Clock, a leading creative house specializing in video creation and production.
Hallie died in a tragic accident at age 11 ¾ in 2004.
Hallie’s life, brimming with joy, activism, and writing, led to the launching of LOVE, HALLIE Foundation, created to engage and inspire young people to create positive change in their communities and the world through activism and philanthropy. Ted has served as President ever since, bringing ten children from Durban, South Africa to the U.S. to live with his family while raising funds to help rebuild their burned-down orphanage; appearing twice on The Oprah Winfrey Show, leading to Oprah creating the Hallie Dorm in Benoni, South Africa; working with the Nelson Mandela Foundation to introduce Mandela Day to the United States, with Malaria No More to enable young people to engage in the battle to eradicate malaria; and creating publications, videos, music, and live presentations that incorporate Hallie’s words and story. Love Hallie has published three books of Hallie’s writing and art, as well as worked with Grammy Award-winning producer, engineer, and musician Steve Addabbo to produce Carpe Diem, an album of songs by Ted and others inspired by Hallie and Hallie’s poems and journal entries performed by Barbara Feldon, best known for her portrayal of Agent 99 on Get Smart! Love, Hallie’s initiatives have reached more than 60 million people worldwide.
For the past decade, Ted has served as an Affiliate Consultant with Support Center, a nonprofit similar to Cause Effective, where he provides organizational planning, board development, and resource development consulting and training to dozens of nonprofits each year. His current and most recent clients include Badass Animal Rescue, Bellevue Literary Review, Chess in the Schools, Harvest Home, HUDSY, Lake Placid Sinfonietta, Mt. Kisco Day Care Center, Refugee Assistance Program, Rehabilitation Through the Arts, and Volunteer New York.
Ted has also, since August 2023, served pro-bono as Executive Director of the Workshop In Business Opportunities (WIBO), the entrepreneurial training program founded by his father in 1965.
In his spare time, Ted is an avowedly amateur writer (he claims to have written seventeen novels, but their average length is about a page each), musician, songwriter, actor, first baseman, and poker/boggle player.”
