Trish Karter
President & CEO
Dancing Deer Baking Co., Inc.

As CEO and cofounder of Dancing Deer Baking Co. Trish Karter has found a way to marry her creative, artistic, environmental, community and business interests. The woman-owned enterprise located in Boston’s inner city, is lauded as one of the nation’s most innovative natural food companies. It has received the food industry’s equivalent of the “Oscars” many times over, 1999 Brand Design Award from the American Institute of Graphic Artists, 2000 SBANE New Englander Award for Innovation, Inc. Magazine’s listing in the top 100 Inner City companies (2001, 2002 and 2003), FleetBoston’s 2002 Small Business Leadership Award for Innovation, 2001 and 2005 Chamber of Commerce Award for Excellence, Francis Hesselbein Community Excellence Award 2005, Fortune Small Business Best Bosses Award 2005, WBENC Business Star 2006, Rosoff Award for Individual Achievement 2006, Corporate Philanthropy Award, Boston Business Journal, Innovator of the Year 2006 and many other accolades and honors. All Dancing Deer employees are shareholders and its operating philosophy is that when people are happy it shows in the food. The company partners in a philanthropic venture called the Sweet Home Project, with the Paul and Phyllis Fireman Foundation. Dancing Deer donates 35% of the retail price from the Sweet Home product line to direct action programs to end family homelessness. Karter is active in the local community and works with the City of Boston’s efforts to promote economic well-being in otherwise overlooked areas.

Karter’s first business adventure was to leave her studies in Classics and Art History at Wheaton College, just a semester shy of a Bachelor’s Degree, and help dig her father (and hero) out of a Chapter 11 Reorganization. He had pioneered the recycling of bottles and cans on an industrial basis and his company went on to write the book on how to reclaim that portion of the waste stream.

She continued on from there to a series of business challenges which had in common the characteristic of being in relatively unexplored territory – a comfort zone for Karter.

In 1982 she received a Masters in Public and Private Management from Yale University.

Years later, Trish set aside her business interests and, taking a deep breath, invested her full energies to the pursuit of her first great love, which was to draw and paint. Five happy and productive years spent in the studio and outdoors doing plein air landscape work greatly influence her choices and perspective today. She is an activist for the environment on many fronts. An unintended turn of events led her back in to business and the formation of Dancing Deer. But long an environmentalist and student of nature, Trish has committed the company to continuing its leadership in the natural foods movement and striving to attain green manufacturing and packaging to the fullest extent possible.

In 2002 Karter was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Wheaton College in Norton, MA for her accomplishments as a mother, entrepreneur, activist and artist. Her two children, Eleanna and Dimitri, are her greatest joy.