Originally from the South Side of Chicago, Patrick came to Massachusetts at 14, when he was awarded a scholarship to Milton Academy through the Boston-based organization A Better Chance. After graduating from Harvard College and Harvard Law School, he clerked for a federal appellate judge and then launched a career as an attorney and business executive, becoming a partner at two Boston law firms and a senior executive at Texaco and Coca-Cola. In 1994, President Clinton appointed Patrick to the nation’s top civil rights post, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.

 

In 2005, in his first bid for public office, he became the first African-American governor of Massachusetts. During his eight year tenure, Patrick helped revive a battered economy through the expansion of affordable health care to more than 98 percent of state residents, launched initiatives stimulation clean energy and biotechnology, won a national Race to the Top educational grant, steered the state to a 25-year high in employment, and made unprecedented investments in Massachusetts public schools. By the end of Governor Patrick’s term, the state ranked first in the nation in student achievement, energy efficiency, veterans services, and entrepreneurship.

 

From April 2015 to December 2019, he served as a Managing Director of Bain Capital LLC, where he focused on investments that deliver both a competitive financial return and significant positive social impact. He is the Founder & Chairman of TogetherFUND, a political action committee supporting progressive politics and grassroots groups working to drive turnout and engagement among disenfranchised and marginalized voters.

 

Patrick is a Rockefeller Fellow, a Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute, and the author of two books, A Reason to Believe: Lessons from an Improbable Life and Faith in the Dream: A Call to the Nation to Reclaim American Values.

 

Opening Keynote Speech
Saturday, March 27th, 2021 9 a.m. EST

Mariana Mazzucato (PhD) is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL), where she is Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose (IIPP). She received her BA from Tufts University and her MA and PhD from the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research. Her previous posts include the RM Phillips Professorial Chair at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at Sussex University. She is a selected fellow of the UK’s Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) and of the Italian National Science Academy (Lincei).

She is winner of international prizes including the 2020 John von Neumann Award, the 2019 All European Academies Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values, and the 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. She was named as one of the ‘3 most important thinkers about innovation‘ by The New Republic, one of the 50 most creative people in business in 2020 by Fast Company, and one of the 25 leaders shaping the future of capitalism by WIRED.

She is the author of three highly-acclaimed books: The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths (2013) which investigates the critical role the state plays in driving growth; The Value of Everything: making and taking in the global economy (2018) which looks at how value creation needs to be rewarded over value extraction; and the newly released Mission Economy: a moonshot guide to changing capitalism (2021).

She advises policy makers around the world on innovation-led inclusive and sustainable growth. Her current roles include being Chair of the World Health Organization’s Council on the Economics of Health for All and a member of the Scottish Government’s Council of Economic Advisors, the South African President’s Economic Advisory Council, the OECD Secretary General’s Advisory Group on a New Growth Narrative, the UN High Level Advisory Board for Economic and Social Affairs, Argentina’s Economic and Social Council, Vinnova’s Advisory Panel in Sweden, and Norway’s Research Council. Previously, through her role as Special Advisor for the EC Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation (2017-2019), she authored the high-impact report on Mission-Oriented Research & Innovation in the European Union, turning “missions” into a crucial new instrument in the European Commission’s Horizon innovation programme.

 

Fireside Chat with Mariana Mazzucato, in conversation with Dani Rodrik: Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism

Saturday, March 27, 2021, 4 p.m. EST

Dani Rodrik is Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He has published widely in the areas of economic development, international economics, and political economy. His current research focuses on employment and economic growth, in both developing and advanced economies. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the inaugural Albert O. Hirschman Prize of the Social Sciences Research Council. Professor Rodrik is currently President-Elect of the International Economic Association and co-director of the Economics for Inclusive Prosperity network. His newest book is Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy (2017). He is also the author of Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science (2015), The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy (2011) and One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth (2007).

Fireside Chat with Mariana Mazzucato, in conversation with Dani Rodrik: Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism

Saturday, March 27, 2021, 4 p.m. EST

Ted is an Executive Director within Global Supplier Diversity at JPMorgan Chase & Co, a leading global financial services firm with assets of $3.4 trillion and operations worldwide. The Firm is a leader in investment banking, financial services for consumers and small businesses, commercial banking, financial transaction processing, and asset management.
Ted joined JPMorgan Chase & Co. in 2016 and directs the firm’s strategy to grow diverse businesses through supplier inclusion and development, a critical component of JPMC’s $30 billion Path Forward commitment to advance racial equity. Prior to his current role, he served as Head of Small Business, Global Philanthropy and led Small Business Forward, the firm’s global initiative investing $50 million annually to connect small businesses with growth resources. He is an experienced leader who brings more than 15 years of global experience in building programs and partnerships that drive economic growth — with an emphasis on underserved small businesses.
Prior to JPMorgan Chase, Ted led Small Business initiatives at SourceAmerica, HJ Heinz, consulted with the World Bank Group, and was Chief of Staff at the Washington, D.C. Department of Small & Local Business Development.
Ted earned his Bachelor’s degree from the Williams School of Commerce, Economics, and Politics at Washington and Lee University and a Master of Public Administration from the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University Of Pittsburgh.

Political scientist, serial entrepreneur, change agent and social critic. Kelly Burtonis a modern-day renaissance woman who leads with passion, purpose and vision. She is the Founder of Nexus Research Group, a social impact firm that works with foundations and large-scale non-profits to help them catalyze change in local communities.

In 2017, Kelly launched Founders of Color (FOC), a digital platform committed to helping minority entrepreneurs grow and scale their businesses. Today, FOC has more than 4K users in 40+ states, with members ranging from earlyistage tech startups to multi-million dollar companies. She is also the founding co-convener of the Black Innovation Alliance, a national coalition of ecosystem leaders committed to ensuring African-Americans have fair access to the innovation economy.

Kelly’s work has been featured in numerous publications, among them Tech Crunch, Fast Company and Essence Magazine.

In addition to her entrepreneurial endeavors, she has served as a regular contributor for HuffPost and currently serves on the Advisory Board for SXSW Pitch.  She is a mentor for numerous entrepreneur communities including Praxis Labs and Echoing Green and is a very active voice on social media, with approximately 70K followers on Linkedin alone.

Kelly has two hard-earned degrees, a BA from Clark Atlanta University and a PhD from Emory University, both in Political Science.

As President & CEO of Appalachian Community Capital, Donna J. Gambrell is responsible for attracting and directing investments to Community Development Financial Institutions (or CDFIs) and other mission-driven lenders in Appalachia. These lenders, in turn, use the investments to make loans to small business owners, including to minority- and women-owned businesses, in underserved communities throughout the region.

Previously, Ms. Gambrell served as Director of the Treasury Department’s CDFI Fund, and in executive positions with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.  Currently, she is a board member for  the following organizations: Southern Bancorp, Little Rock, Arkansas, which is one of the nation’s largest CDFIs; Association for Enterprise Opportunity, a membership organization for microbusinesses; Opportunity Finance Network, a CDFI trade association; The Low Income Investment Fund, a national CDFI focused on education; and Raza Development Fund, the largest Latino CDFI in the country.

William Bradford, PhD, is a national expert on minority-owned businesses, as well as entrepreneurial and small business finance, venture capital, and corporate finance. Previously, he was Dean of the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington. He has authored or co-authored three books and more than 70 articles on finance during his career. Upon his retirement in 2020, the Foster Business School established the William Bradford Professorship, to be awarded to a faculty member concerned with diversity. In addition to his academic pursuits, he has consulted numerous firms and international lectureships in corporate finance and entrepreneurship in the UK, Indonesia, Egypt, the Ivory Coast, South Korea, Canada, China, and South Africa. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Howard University, MBA in Finance, and PhD in Finance and Economics from Ohio State University.

Manish Sisodia is the Deputy Chief Minister and Education Minister of Delhi. Additionally, he also holds the Finance & Planning, Labour, Land & Building, Vigilance, Services, Tourism and Art, Culture & Language portfolios.

During his tenure as Education Minister, a significant transformation has taken place in the infrastructure and quality of education provided by Delhi government schools. Mr. Sisodia doubled the budgetary allocation to Education which is now constant at almost 25% of the entire state budget. This was a historic step and has since been followed by the launch of a full-fledged reform process in public education. Sisodia has gained a reputation around the country as one of the best education administrators and educationists in government.

Recently, he has candidly given a detailed account of this journey as Education Ministry in his book “Shiksha ― My Experiments as an Education Minister”. It is Mr. Sisodia’s vision that has resulted in path breaking innovations such as the Mentor Teacher Programme, Mission Buniyaad, Happiness Curriculum and the Entrepreneurship Mindset Curriculum. For his phenomenal work in improving the government education system in Delhi, he has been awarded ‘Finest Education Minister’ in 2017 and ‘Champions for Change’ in 2019.

Prior to his political career, Mr. Sisodia was one of India’s foremost Right to Information (RTI) activists having co-founded the non-profit Kabir and had a successful career in journalism spanning a decade.

Erin Ganju is a Managing Director at Echidna Giving, one of the largest private funders in girls’ education in lower-income countries where girls are most disadvantaged. Erin joined Echidna Giving from Room to Read, the internationally lauded NGO she co-founded to advance literacy and gender equality. During her tenures as COO and CEO, Room to Read helped over 12 million children in 15 countries pursue a quality education. Erin was instrumental in the design and implementation of the organization’s scalable, replicable model. Erin captured her experiences and insights as co-author of Scaling Global Change: A Social Entrepreneur’s Guide to Surviving the Start-up Phase and Driving Impact. The book is a how-to guide for social entrepreneurs who have a vision to change the world and need a strong organizational foundation to do it, utilizing Room to Read as an organizational case study.

 

Erin’s has been recognized as a World Economic Forum’s Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur (2014), a Global Impact Featured Member for 2017 by the Young Presidents’ Organization, and was named one of Fast Company’s Extraordinary Women (2012). Before co-founding Room to Read, Erin worked at Goldman Sachs & Co, Unilever and several technology start-ups. Erin holds a combined bachelor’s and master’s degree in international relations and economics from The Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Yasmin Ali Haque is UNICEF Representative to India since July 2017. With over 24 years of service in UNICEF, starting her career in Bangladesh, Yasmin has held leadership roles in the Office of Emergency Programmes, South Sudan, Ghana and Sri Lanka.
Dr. Haque’s leadership and professional experience spans over a wide range of fields including policy analysis, strategic planning for women’s & child rights, child-centric development programming and large-scale responses for children in humanitarian crisis. Yasmin is a strong believer in the power of collaborative action in accelerating results for children.

Atul Satija is the Founder & CEO of The/Nudge Foundation. After 17 years of starting, scaling and turning around various businesses in some of the largest and most respected organisations globally, he decided to start The/Nudge Foundation to fulfill his passion of working on inequality and social issues facing India. Previously at his 5-year stint at InMobi, Atul helped scale the organisation from a small start-up to a global leader in mobile advertising. Prior to InMobi, Atul was the Head of Mobile Business for Japan & Asia-Pacific, and Head of Business Development for India at Google. Atul has also done various sales, consulting and business development assignments across telecom and technology companies including Adobe, Samsung and Infosys.

David Auerbach is a co-founder of Sanergy, based in Nairobi, Kenya, which takes a circular economy approach to manage sanitation and organic waste in Africa’s fast growing cities. He founded Sanergy in 2011, and the organization now serves 150,000 people every day with safe sanitation, and converts 100% of the waste into agricultural inputs – insect-based animal feed, organic fertilizer, and biomass fuels. Previously, David built partnerships at Endeavor and the Clinton Global Initiative. David is an Ashoka and Echoing Green Fellow. He holds an MBA from MIT and a BA from Yale University. He has lived in Nairobi, Kenya since 2011.

Katherine Lucey is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Solar Sister. Katherine is a Schwab Foundation Entrepreneur of the Year, an Ashoka Fellow, and a Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation Entrepreneur. She has received recognition and awards for her work with Solar Sister including Clinton Global Initiative, Social Venture Network, C3E, and International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) Champion of Change Award. She holds an M.B.A. from Georgia State University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism from the University of Georgia. Prior to becoming a social entrepreneur, Katherine spent over 20 years as an investment banker on Wall Street providing structured finance solutions to the energy sector.

Stephanie is a member of DRK’s Operating Committee, a leadership team that sets priorities, manages organizational culture and develops strategies for the Foundation and serves as a Managing Director of the Foundation where she 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. Stephanie currently serves on the boards of DRK portfolio organizations GlobalXplorer, Kinvolved, Onward, Propel America, Trey Athletes, and WattTime. She previously served on the boards of DRK grantees Braven, EdBuild, Empower Schools, and Immigrant Justice Corps.

Stephanie was on the founding team of Cambridge Technology Partners (CTP), a visionary startup in the tech space that went public and was one of the first entities to foresee the transformation from mainframe-centric solutions to client-server architecture and packaged solutions. She previously was Co-Founder, CEO, and Director of Surebridge, a web-based software provider that was ultimately sold to Time Warner.

She has served as Acting Executive Director at the Tobin Project, a nonprofit organization that sits at the forefront of major research initiatives that address some of society’s most pressing problems and helps transform public policy debates, inspired by economics Nobel laureate James Tobin. She currently serves on their Board of Directors. Stephanie received a “Top 40 under 40” award from the Boston Business Journal in 1999. She serves on the President’s Council of Cornell Women and is a co-Master of Cabot House at Harvard University. She has consulted with clients ranging from early-stage to established organizations in the nonprofit, technology, and healthcare sectors and serves on several social enterprise boards.

She received her BS in Applied Economics with a concentration in International Relations from Cornell University, an MBA from the Harvard Business School and an MPP from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Manager of second opportunities for the prison and post-prison population of Colombia. Actress, businesswoman, founder and executive president of the Internal Action Foundation. Appointed by the Ministry of Justice and Law as a Goodwill Ambassador to promote the re-socialization and humanization of the prison system (2014).

In 2000 she began her acting career. After participating in 15 productions and her last leading role in the Tvshow  “Three Miracles”, she retired from acting to dedicate and to work in prisons.

In 2012 she created a theater group at the women’s penitentiary “El Buen Pastor” in Bogotá, where she began her involvement in prisons. To date, she has worked in 31 prisons in Colombia, benefiting more than 30,000 inmates.

• In 2013, she created the Internal Theatre Foundation, now the Internal Action Foundation.
• She has carried out the I, II, III and IV National Prison Theatre Festival, with extra-mural performances for the public.
• Organizer of the first TEDx in a Latin American prison (TEDx “Buen Pastor”:  How to Turn Mistakes into Opportunities).
• Member of the Prison Dignity Committee of the Ministry of Justice and Law (2013).
• Co-founder of Freedom House, a space for post-penitentiary attention in alliance with the Ministry of Justice, INPEC and Colsubsidio.
• Manager and creator of the first restaurant in the world open to the public in a women’s prison, INTERNO.
• She has participated as a speaker at important international events of the IDB, such as the Women’s Forum for Society and Economy in Deauville, France and Sao Paulo (2014), the True North Woman in Guanajuato, Mexico (2015), Tedx Mujeres Bogotá, Demand Solution in Miami., Women Economic Forum Latin America, McKenzie among others.

In 2017, she began her involvement with the juvenile prison sector.

Wawira is the founder of Food for Education an organization that is feeding Africa’s future through innovative, cutting-edge technology. Food for Education has created a sustainable model of efficiently providing locally sourced, high quality, nutritious meals to public primary school children. Their scalable, efficient model is creating the first sustainable path to solve the child nutrition crisis for 500 million African children. She is a Ford Foundation Global Fellow, the youngest recipient of the University of South Australia’s alumni award 2017, a 2018 Rainer Arnhold Fellow, a recipient of the Builders of Africa Award 2018 and one of 2018’s Top 40 under 40 women in Kenya. She is also the first recipient of the Global Citizen Youth Leadership Prize 2018 presented by Cisco.

Isabel Guerrero is the Executive Director of IMAGO Global Grassroots and teaches Scaling up for Development Impact at Harvard Kennedy School. Isabel also teaches scaling to the Schwab Foundation’s Social Entrepreneurs and to the Bernard Van Leer Foundation.

Isabel is an economist that worked at the World Bank for most of her professional life, including as VP for South Asia where she managed a 39-billion-dollar portfolio between 2008 and 2013. Before that she was a Country Director for Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Mexico, Peru and Paraguay where she oversaw large education projects, especially in India, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.

Isabel studied economics at Catholic University in Peru and at the London School of Economics. She studied psychoanalysis at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. She is a Board member of the UN University and it is a frequent commentator on CNN Dinero.

Vineet Rai is the Founder of Aavishkaar Group and chairs its Group Executive Council. Aavishkaar Group is an Impact Investment Platform impacting millions of people in Asia and Africa using entrepreneurship based development approach.

Vineet believes in building impact ecosystem to deliver real Impact as enshrined in the vision of Aavishkaar Group “We exist to bridge the Opportunity Group for the Emerging 3 Billion”. Vineet believes that Impact Investing has the potential to change the world of finance irreversibly.

The Group’s ecosystems include Aavishkaar Capital – the Impact fund manager focused on Global South, Arohan – One of India’s largest & most digitally advanced microfinance institution (MFI) targeting low income households, Ashv Finance – a Phygital NBFC, offering unique cash flow based business loans to Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises and IntelleCap – Global Impact advisory firm providing Consulting, Investment banking and an Inclusive networking platform, Sankalp for engagement around impact investing.

Aavishkaar Group has 7000 employees, manages assets in excess of US $ 1.2 Billion while trying to serve needs of entrepreneurs from debt of US $ 150 (INR 10 thousands) to equity of US $ 15 Million (INR 100 Crore) while aligning the group to 13 out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals or SDG’s.

Vineet has received numerous awards including the TiE Hall of Fame 2018, the Impact Investor of the Year by News Corp for 2016, Porter Prize for Strategic Leadership in Social Space, 2016, CNBC TV 18 Award for being the Catalyst Fund for India 2016, G 20 – SME Innovation in Finance Award 2010 in Seoul South Korea, UNDP-IBLF –ICC World Business Award in 2005 and Lemelson Award for Social Venture Investing.

He is an Ashoka Fellow and Honorary Member of XLRI Alumni Association. Vineet recently featured on the cover of Forbes India, January 2018 issue. Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever endorsed Aavishkaar Intellecap Group for its efforts in furthering inclusive development. Vineet was invited by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi for consultations on doubling the income of the farmers in September 2017 as part of his champions of change program. Vineet also serves as Commissioner at the Business Commission for Sustainable Development, as Senior Advisor to Blended Finance Working Group at OECD and as an Advisor to United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific Science Technology and Innovation Advisory Board.
Recently Vineet Rai and Swati Rai (Co-Founder) was awarded the Faces of Vibrant Bharat 2021 by Grant Thorton Bharat.

Driving on Indian roads is one of his passions and he tries to cover 50,000 KM every year.

As Chapter Manager Mónica leads the work of ANDE in Central America and Mexico: research development, program management, organization of various events, round tables, panels, workshops, etc., member services, fundraising and partnership development to deepen and expand the Chapter work. She is in the Executive Council of the Central America Impact Investing Platform (PiiC).
She has a Master’s degree in Sustainable Development and CSR from Escuela de Organización Industrial in Madrid, Spain, and a Bachelor’s degree in Communication. She has prior experience in the social sector working for an NGO that provides capacity building and jobs for underprivileged people. Previously, she worked as an Operations Manager for the Impact Hub, where she gained extensive knowledge of the social impact ecosystem in Mexico.

Mandela SH Dixon: Silicon Valley’s #1 Fundraising Coach for Underrepresented Founders

 

Mandela SH Dixon is a founder, investor, and startup ecosystem leader, who has trained hundreds of entrepreneurs around the world on how to build successful businesses. As the Founder and CEO of Founder Gym, the premiere online training program for underrepresented founders, Mandela and her team have helped over 500 founders raise more than $80 million in startup capital in less than three years.

 

Prior to Founder Gym, Mandela was the founding Portfolio Services Director at venture firm Kapor Capital, the Global Director of Startup Weekend Education, and one of the first Black women to raise venture capital from Silicon Valley investors in 2012.

 

Mandela is an inaugural member of First Round Capital’s Angel Track program, composed of select angel investors from Silicon Valley’s most prominent tech companies. Mandela is a respected thought leader, who has shared her frameworks for success on over 100 stages and in more than 100 publications. Mandela has received various recognitions, including being named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s 100 Powerful Women list, Forbes 30 Under 30 list, as well as LinkedIn’s Top 10 Voices in Venture Capital and Startups. You can follow Mandela onInstagram,Twitter,LinkedIn, and Medium.

 

Recent Press + 2021 Highlights: 

• Founder Gym (FG) is in the midst of completing our 15th cohort in 3 years
• FG Graduates have now collectively raised over $80m in startup capital to scale their tech startups
• Founder Gym and Mandela SH Dixon are featured in a 4-page spread in Entrepreneur magazine! (Here’s the digital version)
  • The article provides a deeper understanding of Founder Gym’s origin story and how we specialize in helping underrepresented founders build successful tech startups.

Our mission is going to be featured on stages across the world this year, as we speak at events like NBA All-Star Weekend, SXSW, Harvard‘s annual business conference, and more!

Javier Saade is Managing Partner of Impact Master Holdings, a VC focused on working with companies creating values-driven value, and a Venture Partner at Fenway Summer Ventures, a VC that has backed 60+ enterprises innovating at the intersection of finance and technology. He also currently serves on the Board of Directors of SoftBank Vision Fund Investment Corp. (NASDAQ: SVFA), Board of Directors of Porch Group (NASDAQ: PRCH) and as Chairman of the Board of GP Funding, Inc., a Rothschild and Presidio-owned financial services company.

Previously, Javier was appointed by President Obama to serve as Associate Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and was its Chief of Investment and Innovation. He was one of the highest-ranking Latinos in government and a national leader focused on sustainable investing, inclusive finance, innovation and economic development.  Javier was also a full-time member of the Biden-Harris Transition Team focused on Treasury and several cross cutting economic issues.

Prior to public service he spent over twenty years in investing, entrepreneurial, operating and C-suite advisory roles at organizations that include, but are not limited to, McKinsey & Company, Bridgewater Associates, GEM Group and Air America, a company he co-founded. Throughout his career, Javier has also served on several private equity and venture-backed boards and as Mentor at Kauffman Foundation’s Fellows Program and Techstars. Javier was also recently on the Board of Advisors of Harvard’s Rock Center for Entrepreneurship.

He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MS in Operations & Technology from Illinois Institute of Technology and a BS in Industrial Management from Purdue University.

As a general partner at M25, Mike has participated in over 100 investments in early-stage companies across the Midwest. Outside of his responsibilities at M25, Mike is a Kauffman Fellow (Class 24) and a board member at BLCK VC, leading initiatives in the Midwest to connect, engage, empower, and advance Black venture investors. Prior to M25, Mike founded The Anvil, a co-working space and startup incubator on Purdue University’s campus, where he helped launch the first Purdue startup to be accepted to Y Combinator. Mike lives in Chicago with his wife, Erikka, and in his free time, he enjoys making wine, eating sushi, following Chicago sports, and traveling

Deirdre Quarnstrom (she/her) started the program at Mojang Studios to bring Minecraft to mainstream education which now reaches millions of students and educators around the world. As General Manager of Minecraft Atlas at Microsoft, she leads social impact for the Minecraft franchise which includes teams responsible for the Minecraft Education business, Minecraft Hour of Code, work to make Minecraft more accessible for players of all abilities, and programs focused on sustainability, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Deirdre serves as a Director on the board of Block by Block, a non-profit partnership between Mojang Studios and UN-Habitat that uses Minecraft to empower youth and women in developing nations, and is a Trustee on the Board of the French American School of Puget Sound and co-chair of the school’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. She holds an undergraduate degree in Economics from McGill University in Montreal, an MBA from Seattle University, and completed the Stanford Executive Program at Stanford University in 2018. Deirdre, her husband, and their two daughters live in Seattle, Washington.

Dr Bronwyn Stuckey (PhD, MEd, BA) is a Global Consultant Specialist in Game Play, Gamification, Communities of Practice and Learning Communities.

Bron has been engaged in educational community and gameful practices in learning development for the past 15 years. She has worked to explore virtual worlds, games in learning and how we can cultivate identity, agency, citizenship, leadership, and community. She is a postdoctoral research fellow of the Arizona State University Center for Games & Impact and is a leader in the field of gamification for cultivation of community and identity. As a global Minecraft mentor and for that past 10 years has consulted to Departments of Education, Health and Transport on ways Minecraft in particular can enhance their community outreach and educational agendas.  Bron supports youth enterprise and is on the board of several game-savvy startups. Bron’s overriding drive is to understand how games support learning and cultivate community for learners of all ages.

https://about.me/bronstuckey @bronst

Natalia Castillejo is a Principal Product Manager at Duolingo. She has been at Duolingo for five years. In that time, Natalia has led a variety of initiatives, including the launch of Duolingo Audio Lessons, the Duolingo Kids app, the Duolingo Podcast, and the Japanese course. As the Product Manager of the Speaking and Stories teams, Natalia collaborates with engineers, designers, and learning scientists to continually improve the way Duolingo teaches languages.

Deborah is the Managing Partner of GSV Ventures, a venture fund investing in education and workforce skills technologies that are disrupting the $7 Trillion sector. In addition, she is Co-founder of the ASU+GSV Summit. Now in its 12th year, the ASU+GSV Summit celebrates innovations and innovators across the global “preK to Gray” learning and talent landscape and attracts over 5,500 attendees.

Deborah currently serves on the boards of Aakash Educational Services Ltd (a leading tutoring and test preparation company in India), Ascend Learning (a portfolio company of Blackstone and CCCP), ClassEDU, Create and Learn, Degreed, The Educational Testing Service (ETS), Intellispark, Mighty, PhotoMath, QuillBot, Remind, Stride, Turnitin (an Advance Communications company) and Valenture Institute. She is a board observer at CLI Studios, CreativeLive, Fairygodboss, Lightneer, Outlier.org, RaiseMe, and Toucan. She is a member of the boards of The Common Ground Foundation, The Falling Walls Digital Education Jury Board, The Khan Academy Thought Leadership Council, The New Profit Prophets Education Advisory Group, Oriental Education Institute (OEI), Steppenwolf Theatre Company and The Strada Institute for the Future of Work Advisory Committee. She previously served on the board of a number of education organizations including The Chicago Board of Education (CPS) and KIPP: Chicago.

Deborah graduated cum laude with a BA in history from Princeton University in 1982 and an MBA from Harvard University in 1987.

Ankur Vora leads the Foundation Strategy Office at the Gates Foundation. His team support creation and evaluation of BMGF’s strategies, as well as exploring new paths to impact that align with the foundation’s missions.

Prior to that, he was the director of programs at The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) in London where he oversaw a cross-cutting portfolio of programs focused on health, nutrition, education, and climate change across Africa and South Asia, and led CIFF’s efforts in designing and performance managing investments with grantees.

He also served as principal at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), where he focused on healthcare, financial services, and social impact projects. Before that, Ankur was a lecturer of Economics at the University of Chicago. He also worked briefly at Goldman Sachs, the Industrial Development Bank of India, and the Bhabha Atomic Research Center in India.

Ankur holds a PhD in Economics from The University of Chicago, along with a Masters in Economics and Bachelors in Computer Science from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilani, India. He currently sits on the boards of Innovations for Poverty Action and Global Health Labs.

Rita founded and led Tewa (1995/2001), the Nepal Women’s Fund and Nagarik Aawaz (2001/2009) the peace-building initiative. She envisioned the Tewa Center and brought it to fruition, leading all related fundraising campaigns for the same (2011 – 2017). Since 2018, Rita has been coordinating Nagarik Aawaz’s “Peace Building Memorial & Learning Center” initiated in Nawal Parasi in the center south of Nepal. Rita’s training and ongoing practice has been in the area of women’s advancement, local philanthropy, and peace-building. Rita has served as Chair on the Boards of the Global Fund For Women & the Global Fund for Community Foundations among others.

Currently she is helping to envision and give momentum to the Inter-generational Feminist Forum in Nepal.

Alex is a Managing Partner at New Profit, a Boston-based national venture philanthropy. His work is focused on funding and scaling parent power and systems change in education, innovative whole school models, and how those models create platforms to widely share their best content and practices. In 2019, Alex launched a web-based set of tools and resources for practitioners and funders on parent power in education and how to use measurement to maximize impact: www.parentpowerined.org.

Alex serves on the Massachusetts State Board of Higher Education and the nonprofit boards of Innovate Public Schools in California, Valor Collegiate Schools in Tennessee, 4.0 Schools in New Orleans, and Saga Education in Boston. Alex is also a Pahara Aspen Education Fellow and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.

Prior to New Profit, Alex served as Chief of Staff, Strategy and Execution at KIPP Houston, as a Regional Director of Growth and Sustainability at the KIPP Foundation, and as a Manager with the Bridgespan Group. Alex started his career in for-profit management consulting, working for clients in financial services, telecommunications, private equity, and state government.
Alex has published works on mergers and collaborations in the nonprofit space, nonprofit best practices in being data-driven and mission-focused, and multiple articles on how philanthropy can support enduring parent power and systems change in education.

Alex has an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School, and a BS in Political Science from Columbia University. Originally from New Orleans, he currently resides in Brookline, MA.

Silvia Bastante de Unverhau is the Chief Philanthropy Officer of Co-Impact, focusing on partnerships and strategy. In this role, she develops partnerships and helps to mobilize philanthropy to support Co-Impact’s goals. She is a global philanthropy expert and senior advisor, with over 20 years of experience working across the business, non-profit, international development, and government sectors. She is a regular writer and speaker on philanthropy and has been quoted by leading publications, including the Financial Times and Forbes.

Silvia is the former Global Head of Philanthropy Advisory at UBS where she led a team of specialists helping wealthy families realize their philanthropic aspirations. Prior to that, she was an Associate Partner at the global strategy consulting firm Monitor Group and also worked for the Organization of American States and Amnesty International, among others. Silvia holds degrees from the London School of Economics and Political Science and Harvard Kennedy School.

Originally from Lima, Peru, Silvia has visited and worked in over 70 countries across five continents. She lives with her husband and two children in Zurich.

Mark Kramer is a leading researcher, writer, speaker and consultant on philanthropy, business strategies for social impact, and impact investing. He is best known as the co-author of seminal articles in Harvard Business Review and Stanford Social Innovation Review on Creating Shared Value, Collective Impact, and Catalytic Philanthropy.

Mark co-founded FSG in 1999 with Professor Michael Porter, now a 150-person global social impact consulting firm, that includes the Shared Value Initiative, the Collective Impact Forum, and Talent Rewire. In 2021, Mark stepped back from active management at FSG to create an impact investment firm, currently in formation.

Mark also serves as a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, a member of the Aspen Philanthropy Group and an advisor to Kimberly-Clark, Maple Leaf Foods and Nestlé.

Previously, Mark served as President of the private equity firm Kramer Capital Management. He is a graduate of Brandeis University, The Wharton School, and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Rebecca Henderson is one of 25 University Professors at Harvard, a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a fellow of both the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is an expert on innovation and organizational change, and her research explores the degree to which the private sector can play a major role in building a more sustainable economy, focusing particularly on the relationships between organizational purpose, innovation and productivity in high performance organizations. Rebecca sits on the boards of Idexx Laboratories and of CERES and was named one of three “Outstanding Directors of 2019” by the Financial Times.

Her publications include Leading Sustainable Change: An Organizational Perspective, and Accelerating Energy Innovation: Lessons from multiple sectors. For several years she taught “Reimagining Capitalism: Business & the Big Problems”, a course that grew from 28 students to over 300 and that is the basis for the newly released Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire – a book that has just been shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey 2020 Business Book of the Year Award.

Ioannis is a Professor, an Advisor and a Keynote Speaker on Sustainability Leadership and Corporate Responsibility. Through his academic work, advisory roles, teaching, and engagement with executives, he seeks to understand and explore whether, how and the extent to which companies and capital markets can lead on the path towards a sustainable future. He graduated magna cum laude from Yale University, majoring in Economics and Mathematics and holds a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University and the Harvard Business School. He is currently an Associate Professor with tenure at London Business School. Prof. Ioannou regularly publishes in top-tier peer-reviewed academic journals and due to the popularity and impact of his research, he regularly ranks in the top 100 authors on the social science research network (SSRN). Among other advisory roles, Ioannis is a member of the ESG Advisory Board of the DWS Group, and a member of the World Economic Forum Experts Network. He is also very active on social media and he is frequently quoted in articles in the popular and managerial press including outlets such as the Financial Times, Bloomberg, The Guardian, BBC, and Forbes, among others. Ioannis has recently launched a 6-week online course on Sustainability Leadership and Corporate Responsibility (www.london.edu/SLCR).

Michael Kobori is Chief Sustainability Officer at Starbucks Coffee Company, where he is responsible for leading the company’s aspiration to become resource positive.

Prior to joining Starbucks, he spent 22 years at Levi Strauss & Co. where he served as Vice-President of Sustainability.  Michael has also served as Vice-President at Business for Social Responsibility.  Prior to that, he spent nine years at The Asia Foundation, where he supported human rights and economic development in Bangladesh, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Michael is a lecturer in corporate sustainability at the Haas Business School, University of California at Berkeley.  He is also the Executive Producer of Utopia Theatre Project, an artist-led social justice theater company.

Michael has served on a number of boards and advisory commissions, including the Cotton Board, Better Cotton Initiative, Sustainable Apparel Coalition, ILO Better Work, Levi Strauss Foundation, and The Asia Foundation.

Michael received his A.B. in Asian Studies and Psychology from the University of California at Berkeley, where he also received his Masters’ Degree in Public Policy.  He also spent a year studying at International Christian University in Tokyo and studied sustainable finance at Oxford University.

Maya Chorengel is Co-Managing Partner at The Rise Fund, a $5 billion global impact investing fund managed by TPG. Prior, Maya co-founded Elevar Equity, was Managing Director of the Dignity Fund, and invested for Warburg Pincus. Maya is a Director of Benevity, EverFi, Varo Bank, Nithio, SEO, and Kiva and serves on the Advisory Boards of the Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Initiative and CASE i3 at Duke University. She co-authored “Calculating the Value of Impact Investing” published in the Harvard Business Review. Maya earned an A.B. in Social Studies from Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Morgan  has close to two decades of experience making finance a tool for social justice. In that time she has influenced over $150B and is a regularly sought out expert on impact investing. Her first book, Real Impact: The New Economics of Social Change has been featured everywhere from Harvard Business School to the United Nations.

A serial social entrepreneur, prior to Candide Group she was the founding CEO of Toniic, a global impact investment network, co-founder of Transform Finance, a non-profit organization building a bridge between finance and social justice, and also founding ED of the Responsible Endowments Coalition, educating and organizing over 100 campuses across the country.

She received a B.A with High Honors in Economics and Political Science from Swarthmore College, and serves as an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Program at Middlebury College. More on Morgan at www.morgansimon.com.

Alicia Robb is the Founder and CEO of Next Wave Impact and the Managing Partner of two early-stage venture funds. She is also the Research Director at Cruelty Free Investing and a Research Fellow at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She was previously a Senior Fellow with the Kauffman Foundation for more than a decade.

 

Alicia received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She previously worked as an economist with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Office of Economic Research in the SBA. She is a prolific author on the topics of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial finance. In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, she is the co-author of A Rising Tide: Financing Strategies for Women-Owned Businesses and The Next Wave: Financing and Investing Strategies for Growth-Oriented Women Entrepreneurs published by Stanford University Press, as well as Race and Entrepreneurial Success published by MIT Press. She teaches workshops on angel investing and investor readiness around the globe.  She is an active angel investor, a limited partner in three early-stage venture funds, a mentor to various young firms, and a board member for several groups, including the Deming Center Venture Fund, the Kachuwa Impact Fund, Good Food Institute, Luvin Arms Animal Sanctuary, and Vegan Investors.

 

Alicia was awarded the prestigious Hans Severiens Award in 2020, ACA’s annual award recognizing one individual’s work in advancing the field of angel investing.  She splits her time between Glenwood Springs, Colorado and Tucson, Arizona with her husband, Mark, and a menagerie of rescued animals.

John is the CEO of Pivotal Ventures, which was founded by Melinda Gates to expand equality and opportunity in the United States through partnership, investment, and advocacy. John joined Pivotal Ventures from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he served as Melinda’s chief of staff.

In a career spent at the intersection of business and philanthropy, John has demonstrated practical ways to leverage capitalism for social change, holding firm to the idea that the private sector can be both “tough-minded and tender-hearted.”

In the 1990s, he co-founded Pura Vida Coffee, a social enterprise and one of the first companies to sell fair-trade coffee nationwide. Under John’s leadership, Pura Vida Coffee achieved dual goals of scaling business while delivering economic benefit for coffee farmers and families around the world. Prior to Pura Vida Coffee, John led strategic initiatives as part of management teams at Microsoft, Starwave (a media company purchased by Disney), and Starbucks, where he drove the development of the Starbucks Foundation’s long-range strategic plan.

John received his MBA from Harvard University after earning a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from Stanford University, where he wrote his thesis on modern strategies for fighting hate groups. He is a former guest lecturer at Harvard Business School and an Ashoka Fellow, an honor that recognizes entrepreneurs using business to transform society.

John and his wife, Shelly, live in Seattle and have three sons: Jackson, Nick, and Matthew.

Tech titan Michele Romanow is a serial entrepreneur who started six companies before her 35th birthday. A “Dragon” on CBC’s hit show Dragons’ Den, Romanow is the Co-founder and President of Clearbanc. Clearbanc has invested more than $1.6B into 4,000 companies making them the biggest ecommerce investor in the world. She previously co-founded SnapSaves, acquired by American tech giant Groupon, and Buytopia.ca, which acquired ten competitors, including Shop.ca and WagJag.

 

In 2015, Michele became the youngest judge on CBC’s Dragons’ Den (Canada’s Shark Tank), and has been a ‘Dragon’ for the last six seasons. A prolific investor, Michele was recently named Fortune’s 40 under 40, a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, one of Canada’s Most Powerful Women and Canada’s Angel Investor of the Year.

 

Michele has created digital solutions for many of the world’s leading brands, including P&G, Netflix, Starbucks, and Cirque du Soleil. In the media, Michele’s work has been profiled in Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, TechCrunch, and The Globe and Mail.

 

Michele is a director for Vail Resorts, Freshii, BBTV and League of Innovators. Previously she was a director for Whistler Blackcomb, SHAD International. Michele also co-founded the Canadian Entrepreneurship Initiative non profit with Sir Richard Branson.

Esha Sahai is a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and educator. She is Founding General Partner at

Flamenco Ventures. As the Founder of Girls Who Venture, she is working towards gender equality in

entrepreneurship and venture capital, particularly in emerging markets. She is an Entrepreneur In

Residence at Xcelerator at UC Berkeley. Esha is also an advisor at Viell and Skydeck Berkeley, and a

mentor at Manush Labs and Alchemist Accelerator. She is the founder of Rio, a startup that develops digital business cards, and was a finalist at Alchemist Accelerator in 2019. Esha was an Entrepreneur In

Residence at the College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts,

Amherst. As a serial entrepreneur, Esha co-founded and worked at startups funded by a16z, DARPA, and

the Foundry Group.

 

Previously she was an investor at Varidus, Zane Venture Fund, Alumni Ventures Group, a member of

Microsoft’s Corporate Strategy and Development team for the Cloud & Enterprise and AI divisions, and an investor at M12 (previously Microsoft Ventures). Before joining Microsoft, Esha served as a Legatum Fellow at MIT, where she worked on multiple for-profit and non-profit ventures. Her mobile startup Curious Learning was a semi-finalist in MassChallenge & MIT’s 100K. Past stints include Oracle Corp., edX, LearnLaunch Accelerator, and a Techstars startup. Esha has served on the boards of Tesseract Inc. (acquired by Reliance Industries), Ant Bicycle. Girls Inc., Circle of Women, UMass Amherst’s Maroon Ventures Fund, GetMAGIC Corp, and SOWCoders.

 

She was a Bay State Fellow at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she received her B.S. and

M.S. degrees in computer science in 2002 and 2004, respectively. Esha has a degree in management and

engineering from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and MIT Engineering.

Rick is a San Francisco Bay Area native, a social entrepreneur, and a pioneer in affordable housing construction. He has more than four decades’ experience building affordable and market rate housing across California. In 1978 he helped create Eden Housing, which builds affordable homes for workforces and formerly homeless Californians. In the early 1980s, he and visionary housing leader Don Terner teamed up to establish BRIDGE Housing, which builds homes for families of modest means who have been priced out of the market. These remain two of the most successful non-profit housing corporations in the nation. In 1988 he founded Holliday Development, and went on to become a leader in leveraging the benefits of private development to create vibrant, sustainable communities the the Bay Area and beyond.

Today he is founder and CEO of Factory OS, an ambitious effort to ease the housing challenge by scaling the off site production of multifamily housing. Factory OS is a new approach to housing construction, integrating the design and build processes, powered by local union labor and pioneering in-house research and innovation. Having successfully developed the largest prefab home construction project in San Francisco history, Rick knows firsthand how powerful this technology can be.

Shaina Doar is President and COO of FactoryCo at Sidewalk Labs with deep expertise in urban policy, economic development, and incubation and scaling of technology investments and ecosystems. At Sidewalk Labs, Shaina has led incubation and investment teams across civic technology, digital identity, real estate, and healthcare, including the creation of Cityblock Health, an urban healthcare company. In her current role, she oversees the creation of Sidewalk’s development of a factory-made mass timber construction business that can improve the sustainability of our built environment through offsite, efficient production of timber buildings.

Before Sidewalk Labs, Shaina served as the Chief of Staff to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Economic Council in Chicago. In that role, she created the city’s economic development agenda for both terms under Mayor Emanuel’s leadership. Upon his election and with the support of over 150 leaders in Chicago, Shaina led the creation of the Plan for Economic Growth and Jobs, a comprehensive plan for the city to build economic clusters, foster small business growth, invest in critical infrastructure and develop a 21st century workforce. In this capacity, Shaina led job creation efforts leading to the relocation of major corporations into Chicago. She advised on critical infrastructure financing projects that leveraged public money with private investment, including the build of the Riverwalk, a $800M investment, a $200M energy retrofit program, and led the creation of the Chicago Infrastructure Trust. To build the innovation ecosystem in Chicago, Shaina helped Chicago leverage private capital and federal dollars to launch a med-tech incubator, MATTER, a hardware incubator, MHUB, and a $350M applied R&D institute for digital manufacturing.

Prior to her role in Chicago, Shaina was a consultant at McKinsey and Company where she worked with local governments around the world on economic development efforts, workforce development efforts, retail growth and transforming higher education.

Shaina has served on several civic non-profit economic development boards, including Accion Chicago, a nonprofit organization that supports underserved entrepreneurs with capital, and the Zoning Board of Appeals for the City of Chicago. She holds an MBA from Northwestern University and a BS from the University of Notre Dame. Shaina  lives in Minneapolis with her husband and three daughters. 

Yemi Amu is the Founder and Director of Oko Urban Farms, Inc. In 2013 she established NYC’s first and only publicly accessible out door aquaponics farm – The Oko Farms Aquaponics Education Center.  She directs all of Oko Farms’ programs including education, design/build projects and community related activities. Yemi is one of NYC’s leading aquaponics expert and is a committed educator. Over the past decade, she has facilitated the creation and maintenance of over 20 edible spaces throughout NYC; created and implemented various culinary, nutrition and gardening programs for both youth and adults; and promotes aquaponics as a tool for environmental awareness and stewardship. Yemi has a M.A. in Health and Nutrition Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She was awarded Hunter College NYC Food Policy Center, Rising Star in NYC Food Policy (2016).

JC de Swaan is a lecturer in the economics department at Princeton University, where he is affiliated with the Bendheim Center for Finance.  He teaches courses on ethics in finance and on Asian capital markets to undergraduate and graduate students, acts as a faculty adviser to first-year and sophomore students, and hosts speakers on the topic of ethics in finance.  He also teaches at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge.  Separately, he is a Partner at Cornwall Capital, an investment fund based in New York.  Prior to Cornwall, he was a senior advisor on China at a global macro fund, an investment professional at an Asia-dedicated hedge fund, and a management consultant at McKinsey & Company.

 

JC de Swaan received his B.A. from Yale University, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and a Master in Public Policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School.  He is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of Seeking Virtue in Finance: Contributing to Society in a Conflicted Industry (Cambridge University Press).

As a director of the Reimagining Capitalism team at the Omidyar Network, Chris leads the firm’s strategy and portfolio of work focused on how corporations and capital markets can contribute to a more inclusive capitalism. He also oversees impact investing field-building strategy and portfolio, working to increase the reach and effectiveness of the industry.

Chris serves in advisory and/or governance roles for ANDE, Blue Haven Initiative, the Catalytic Capital Consortium, the Collaborative for Frontier Finance, Social Finance US, the Tipping Point Fund, and the US Alliance for Impact Investing.

Prior to joining the firm, Chris was director of global partnerships at USAID’s Global Development Lab, where his team managed the Global Development Alliance, USAID’s flagship model for building shared value partnerships with the private sector. Chris also oversaw the Lab’s entrepreneurship and impact investing portfolio, including the Partnering to Accelerate Entrepreneurship (PACE) initiative. He also led an effort to create the Scaling Off-Grid Energy – Grand Challenge for Development, a multi-donor partnership focused on scaling the household solar sector in sub-Saharan Africa, in support of President Obama’s Power Africa initiative. Chris previously served as director of global programs for Accenture Development Partnerships (ADP), Accenture’s not-for-profit international development consulting practice, where he oversaw ADP’s global portfolio of work with over 50 NGOs and donor agencies. Additionally, Chris has experience working in Bolivia with the IFC, in Poland with a microfinance network, and with a range of nonprofit organizations across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Chris has a Master’s degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and a B.A. in economics and international studies from Miami University, where he was a Truman Scholar.

Professor Myriam Sidibe is the Chief Mission Officer and Founder of Brands on a Mission, a B-Corp aiming to get Brands and Companies to drive impact in health and well-being through their business models. She is also the co-founder and Chair of the Kenya National Business Compact on Coronavirus and the woman behind the multi-award winning and UN recognized Global Handwashing Day now celebrated in over 100 countries. From within Unilever, she has created a movement to change the handwashing behaviors of one billion people, the single biggest hygiene behavior change program in the world. In addition, Myriam is a Research Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government of Harvard Kennedy School and a honorary Professor of the Practice at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She is the author of the best-selling book #1 Business Ethics Brands on a Mission : How to Achieve Social Impact and Business Growth through Purpose (Routledge 2020) and her TED talk The Simple Power of Handwashing has been viewed more than 1 million times. She is a regular contributor to the Entrepreneur and is regularly featured in FT, Forbes, HBR, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Reuters and CNBC.

Ariel Smilowitz is a member of BlackRock’s Investment Stewardship (BIS) team, based in New York. Through direct engagement with BlackRock’s portfolio companies, the BIS team promotes corporate governance and business practices that are aligned with the long-term economic interests of BlackRock’s clients.

As a generalist, Ariel is responsible for proxy voting; engaging with senior executives and board members of portfolio companies on matters related to corporate strategy, governance, and environmental and social issues; and contributing to the development of engagement and thought leadership strategies to enhance sustainable financial performance.

Prior to joining BlackRock, Ariel worked at Rabin Martin, a global health strategy firm, where she was responsible for the execution of communications, thought leadership, and advocacy initiatives for Merck & Co.’s flagship corporate responsibility program. She started her career at UNICEF, where she supported organizational learning and development efforts to strengthen the technical expertise of employees across all programmatic and business functions.

Ariel earned a BA in Government from Cornell University and an MPA in International Development Policy & Management from the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service

Quyen Tran is the Director of Impact Investing for BlackRock. Her research creates BlackRock’s framework for advancing impact investing, including the development of BlackRock’s criteria for impact investing across asset classes. Quyen’s research includes making the case for impact in public equities, the case for alpha generation, the role impact plays in a total portfolio’s asset strategy, and best practices in impact measurement. She partners with academia and industry practitioners to develop thought leadership in the impact ecosystem. Quyen is a member of Harvard Business School’s Alumni for Impact Initiative, serves on the Global Impact Investing Network’s (GIIN) working group for impact in public equities, and is a Board Advisor for Bentley University’s Sustainable Investment Group.

Prior to joining BlackRock, Quyen worked as the sustainable investment strategist for Wellington Management. She guided the development of the firm’s flagship impact strategy in public equities and the strategy to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Previously, Quyen worked as a senior investment consultant at Cambridge Associates where she advised endowments and foundations on investment strategy and she headed the training program for analysts globally. At Fidelity Investments, Quyen was a director of investment analytics covering global equities.

Quyen earned her MBA from Harvard Business School and her BA, cum laude, in philosophy from Mount Holyoke College. She studied abroad at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies in Sarnath, India. On a volunteer basis, she taught English as a classroom teacher in Vietnam and worked for the advancement of grade-school children in the US.

William McSweeney is a research analyst and member of the Global Impact team within the Fundamental Equity division of BlackRock’s Portfolio Management Group. William
joined the Global Impact fund in 2020 and covers multiple sectors, including financial and education technology.

Prior to joining the Global Impact team, William was a research associate responsible for covering the energy industry for BlackRock’s Value and Income team. William’s
passion for impact investing came from his focus on the transition to clean energy and the electric vehicles industry.

William graduated Cum Laude from Hofstra University, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in finance and minored in economics.

Katie is a Research Associate for the Impact-Weighted Accounts Project. Prior to joining the team, she worked with accelerators, social enterprises, institutional investors, and field-building organizations addressing global challenges through market-based approaches. Katie’s earlier work included HIV prevention and control, global health finance, and human resources for health. She earned a Master of International Business from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and a Bachelor’s from Brown University where she focused on Development Studies and Global Health. Katie is driven by the IWA’s goal to think creatively and rigorously about the integration of impact metrics within corporate financial accounts, and believes the project will contribute to adoptable and scalable solutions.

Daniel Concessi is a research analyst for the Impact Investing strategy within BlackRock’s Fundamental Active Equity group. Danny covers multiple sectors within the Impact strategy, including healthcare, software, telecommunications, and financial services.

Prior to joining BlackRock, Danny was a research associate at Wellington Management, where he worked as an equity analyst on the firm’s flagship Global Impact equity strategy, and as a sector specialist covering financial services. Before Wellington, Danny spent the first two years of his career in New York City at Morgan Stanley conducting credit analysis to support the underwriting of leveraged loans.

Danny graduated Magna Cum Laude from Northeastern University, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in finance and accounting and a minor in economics in 2016. Outside of his career, Danny is active in community and philanthropic work, including running Boston Marathons to raise awareness and cancer research funding for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Katie is a Research Associate for the Impact-Weighted Accounts Project. Previously, Katie was a Senior Consultant at Oliver Wyman. Her project experience has included work in promoting healthier consumer purchasing behavior with over twenty retailers and manufacturers as well as data migration and project management for post-merger integrations in aviation. As a Fellow with TechnoServe Ethiopia, Katie created the organization’s in-country environmental strategy and promoted farmer livelihood interventions that reduced deforestation of the last indigenous forest in Ethiopia. Katie attended Dartmouth College where she was magna cum laude and earned the Lewis H. Haney Prize for Best Thesis in Economics. She graduated with High Honors with a B.A. in Economics in 2016.

Rob is the Program Director and Senior Researcher for Multi-Faculty Sustainability and Impact Investing Special Projects, including The Impact-Weighted Accounts Project, the Social Impact Collaboratory, and the Project on Impact Investments at Harvard Business School. Previously, Rob was a Vice President at Goldman Sachs where he had roles in Investment Product Innovation, Strategy & Development, Alternative Investment Strategies, and Private Wealth Management. Rob has consulted with the National MS Society and the World Wildlife Fund and was a 2019 Three Cairns Climate Fellow focused on mitigating the environmental effects of charcoal use in Mozambique. Rob received his MBA from Columbia Business School in the Executive Program where he concentrated on Social Enterprise and Impact Investing, graduating Deans Honors with Distinction (top 10%). He was featured in Poets and Quants annual 100 Best & Brightest Executive MBAs list. Rob is the 2019 recipient of the Carson Family Changemaker Award which recognizes commitment to the field of social enterprise. Rob earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from Georgetown University where he graduated Magna Cum Laude.

Quyen Tran is the Director of Impact Investing for BlackRock. Her research creates BlackRock’s framework for advancing impact investing, including the development of BlackRock’s criteria for impact investing across asset classes. Quyen’s research includes making the case for impact in public equities, the case for alpha generation, the role impact plays in a total portfolio’s asset strategy, and best practices in impact measurement. She partners with academia and industry practitioners to develop thought leadership in the impact ecosystem. Quyen is a member of Harvard Business School’s Alumni for Impact Initiative, serves on the Global Impact Investing Network’s (GIIN) working group for impact in public equities, and is a Board Advisor for Bentley University’s Sustainable Investment Group.

Prior to joining BlackRock, Quyen worked as the sustainable investment strategist for Wellington Management. She guided the development of the firm’s flagship impact strategy in public equities and the strategy to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Previously, Quyen worked as a senior investment consultant at Cambridge Associates where she advised endowments and foundations on investment strategy and she headed the training program for analysts globally. At Fidelity Investments, Quyen was a director of investment analytics covering global equities.

Quyen earned her MBA from Harvard Business School and her BA, cum laude, in philosophy from Mount Holyoke College. She studied abroad at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies in Sarnath, India. On a volunteer basis, she taught English as a classroom teacher in Vietnam and worked for the advancement of grade-school children in the US.

William McSweeney is a research analyst and member of the Global Impact team within the Fundamental Equity division of BlackRock’s Portfolio Management Group. William
joined the Global Impact fund in 2020 and covers multiple sectors, including financial and education technology.

Prior to joining the Global Impact team, William was a research associate responsible for covering the energy industry for BlackRock’s Value and Income team. William’s
passion for impact investing came from his focus on the transition to clean energy and the electric vehicles industry.

William graduated Cum Laude from Hofstra University, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in finance and minored in economics.

Daniel Concessi is a research analyst for the Impact Investing strategy within BlackRock’s Fundamental Active Equity group. Danny covers multiple sectors within the Impact strategy, including healthcare, software, telecommunications, and financial services.

Prior to joining BlackRock, Danny was a research associate at Wellington Management, where he worked as an equity analyst on the firm’s flagship Global Impact equity strategy, and as a sector specialist covering financial services. Before Wellington, Danny spent the first two years of his career in New York City at Morgan Stanley conducting credit analysis to support the underwriting of leveraged loans.

Danny graduated Magna Cum Laude from Northeastern University, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in finance and accounting and a minor in economics in 2016. Outside of his career, Danny is active in community and philanthropic work, including running Boston Marathons to raise awareness and cancer research funding for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Dr. Nita Mosby Tyler is the Chief Catalyst and Founder of The Equity Project, LLC – a consulting firm supporting organizations and communities in building diversity, equity and inclusion strategies and The HR Shop, LLC – a human resources firm designed to support non-profits and small businesses. She is the former Senior Vice President and Chief Inclusion Officer for Children’s Hospital Colorado – the first African American woman to hold that position in the organizations 100+ year history. She is also the former Executive Director of the Office of Human Resources for the City and County of Denver – the first African American woman to hold that position in the 63+ year history of the agency. Dr. Mosby Tyler, a consultant accredited by the Georgetown University National Center for Cultural Competence and recipient of the Cornell University Diversity & Inclusion certification, is nationally recognized for her equity work with non-profit, community, government and corporate organizations.

 

In her work, Dr. Mosby-Tyler specializes in the development and delivery of leadership, equity, diversity, cultural responsiveness and inclusiveness strategies and training programs.  Some of her clients and collaborative efforts include the University of Colorado Hospital, The Aurora Police Department, The Center for Trauma and Resilience, The Centers for Disease Control, Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment, Agency for Human Rights and Community Relations – The City and County of Denver, The ACLU of Colorado, ProLogis, Willis Towers Watson, Kaiser Permanente, The GLBT Community Center of Colorado, The Boulder County AIDS Project, The Mayor’s Commission on Aging, Denver Police Department, Colorado Convention Center, Jefferson County Sheriff Department, Colorado State Patrol, RedLine, Earth Force, the Blue Bench, The African Community Center, the Colorado Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the Colorado Organization for Victim Assistance, Denver Office of Strategic Partnerships –  The City and County of Denver, Donor Alliance, Nurse-Family Partnership, Denver Sheriff Department, Denver Fire Department, The Denver Foundation, Community Resource Center – Denver, The Crisis Center, cityWILD, Kid’s In Need of Dentistry (KIND), Mental Health America-Colorado, Denver Mayor’s African American Commission, Bringing Back the Arts, the National Coalition on Donation, Donor Awareness Council, Colorado Bar Association Leadership Training, Kalamazoo Community Foundation, Regional Institute of Health & Environmental Leadership, Denver Mayor’s GLBT Commission, 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, The Aurora Chamber of Commerce, JeffCo Public Health and many more.

Dr. Mosby Tyler has a vast, 32-year background in human resources, diversity & inclusion, training and operations management.  She has held leadership roles at AT&T, Kaiser Permanente in both Georgia and Colorado-regions, the McKesson Corporation and Statline (a subsidiary of the Musculoskeletal Tissue Foundation).

In the community, Dr. Mosby Tyler has received appointments by former-Mayors Wellington Webb and John Hickenlooper to serve as a member of the Career Service Authority Board for the City and County of Denver, by Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper to the Tony Grampsas Youth Services Board of Directors and by the Executive Director/Chief Medical Officer of the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment to the Colorado Health Equity Commission. Dr. Mosby-Tyler has also served as the Diversity Chairperson for the Human Rights Campaign at both local and national levels and is a member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., the Links, Inc. and the Phi Delta Kappa International education professional association.  She is a former board member of the One Colorado Education Fund. In addition, she has served on the Colorado Tobacco Review Committee, the Black Health Collaborative Education Committee and the Disparities Action Committee. She currently serves as chair of the Denver Foundation Board of Trustees and also serves on the boards of the Bonfil-Stanton Foundation and Craig Hospital.

Dr. Mosby Tyler, the 2019 9News Leader of the Year, has received many local and national awards for her service and leadership accomplishments including recognition from U.S. Department of Health And Human Services, U.S.

Department of Agriculture, Denver Business Journal, United Healthcare, ACLU of Colorado’s Carle Whitehead Memorial Award, Aurora Chamber of Commerce, Human Rights Campaign, Community College of Denver, National Diversity Council, Colorado Women’s Chamber, Mountain Region Black Economic Summit, City and County of Denver, Aurora Police Department, Denver Health, Denver Sheriff Department, Colorado Black Women for Political Action and the Urban Leadership Foundation.

 

Dr. Mosby Tyler holds a doctorate in the field of Organizational Leadership, a Master of Arts degree in Management and a Bachelor of Science degree in Education. 

Adrienne is the Executive Vice President, Americas Talent Management for Bain & Company.  She joined Bain’s Boston office as an Associate Consultant after graduating from Yale College in 1986.  After three years in Bain’s Boston office Adrienne took a leave to attend the Stanford Graduate School of Business where she graduated in 1991 with an MBA.  She then worked as a Consultant in Bain’s San Francisco office for two years before transferring to the Chicago office where she is still based today.  Adrienne continued in client facing roles for the next several years in Chicago working with clients in many industries including financial services, telecommunications, utilities, aerospace/defense, health care, and consumer packaged goods.

In 2001 Adrienne focused her career internally and began managing all people related functions for Bain in the Chicago office.  In 2005 she stepped into a newly created role as Director of North American Human Capital.  This new role was created to support the Office Heads and local office talent leaders in the region to oversee HR operations and to lead strategic talent initiatives and projects.  In 2011 Adrienne was promoted to Senior Director and her scope was expanded to include all Bain offices and employees in the Americas region.

Adrienne is a native of Chicago’s south side.  She grew up in the Jackson Park Highlands and attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools from Kindergarten through High School.  Today she lives in Hyde Park’s Kenwood area with her husband and three sons.  She sits on multiple charitable boards including the University of Chicago Women’s Board where she is currently serving as a member of the Steering Committee. 

Cornell William Brooks is Hauser Professor of the Practice of Nonprofit Organizations and Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Social Justice at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also Director of The William Monroe Trotter Collaborative for Social Justice at the School’s Center for Public Leadership, and Visiting Professor of the Practice of Prophetic Religion and Public Leadership at Harvard Divinity School. Brooks is the former president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a civil rights attorney, and an ordained minister.

Brooks was most recently visiting professor of social ethics, law, and justice movements at Boston University’s School of Law and School of Theology. He was a visiting fellow and director of the Campaign and Advocacy Program at the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics in 2017. Brooks served as the 18th president of the NAACP from 2014 to 2017. Under his leadership, the NAACP secured 12 significant legal victories, including laying the groundwork for the first statewide legal challenge to prison-based gerrymandering. He also reinvigorated the activist social justice heritage of the NAACP, dramatically increasing membership, particularly online and among millennials. Among the many demonstrations from Ferguson to Flint during his tenure, he conceived and led “America’s Journey for Justice” march from Selma, Alabama to Washington, D.C., over 40 days and 1000 miles.

Prior to leading the NAACP, Brooks was president and CEO of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, where he led the passage of pioneering criminal justice reform and housing legislation, six bills in less than five years. He also served as senior counsel and acting director of the Office of Communications Business Opportunities at the Federal Communications Commission, executive director of the Fair Housing Council of Greater Washington, and a trial attorney at both the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the U.S. Department of Justice. Brooks served as judicial clerk for the Chief Judge Sam J. Ervin, III, on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Brooks holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and member of the Yale Law and Policy Review, and a Master of Divinity from Boston University’s School of Theology, where he was a Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholar. Brooks has a B.A. from Jackson State University. He is the recipient of several honorary doctorates including: Boston University, Drexel University, Saint Peter’s University and Payne Theological Seminary as well as the highest alumni awards from Boston University and Boston University School of Theology. Brooks is a fourth-generation ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Samir Ibrahim is the CEO and co-founder of SunCulture. SunCulture develops and commercializes life-changing technology that solves the biggest daily challenges for the world’s 570 million smallholder farming households. Samir is recognized as a Forbes 30 Under 30, Top Conscious Business Leader by Conscious Company Media, and a World Energy Council Future Energy Leader alumnus. Samir is also on the Organizing Committee of Shikilia, a coalition of public and private sector organizations providing emergency cash transfers to low-income Kenyan communities.

Dr Hazel Wallace, founder of The Food Medic, is an NHS medical doctor, registered nutritionist (ANutR), and best-selling author.

She started ‘The Food Medic’ blog in 2012, as a medical student, in a bid to bridge the gap between conventional medical advice and the latest thoughts and developments in nutrition and other areas of lifestyle. The blog has now extended to various other platforms and publications including social media, two books, The Food Medic and The Food Medic for life, and a podcast where she interviews leading experts on how we can live healthier lives. Dr.Hazel is also a qualified personal trainer and is passionate in the use of exercise as medicine, which was the topic of her TEDX talk.

Hazel is currently working as a COVID doctor during this pandemic, treating patients acutely unwell with COVID and seeing patients in follow-up clinic with Post COVID syndrome (aka. Long COVID).

Hazel studied Medical Sciences (BSc Hons) at the University of South Wales between 2009 – 2012, graduating with first-class honours and an award for the highest academic achievement in her year cohort. Following her undergraduate degree, Hazel pursued a 4-year graduate degree in Medicine (MBBCh) at Cardiff University. During her time at medical school, she also gained her level 2 and level 3 qualification as a personal trainer. She has recently completed a masters degree in Clinical Nutrition and Public Health nutrition at University College London.

Her debut book ‘The Food Medic” was released on May 4th, 2017 and made both the UK and Irish Bestseller lists (at number 3 and number 1 respectively). Her second book “The Food Medic for Life” was released the following year in April 2018, which also made the bestseller charts. Hazel hosts her own podcast “The Food Medic” interviewing leading experts in their field and sharing actionable advice on how we can live healthier lives. Hazel is a columnist for Health and Wellbeing magazine and features on James Martin Saturday Morning Kitchen as their resident doctor.

In September 2017, Hazel was chosen as the Health Food Manufacturers’ Association ‘Blogger of the Year 2017 and in February 2018, was awarded the Wellness Blogger of the Year Award at The Wellness Awards 2018. The Food Medic was also ranked as one of the top 10 best Nutrition Blogs in the UK. In 2020 she also launched her own The Food Medic menu with the PAUL across the UK.

Hayling Price serves as Managing Director of Public Policy and External Engagement for the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), an education and antipoverty organization that serves over 20,000 children and families annually. He leads HCZ’s efforts to scale impact by supporting systems change initiatives in neighborhoods across the country. To this end he also manages the William Julius Wilson Institute, HCZ’s national hub for place-based, people-focused solutions that open pathways to social and economic mobility.

Before joining HCZ Hayling was a strategy consultant at FSG, where he developed the firm’s systems change practice, advised social sector clients on education initiatives, and helped launch collective impact efforts around the country. Prior to joining FSG Hayling worked as a federal advocate promoting public policy impacting youth and families. Through this work he supported the rollout of the federal Promise Neighborhoods initiative, providing advocacy support and technical assistance to cradle-to-career efforts nationwide. Hayling received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. He also received his Master’s in Business Administration from Harvard Business School and Master’s in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Kanika Bahl is CEO of Evidence Action where she has been on the Board since 2015.  Previously she served as Managing Director at Results for Development (R4D), where she established and led the Market Dynamics practice. The practice has increased access to products such as childhood pneumonia treatments and malaria bed nets for millions of individuals in Africa and Asia. It achieves this by aligning the interests of manufacturers, donors, and country governments to develop and execute healthcare solutions for under-served markets at scale. Bahl is on the Board of TechnoServe and previously acted as Market-Shaping Co-Chair for the UN Commission on Life Saving Commodities. Prior to R4D, Bahl served as an Executive Vice President at the Clinton Foundation Health Access Initiative (CHAI). Bahl received her MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and her BA in Mathematical Economics from Rice University.

Sasha is the Co-Founder of 60 Decibels, a social impact and customer intelligence company that helps organizations around the world better understand their customers. Our Lean Data approach makes it easy to listen to the people who matter most, allowing us to bring customer-centricity, speed and responsiveness to impact measurement. Our team of more than 800 researchers in 50 countries deploy phone-based surveys, along with SMS and online, in more than 100 languages.

 

Prior to co-founding 60 Decibels, Sasha worked for 12 years at Acumen, most recently as Chief Innovation Officer. Sasha is also a noted speaker and blogger on generosity, philanthropy and social change.

 

Sasha holds a BA from Harvard College, a Masters in Public Administration in International Development from Harvard’s Kennedy School and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Diane is Senior Director of Impact Solutions at Y Analytics, TPG’s innovative capability, which is purpose-built to understand and improve the environmental and social impacts of deployed capital. In her role, Diane oversees TPG Rise Fund’s impact assessments and management activities. Previously, Diane was Director of International Development at Social Finance UK, where she focused on structuring results-based financing mechanisms to address development challenges. Diane worked in the investment banking division of Citi Bank, with a focus on the consumer and retail sector. Diane holds an MPA/ID from the Harvard Kennedy School and a BA in Economics from Cambridge University.

Raheel Khursheed is a founder, technologist, and journalist whose work has spanned Twitter, Snapchat, CNN, and Change.org. Raheel is currently the co-founder of Laminar, a Next Gen No-Code video-streaming infrastructure platform. Prior to Laminar, Raheel founded Antrho.AI, which leveraged the expertise of anthropologists, mathematicians, and data scientists to build ethical, machine-based systems that mapped complex landscapes. Raheel also worked as Head of News, Politics, and Government for Twitter India from 2014-2018. While at Twitter he led the conception, development, and roll-out of multiple award-winning civic tech products.

Kathy Pham is a product leader, computer scientist, and founder whose work has spanned Mozilla, Google, IBM, Harris Healthcare, and the federal government. Kathy was a founding product and engineering member of the U.S. Digital Service at the White House. At the Harvard Kennedy School, Kathy created and teaches a course on Product Management and Society. Kathy is an affiliate at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center where she leads the Ethical Tech working group and a Fellow at the Shorenstein Center. At Mozilla, Kathy co-leads the Responsible Computer Science Challenge and is the co-founder of Mozilla’s Builders Fix-the-Internet Incubator.

Dr. Jasmine McNealy is an Associate Professor of Telecommunication at the University of Florida, where she teaches courses on regulation. She researches media, technology, and law with an emphasis on privacy, surveillance and data governance. Jasmine is also the Associate Director of the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project at UF, and a Faculty Associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.

Amanda has had a unique and diverse career starting out in the financial industry, moving to education as a teacher in her small hometown community, and finally spending the majority of her career in public service. She has served as the Chief of Operations at the California Department of Justice overseeing 1,000 public servants and an $850M budget, National Political Director for Secretary Clinton managing the political and outreach strategy for the 2016 Presidential Campaign, and as a Chief of Staff in the United States Senate during one of the most productive periods in our country’s history. She was named one of the most influential staffers by Roll Call and received a number of awards as the first Latina chief of staff in the history of the U.S. Senate. In addition to her policy work, she has also run for Congressional office in 2014 and Governor in 2018 believing that empowering others is at the heart of public service. She has degrees from Stanford University and Harvard Business School and serves on several non-profit boards

Martina Castro is a Development Impact Manager at CDC Group, the UK’s development finance institution. She is responsible for assessing and managing the development impact of investments and improving impact management practices in line with the latest practices and standards. Prior to joining CDC, Martina advised governments, development finance institutions and donors on private sector development and financial inclusion initiatives. Martina started her career in impact investing in Switzerland. She was advised private clients and family offices, before moving to Haiti where she worked as CFO for a social enterprise. Martina holds a Master in International Affairs from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.

Valerie Threlfall is the founder and principal of Ekouté, a consulting firm based in Oakland, CA that specializes in helping organizations to gather input and feedback from stakeholders, especially those that they seek to serve. Ekouté has led multiple strategy and listening projects for clients including Crescent Porter Hale Foundation, Feedback Labs, Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco, New Door Ventures, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

A core project for Ekouté is staffing Listen4Good, a capacity building initiative of the Fund for Shared Insight that focuses on strengthening organizations’ efforts to listen and incorporate feedback from those they serve into their work. As Listen4Good’s founding director, Valerie led the initial design of the offering and now oversees a coaching and central product and program team that supports more than 500 organizations.

Valerie brings significant expertise in data-driven decision-making, strategy, and impact measurement to her work. Prior to starting Ekouté, she was founding director of the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s (CEP’s) YouthTruth project—one of the first national efforts to gather comparative feedback from students about what’s working and not working in their schools. Prior to joining CEP, Valerie was part of the core business team that built a successful start-up biotechnology company, Momenta Pharmaceuticals. Valerie holds a joint MBA and MPP from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Dr Lucy Kimbell is Director, Social Design Institute, and Professor of Contemporary Design Practices at University of the Arts London. Her research looks at the emergence and development of ‘design thinking’ and the use of design expertise to address organisational, social and public policy issues. Lucy is currently co-investigator on two UKRI funded projects which are cross-disciplinary and co-produced with non-academic partners using design to address the contemporary issues of AI and Anti-Microbial Resistance. Lucy was AHRC design research fellow in Policy Lab, a team in the Cabinet Office in 2014-15 and worked with the EU Policy Lab team using design and futures approaches. She was previously Clark Fellow in Design Leadership at Said Business School, University of Oxford for five years and taught design thinking on the MBA for 14 years as well as being involved in executive education.

Twitter @lixindex

Vikram Gandhi is a Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School. He has developed and teaches a new course, Investing – Risk, Return, and Impact, in the Elective Curriculum of the MBA Program. He also teaches The Entrepreneurial Manager, and FIELD Global Immersion in the Required Curriculum of the MBA Program, as well as various Executive Education Programs. In addition, Vikram is a visiting faculty member of Schwarzman College and Tsinghua University, Beijing. He is a member of the Impact Co-Laboratory focusing on research in the area of Impact Investing.

Vikram is the Founder of Asha Impact, an impact investing platform and is a Senior Advisor to The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. He is a member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) since 1997 and has been a  part of the New York, Hong Kong and Mumbai chapters.  He has spent 23 years in investment banking at Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School (Class of 1989) where he was designated a Baker Scholar, and a B.Com with high distinction from the University of Mumbai. He is also a qualified Chartered Accountant.

Jon Miller is a partner at Brunswick Group, where he co-leads the global Business & Society practice –  which helps companies demonstrate financial value alongside societal value, hand in hand. He is the founder of Open For Business, a coalition of 30 global companies promoting LGBT+ equality, focusing on countries that are hostile to LGBT+ rights. His reports on the economic case for LGBT+ inclusion have helped to reframe the debate, and he is listed as one of the Financial Times’ Top 100 LGBT+ Executives. He writes regularly on the role of business in societal issues, such as inequality, climate change and mental health. He has spoken at high-profile events at Davos, the UN Human Rights Forum, the Milken Institute Global Conference, and Chatham House. He is a regular speaker at Pride events all over the world. At Brunswick, he co-leads the global Business & Society team, and he is the co-author, with Lucy Parker, of Everybody’s Business, which looks at how big business can be a force for positive social progress.

Paloma is an experienced advocate for accountable capitalism and worked extensively with financial institutions and multinational firms to improve their human rights performance. Paloma currently serves as a Senior Consultant to the UN Business and Human Rights in Technology (B-Tech) Project, where she provides strategic advice to institutional investors on human rights risks in digital technology business models and due diligence to address these risks. She is also an advisor to the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights where she provides advice on the roles and responsibilities of institutional investors in driving responsible business conduct. Prior to these roles, she was the Director of the Investor Alliance for Human Rights, where she worked with financial institutions to promote responsible investment grounded in respect for peoples’ fundamental rights.

Ana Zbona has been managing the Civic Freedoms & Human Rights Defenders programme at the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre since 2016. The project explores the role of business in these spheres, and is known for its database of attacks on human rights defenders, working on business-related human rights issues. During the part five years, Ana held positions in steering groups of key civil society coalitions, such as Vuka! and Defending Land and Environmental Defenders coalition, and is also currently serving as a facilitator of the Zero Tolerance Initiative. She is one of the associates in the JustLabs initiative, and has lectured as a guest lecturer on business and human rights at the Global Campus of Human Rights. Before joining the Resource Centre, Ana worked as a manager of a fair trade/community development program with the NGO Mosqoy, working with indigenous communities in the Peruvian Andes. Prior to that, Ana was an advocacy assistant in the EU advocacy team of Human Rights Watch in Brussels, a research assistant for the Slovenian Human Rights Ombudswoman, and a fellow at the EU Delegation to the UN and at the Slovenian Mission to the UN. Ana holds a Master’s degree from the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation (EIUC), Italy, and Lund University, Sweden. She has a BA in International Development and International Relations from Saint Mary’s University, Canada. Her mother tongue is Slovenian; she also speaks fluent English and Spanish, intermediate French and Croatian, and a little bit of Italian. Ana is a national of Slovenia.