Brian is a Partner at Bridges in the U.S. Sustainable Growth Fund, a director of the Bridges Impact Foundation in the U.S., and a leader of our impact advisory activities.

Brian has nearly 20 years of impact investing experience, having written the business plan for Acumen in 2000 and served until 2012 as the Chief Investment Officer, where he oversaw $55m of investments into companies that were delivering health, water, energy, and agriculture services to economic base of the pyramid in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. As CIO, he was a member of Acumen’s management team and helped build out the network of country operations that worked closely with the entrepreneurs. Brian was also a co-founding board member of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) and was one of the principal architects of impact management software tool, Pulse, and the Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS). Prior to Acumen Fund, Brian worked as a health care consultant at McKinsey & Company, was a lead environmental staff person at the Corporation for National Service, and has been involved in starting and advising a range of non-profit and for-profit start-ups.

Brian has an undergraduate degree from Harvard University, an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and an MA in City & Regional Planning from the University of California at Berkeley. He also teaches social entrepreneurship to at Harvard Business School. Brian was the first impact investor to go through the Kauffman Fellows Program of the Center for Venture Education, and is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute.

As a Managing Director of the Foundation, Nathalie Kylander plays a lead role in sourcing new investments and working with the leadership of those organizations as an operating partner and board member as they grow to build capacity and to achieve their maximum impact. As a member of the Foundation’s senior leadership team, she also helps to execute the Foundation’s strategy and goals and contributes to its thought leadership and external outreach. Nathalie currently serves on the boards of DRK portfolio organizations Jaza Energy, Friendship Bench, Digital NEST, Greenwave, PHOOL (formerly HelpUsGreen), Laboratoria, The Center for Good Food Purchasing, and The Renewal Workshop. She previously served on the boards of DRK grantees EforAll, Foster America, Indus Action, Solutions Journalism Network, and Spark MicroGrants.
Nathalie is one of the world’s leading experts on nonprofit brand management. Her passion for understanding and promoting the important role that brand plays for nonprofit organizations has resulted in a decade of research, teaching, and consulting. Nathalie has been a practitioner as well as an academic over the course of her career. Her courses, including many Executive Education programs, and multiple publications have targeted nonprofit leaders, with the goal of building marketing and branding capacity in the sector. Nathalie has supported many of her students as they created and launched social enterprises both at Tufts University, where she taught entrepreneurial marketing and at Harvard where she currently teaches strategic management for nonprofits.

She has worked extensively in both the private and social sectors over the course of her 30-year career. As a biochemist, an MBA and a Ph.D., Nathalie also built on her experience in strategy consulting to hold a number of prominent positions in sales, marketing and management at Medtronic Inc. She led Doctors Without Borders programs in Armenia, worked for the UNDP in Senegal, and has consulted to dozens of both large and small nonprofit organizations.

Nathalie received a BS in Biochemistry from Imperial College at London University, an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and a Ph.D. from Fletcher School at Tufts University.