Speakers

Christopher Aidun joined E+Co, a nonprofit that has promoted clean energy in emerging markets by investing in small and growing businesses since 1994, as Managing Director in 2011. Mr. Aidun was first introduced to E+Co while a senior private equity partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, where he served as E+Co’s pro bono counsel. During his thirty year career, Mr. Aidun has represented clients in investing, restructuring and insolvency transactions, including venture capital, private equity and mergers and acquisitions. As Managing Director, Mr. Aidun led E+Co’s restructuring and the launch by E+Co of Persistent Energy Partners, LLC, a private equity fund manager that will continue E+Co’s work in clean energy and emerging markets.

Deji Akinyanju started his career with Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting) in London, after which he embarked on his entrepreneurial journey with activities in IT, trading, logistics, food, and hospitality within the UK, South Africa, Rwanda, Ghana, and Nigeria.

In 2001 Mr. Akinyanju founded the Food Concepts Group and has since been its CEO. Since inception his aim has been to help revolutionize the food sector in West Africa by providing the market with world-class, modern African food and restaurant brands. Today, Food Concepts Plc has interests in quick service restaurants (QSR), bakeries, property, trading and most recently poultry farming. His journey began with Food Concepts pioneering the food court concept in Nigeria, with the import of two established QSR franchises from South Africa. Mr. Akinyanju soon realized that developing his own brands would be more profitable and would enable more flexibility in terms of tailoring both brand and product to suit local market taste profiles. In 2004 Chicken Republic was born. Just seven years later, Chicken Republic already has 65 stores across Nigeria as well as in Ghana, and is proud of its hard earned reputation as the fastest growing chicken QSR brand in West Africa, the number 1 chicken QSR brand in Nigeria (both in terms of revenues and number of outlets) and one of Nigeria’s top 20 brands overall (Financial Standards Awards 2009).

In addition, Food Concepts also comprises Butterfield Bakery Nigeria (includes 9 plant bakeries in 8 Nigerian states), Pizza Republic (a new Pizza chain in upscale Lagos) and Reeds (a fine-dining Thai fusion restaurant). Moreover, in order to facilitate the group’s innovative backward and forward integration strategies, Food Concepts is in the first phase of developing Free Range Farms (a state-of-the-art poultry farm and poultry processing plant). Finally, the company also includes a lucrative property division (charged with the acquisition and development of the group’s property needs).

Mr. Akinyanju has a BA Information Systems (UK) and an MBA from Cardiff (Wales). He also serves as Director on the board of several companies and associations including the Nigerian International Franchise Association and Xerox Limited.

Robert Annibale manages Citi’s partnerships with global, national and local organizations to support community development through economic empowerment and financial inclusion, focusing on responsible and accessible finance, education and asset building; neighborhood preservation and revitalization; access to college education; and small business and microenterprise development. Mr. Annibale also leads Citi’s commercial relationships with microfinance and other financial institutions, networks and investors, working across Citi’s businesses and geographies, to expand access to financial services in underserved communities.
Since joining Citi, Mr. Annibale has held a number of senior treasury, risk and corporate positions in Athens, Bahrain, Kenya, London and New York. He has served on many external boards and councils, including the Board of Advisors for the United Nations Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor. He currently is a member of the Policy Committee of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at the University of Oxford. He represents Citi on the Boards of the Microfinance Information Exchange, the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CSFI), the US FDIC Chairman’s Committee on Economic Empowerment, the Citi Foundation and the Executive Committee of CGAP (World Bank).
Mr. Annibale completed his BA degrees in History and Political Science at Vassar College, in New York, and his Master’s Degree in African Studies (History) at the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies.

Donnel Baird ’13  is a rising second year student at Columbia Business School, an OSI Echoing Green MBA Fellow and a first place winner of the National Net Impact Business case competition.  He spent 3 years working with underserved communities on behalf of an affordable housing developer as a community organizer in Brownsville, Brooklyn and 2 years as a voter contact director for Obama for America. Mr. Baird worked with Change to Win, a national labor federation, to advise the Department of Energy in the allocation of $6.5 bn of energy efficiency financing under the stimulus, and partnered with banks, utilities, and the Mayor of DC to invest $100m in city financing for energy efficiency retrofits and job creation for underserved communities in the District of Columbia. He grew up in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn and Atlanta, Georgia and majored in African American studies and American History at Duke.

Kythzia Barrera studied Industrial Design at Universidad Iberoamericana, México City. After working in the Interior Design field, she moved abroad to pursue her masters studies at the Man and Humanity Master course, Social and Sustainable Design at the Design Academy Eindhoven, in The Netherlands.

Her passion for crafts took her to Kenya, Brazil, Finland and Japan to pursue research on crafts as social phenomena in modern societies. She works with her colleague and husband, Diego Mier y Terán, who is co-founder and director of Innovando la Tradición AC and Colectivo 1050 Grados. Both organizations support the integral development of pottery communities in the Mexican state of Oaxaca by developing various projects in the field of product development, technology transfer, export market and promotion of traditional pottery.

In her work, Ms. Barrera explores the bridges between art, crafts and design to generate human and social changes. Her work has been exhibited and published in the United States, Holland, Portugal, Kenya and Mexico. Today, she lives and works at Oaxaca, where besides tracing countless projects for Innovating Tradition, Ms. Barrera is conceptualizing a craftsman school, with the idea of offering official, social and professional recognition to different craftsman guilds. She is also developing the technological and ecological development branch of Innovando la Tradicion, in collaboration with National Geographic and Legacy Foundation, which aims to introduce Eco-Leña or Briquetts (ecological substitute for wood) into pottery communities in Mexico and Latin America. Eco-Leña has been tested in 50 countries with extraordinary results improving the quality of life of communities in a vulnerable condition. Throughout her career she has received different scholarships and grants such as FONCA (Mexican National Fund for Culture and Arts), CONACYT (Mexican National Council of Science and Technology) and the Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional (Spanish Agency for International Cooperation).

She is also a Sustainable Design Professor at Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City and a consultant for The Indigenous Culture Department at the same university and collaborates with craftsmen unions around Mexico.

Diana Barrett founded The Fledgling Fund in 2005 after a long career at Harvard University, where she taught in both the Harvard Business School and the School of Public Health. At Harvard Business School, she was a member of the Social Enterprise core group where she taught Business Leadership in the Social Sector as well as in various executive programs. Her areas of interest at Harvard included the use of public private partnerships for global poverty reduction and specifically, in addressing the social and personal burden of disease such as HIV/AIDS. She received both her Masters in Business Administration and her Doctorate in Business Administration from the Harvard Business School. The Fledgling Fund provides an opportunity to further those interests by focusing on innovative approaches to complex social issues including the use of media to ignite social change. In addition to leading The Fledgling Fund, Ms. Barrett serves on the Boards of the International Center for Photography, the Institute for Philanthropy in the U.K., the Social Change Film Forum at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Advisory Board of the Acumen Fund.

Izzet Bensusan ’08 is the President & CEO of Karbone, a renewable energy and environmental commodities brokerage, project finance, research and advisory firm based in New York City. Mr. Bensusan plays an active role in Karbone’s operational activities, from sourcing capital partners for projects, to development of proprietary research, to structuring of OTC contracts for environmental credits. He is a frequent speaker at emissions market and sustainability conferences, and a vocal advocate of policies for the uptake of renewable energy and the shaping of sustainable economies. Mr. Bensusan is also active in the academic community, where he teaches topics in environmental finance and emissions markets at first-tier universities and specialty executive institutions.

Throughout his career Mr. Bensusan has been involved in entrepreneurial ventures focused on cutting edge markets. Prior to Karbone, Mr. Bensusan was a partner at Net2s, a global consulting firm now a part of British Telecom, where he built the privacy and IT security division and established it as the firm’s leading practice. At Net2s, he managed a team of over 100 consultants and engineers servicing top financial firms located primarily in North America. Before joining Net2s, Mr. Bensusan was a founding member of Parlo.com, the first online language-learning experience.

Mr. Bensusan holds an MBA from Columbia University and an MA and BA in international economics and finance from Brandeis University. He is a co-founder of the Entrepreneurs Network of Brandeis University Alumni in New York and serves on the board of the NYC Association for Energy Economics.

Professor Melissa Berman has been the President and CEO of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Inc. since January of 2001. A frequent speaker, Ms. Berman has been profiled in The New York Times and the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Her ideas and views are featured regularly in the Economist, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Financial Times, USA Today, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy. She has been interviewed on the Today Show, NPR, CNBC-TV, and Bloomberg. She has written articles for The New York Times, Across the Board, The Miami Herald and other national publications.

Ms. Berman is a director of the Foundation Center and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. She is an adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s Business School. She serves as a member of the Advisory Board for the Social Enterprise Program at Columbia Business School and is also a judge for the Ron Brown Award for Corporate Citizenship, a presidential award. Ms. Berman holds a B.A. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Professor Travis Bradford is the president and founder of the Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development, a nonprofit organization focused on harnessing the power of the business sector to develop cost-effective and sustainable solutions in technologies, including energy, water, food, and recycling. Through the Institute, he helped found Greentech Media and the Carbon War Room.

Mr. Bradford is also currently the managing partner at Atlas Capital Investments, LP, a global hedge fund dedicated to investing in sustainable technology companies in energy, water, food, and materials. He consults with governments, NGOs, and corporations on strategy and execution.

Mr. Bradford has lectured on finance, entrepreneurship, and alternative energy economics at many leading universities in the U.S, and has been a professor at the University of Chicago and Duke University MBA programs on Energy Innovation.
His published works include Solar Revolution: The Economic Transformation of the Global Energy Industry, published by the MIT Press, and “Private Equity: Sources and Uses” in the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, in addition to dozens of global market research reports on the energy industry.

Bradford earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from Georgia State University in 1992 and an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business in 1996. In 2006, he received an MPA degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He has previously worked at the Federal Reserve and as a partner at various public and private equity investment firms. He is an Associate Professor of Practice in International and Public Affairs at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs.

 Phil Buchanan is president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) and was the first chief executive of the organization. At CEP, Mr. Buchanan has built a research team, secured funding, developed a research agenda, and managed the development and introduction of new performance assessment tools. Under his leadership, the organization has grown into the leading provider of comparative performance data to large foundations and other grantmaking institutions. CEP’s research reports have shaped practice and understanding among foundation CEOs and trustees, and its assessment tools have been used by 200 foundations located in the United States, Canada, the UK, and Israel. The organization has been credited with bringing the voice of grantees and other stakeholders into the foundation boardroom and with contributing to an increased emphasis on clear goals, coherent strategies, and relevant performance indicators as the necessary ingredients to maximize effectiveness and impact. He holds an MBA from Harvard University and received his undergraduate degree in Government from Wesleyan University. Mr. Buchanan serves on the board of Great Nonprofits.

Scott Budde has over 29 years of experience in a wide range of financial services position, concentrating on the use the development of and investment in community development financial institutions, both in the US and internationally.  He is currently researching the formation of Better Harvest Federal Credit Union (in organization) – the first depository in the USA to be focused primarily on small-scale sustainable agriculture. The research project looking at the formation of BHFCU operates under the fiscal sponsorship of the Third Sector New England (an umbrella 501 c 3 in Boston) and is funded by grants from the John Merck Fund, the Jesse and Betsy Fink Foundation and individual donors.

Prior to his current work, Mr. Budde worked for 18 years in the investment management arm of TIAA-CREF, a $450 billion investment firm focused on retirement savings for employees of educational and non-profit institutions.  Mr. Budde  also worked as an Equity Analyst for 6 years before beginning at TIAA-CREF, covering public market financial services stocks and as a Portfolio Manager responsible for the asset allocation of the Company’s lifecycle funds. Mr. Budde also has 12 years of banking and financial services consulting experience in the US and abroad.  He is the author of Compelling Returns: a practical guide to Socially Responsible Investing Strategies published by Wiley and Sons in 2008.

He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation and was a Fulbright Scholar in Hungary.  He has an AB in Economics from Bowdoin College and a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University.

Professor Antony Bugg-Levine is the CEO of Nonprofit Finance Fund, a national nonprofit and financial intermediary dedicated to mobilizing and deploying resources effectively to build a just and vibrant society. In this role, Mr. Bugg-Levine oversees more than $225 million of capital under management and a national consulting practice, and works with a range of philanthropic, private sector and government partners to develop and implement innovative approaches to financing social change. Mr. Bugg-Levine writes and speaks regularly on the evolution of the social sector and the emergence of the global impact investing industry. He is the co-author of Impact Investing: Transforming How We Make Money While Making a Difference (Wiley, 2011). 

As a Managing Director at the Rockefeller Foundation, Mr. Bugg-Levine designed and led the Foundation’s initiative, Harnessing the Power of Impact Investing, and oversaw its program-related investment portfolio. He is the founding board chair of the Global Impact Investing Network, and convened the 2007 meeting that coined the phrase “impact investing.” 

Previously, Mr. Bugg-Levine was the Country Director for Kenya and Uganda for TechnoServe, a nongovernmental organization that develops and implements business solutions to rural poverty. Earlier in his career, as a consultant with McKinsey, he advised Fortune 100 clients in the financial services and health care sectors and helped develop new frameworks for incorporating social dynamics into corporate strategy. A native of South Africa, he served in the late 1990s as the acting communications director at the South African Human Rights Commission and as a speechwriter and media strategist for the African National Congress’s 1999 election campaign. He is an associate adjunct professor in the Social Enterprise Program at the Columbia Business School. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, Ahadi.

Kate Campana manages Malaria No More’s portfolio of investments in Africa. These investments include MNM’s signature Surround Sound communications programs in Senegal and Tanzania. They also include investments in financing mechanisms for speedy mosquito net delivery, country capacity development, and commodities.

Ms. Campana has spent a career between the private and the public sectors. She began her career as a Peace Corps volunteer in a small village in eastern in Congo, where she learned first hand the ravages of malaria. She then alternated professional stints in finance, law and international economic development. As an international development professional, Ms. Campana worked throughout Africa and at various times lived in Congo, Uganda and Sudan. She managed the east and north African operations of an international non-profit which provided advisory services for small and medium sized businesses in rural Africa.

As a lawyer, Ms. Campana worked on Wall Street with a major international law firm, advising major financial institutions on complex cross border financial transactions. She also served as Deputy Director of the Emerging Markets Traders Association where she advised leading financial institutions on how to navigate foreign fixed income markets.

Ms. Campana subsequently served as a community banker for a Bankers Trust in New York City, structuring small business, housing and real estate deals in the inner city.

Ms. Campana holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Texas A&M University and a law degree from Georgetown University. She lives in New York City with her husband, James and two children, Melanie and Samantha.

Steve Corneli is NRG Energy’s Senior Vice President for Sustainability, Strategy and Policy. He oversees NRG’s strategic sustainability and policy initiatives, with a primary focus on clean technologies and sustainable enterprises. Mr. Corneli has previously served as NRG’s Senior Vice President of Market and Climate Policy, where he was responsible for NRG’s climate change and related policy efforts, as NRG’s Vice President of Regulatory and Government Affairs, and as Director of Regulatory Policy. He is a member of the board of the Climate Action Reserve, a premier US certifier of greenhouse gas offset methodologies.

Prior to joining NRG, Mr. Corneli served in the Minnesota Attorney General’s office as an energy policy analyst and then as the manager of the office’s utility consumer advocate division. He also has worked at the law firm of Leonard, Street and Deinard on behalf of utility and independent power producer clients, and was an adjunct faculty member of the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. Earlier in his career, he operated a 600 acre family farm in Wisconsin for more than a decade.

Mr. Corneli has a Master’s degree in public affairs from the Humphrey Institute with a concentration in energy, environment and technology policy, and has taken coursework in the University of Minnesota’s doctoral program in Applied Economic. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree from St. John’s College.

Payal Dalal joined Standard Chartered in July 2008 as the Head of Public Affairs for the Americas. Her main responsibilities include fostering positive relationships with external stakeholders in the government and community, advising on the Bank’s involvement in international development, especially as it involves economic development, women’s empowerment, and the environment, and sharing the Bank’s unique perspective from the emerging markets.

With a professional background in international philanthropy and politics, Ms. Dalal has worked for a wide range of public sector organisations including the World Affairs Council, the Global Philanthropy Forum and the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Ms. Dalal also worked on foreign policy for the Office of President William J. Clinton and remains involved with the work of the Clinton Global Initiative. Most recently, Ms. Dalal worked on the launch of the new AT&T Universal Savings and Reward Card for Citigroup’s credit card business.

A Texas native, Ms. Dalal has an AB with honours from Stanford University and an MBA and an MPA from New York University.

Cathy Dolan is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) for the Opportunity Finance Network (OFN). Ms. Dolan joined OFN in September 2010 as COO. With a decade of experience in community development finance and almost three decades in banking, Ms. Dolan brings exceptional expertise, knowledge of the field, and management experience to her role at OFN. As COO, Ms. Dolan’s responsibilities include business development, executive management, and public representation of OFN. Ms. Dolan joined OFN from Wells Fargo, where she was a Senior Vice President and Director of Community Lending and Investment for the Eastern U.S. and New Markets Tax Credits. She holds an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, and a B.A. from Drake University in Des Moines, IA.

Andrea Flynn is Vice President of the MAC AIDS Fund (MAF), the charitable foundation affiliated with MAC Cosmetics. Ms. Flynn joined MAF in 2007 and plays a key role in the Fund’s senior leadership team supporting the Senior Vice President in the development and execution of its global grant-making and communications strategy and management of the Fund’s operations. Currently, the Fund gives away over $30 million annually particularly in the 72 countries in which the company has affiliate businesses.

In addition, Ms. Flynn is a member of the Global Steering Group for the Global Plan to Eliminate New HIV infections serving as co-chair of the resource mobilization group. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Funders Concerned about AIDS and the Africa Grantmakers’ Affinity Group.

Prior to joining MAF, Ms. Flynn directed global health programs for the Advisory Board Foundation in Washington DC overseeing the Foundation’s partnerships in the U.S., the Philippines, Russia and South Africa. She has also served as a consultant to the William J. Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative in the Caribbean. Ms. Flynn began her career as a clinical social worker in the bone marrow transplant and cardiovascular intensive care units at Boston Children’s Hospital and at Cancer Care Inc.

Ms. Flynn received her Master’s in Business Administration from New York University’s Stern School of Business with concentrations in strategy and multinational business management. She also obtained her Master’s in Clinical Social Work from the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from The College of the Holy Cross.

Professor Ron Gonen ’04 is the Co-Founder of RecycleBank. During his tenure as CEO from 2004-2010, RecycleBank grew from an idea to a company with contracts with over 100 cities and a service that rewards millions of people for their positive green actions across North America and the UK. Mr. Gonen and RecycleBank were recognized by a number of leading business and environmental organizations including: the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader in 2007, the World Economic Forum as a Technology Pioneer in 2009, the United Nations Environment Programme as a Champion of the Earth in 2009, The Pennsylvania Environment Council with the Philadelphia Sustainability Award in 2007, The Social Venture Network with their Innovation Award in 2007, O Magazine as one of their Eco Role Models of 2009, Time Magazine as Social Responsibility Pioneer in 2009, U.S. Conference of Mayors – Outstanding Excellence in Public/Private Partnerships in 2009, and the Wall Street Journal as one of their top 10 Venture Backed Clean Tech Companies of 2009 & 2010. Mr. Gonen is currently a member of RecycleBank’s Board of Directors.

Prior to RecycleBank, Mr. Gonen was a Senior Consultant at Deloitte Consulting. He was a co-recipient of Deloitte Consulting’s National Impact Award for the development of a consulting unit that provided pro bono service to NGO’s. Mr. Gonen is a frequent guest speaker on the role of business and the environment at universities, conferences and companies. He is a past member of the World Economic Forum’s Council on Sustainable Consumption and is currently a Research Associate at the Earth Engineering Center at Columbia University and a Henry Catto Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Mr. Gonen was a recipient of the 2010 University Medal of Excellence from Columbia University, which is awarded annually to an alumnus under the age of 45 for outstanding achievement in scholarship, public service and professional life. In 2011, Mr. Gonen joined the faculty at Columbia Business School as an Adjunct Professor. Mr. Gonen is a Founding Partner of Linhardt Design Studio, a jewelry company that designs and manufactures fine jewelry with a focus on high design merged with sustainable principles. The Linhardt Design store was recently chosen as the “Critic’s Pick” by New York Magazine. He serves on the Board of Directors of Fitango and JobRooster and is on the Board of Advisors of Source4Style and DailyFeats. Mr. Gonen received a BA in History from UMass-Amherst where he graduated with Departmental Honors and was a Massachusetts Commonwealth Scholar. He received an MBA from Columbia Business School where he was a Eugene M. Lang Center for Entrepreneurship award winner.

Sam Gregory is an internationally recognized human rights advocate, trainer and video producer who helps people use the power of the moving image and participatory technologies to create human rights change. He directs WITNESS’ programmatic work, and leads on the Cameras Everywhere initiative – focused on empowering millions of people to use video effectively, safely and ethically. In 2010, he was a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Resident on the future of video-based advocacy, and in 2012 he was named a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. He teaches on human rights and participatory media as an Adjunct Lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Mr. Gregory has created training tools and programs including the WITNESS Video Advocacy Institute (an intensive two-week training program), and was lead editor on Video for Change: A Guide for Advocacy and Activism (Pluto Press, 2005). Over the past decade, Mr. Gregory has worked extensively with human rights activists, particularly in Latin America and Asia, integrating video into impactful campaigns on a range of civil, political, social, economic and cultural human rights issues. Videos he has co-produced have been screened to decision-makers in the U.S. Congress, the U.K. Houses of Parliament, the United Nations and at film festivals worldwide, and have contributed to changes in policy, practice and law.

Widely known for his expertise in emerging forms of advocacy, Mr. Gregory has most recently presented at Re:Publica, Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference, and SXSW Interactive. He publishes regularly in human rights, social entrepreneurship and visual media journals including most recently “Cameras Everywhere: Ubiquitous Video Documentation of Human Rights, New Forms of Video Advocacy and Concerns about Safety, Security, Dignity and Consent” in the Journal of Human Rights Practice (OUP, 2010). A graduate of the University of Oxford, he completed a Masters in Public Policy as a Kennedy Memorial Scholar at Harvard. Mr. Gregory is on the Board of the U.S. Campaign for Burma, and the Advisory Board of Games for Change. Follow his blogging here.

Charles “Chuck” Harris joined the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation in September 2011 as Portfolio Manager and Director of Capital Aggregation. In this role, Mr. Harris oversees and guides the Foundation’s capital aggregation activities and manages relationships with various grantees. Before joining the Foundation, Mr. Harris co-founded and served for five years as Executive Partner of SeaChange Capital Partners, a financial intermediary designed to enhance the flows of capital to outstanding nonprofits serving children and youth in low-income communities in the United States.

Mr. Harris spent 23 years in the banking business before retiring in 2002 from his position as a partner and managing director at Goldman Sachs, where he served as co-head of the East Coast High Technology Group in the firm’s Investment Banking Division and as co-head of Corporate Finance in the Americas. He sits on the boards of several nonprofit and philanthropic organizations and has served extensively on the boards of both private and public for-profit corporations.

Mr. Harris has spoken broadly on the role of capital formation in advancing social change. He is a graduate of Harvard College and holds a master’s degree in finance from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Professor Geoffrey Heal is the Donald C. Waite III Professor of Social Enterprise at Columbia Business School, and is noted for contributions to economic theory and resource and environmental economics. He holds bachelors (first class), masters, and doctoral degrees from Cambridge University, where he studied at Churchill College and taught at Christ’s College. He holds an Honorary Doctorate from the Universite’ de Paris Dauphine.

Author of 18 books and about 200 articles, Mr. Heal is a fellow of the Econometric Society, past president of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, recipient of its prize for publications of enduring quality, and a Life Fellow, a director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and a founder and director of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations, developers of the REDD policy for reducing deforestation by awarding carbon credits for forest conservation. Recent books include Nature and the Marketplace, Valuing the Future, When Principles Pay, and Whole Earth Economics (forthcoming).

Mr. Heal chaired a committee of the National Academy of Sciences on valuing ecosystem services, was a commissioner of the Pew Oceans Commission, is a coordinating lead author of the IPCC, was a member of President Sarkozy’s Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, was a member of the advisory board for the World Bank’s 2010 World Development Report and the United Nations Environment Program’s 2011 Human Development Report, and acts as an advisor to the World Bank on its Green Growth project.

He has been a principal in two start-up companies — one a consulting firm and the other in software and telecommunications — and, until recently, was a member of the Investment Committee of a green private equity group. He teaches MBA courses on “Current Developments in Energy Markets,” “Business and Society: Doing Well by Doing Good?”; and “The Business of Sustainability.”

Anita Househam is a Policy & Legal Adviser for the United Nations Global Compact. In this capacity, she oversees the UN Global Compact integrity measures and advises companies and other stakeholders on their policy commitment to the Global Compact.  She is also issue manager for the supply chain sustainability workstream, and provides programme management support for various initiatives under the human rights and labour-related principles of the Global Compact, including the Children’s Rights and Business Principles.

Before joining the Global Compact in February 2010, Ms. Househam worked as a Client Relationship Manager for a London-based sustainable investment research organisation as well as Programme Coordinator for the MFA Forum, a multistakeholder initiative focusing on sustainable supply chains in the textile industry, at AccountAbility.

Ms. Househam has an Honours LLB (Bachelor of Laws) in European Legal Studies from Lancaster University and graduated in 2005 with a Masters of International Business Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

Jeannine Jacokes currently serves as senior policy advisor to the Community Development Bankers Association. Ms. Jacokes also currently serves as Executive Director of Partners for the Common Good. She served for more than six years as a senior member of the management team at the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund. Prior to the CDFI Fund, Ms. Jacokes was a senior policy advisor at the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. Ms. Jacokes also served for two years at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. For three years, Ms. Jacokes was the President of the Board of Directors of the Women in Housing and Finance Foundation, a District of Columbia community foundation that promotes financial literacy among low-income individuals. Ms. Jacokes holds a Masters degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and B.A. from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Mrs. Jacokes is Secretary of the CDFI Coalition.

Simon Kilmurry served as chief operating officer of American Documentary for six years before assuming the role of executive director in Fall 2006. Since joining AmDoc in 1999, he has played a key role in helping to set strategic direction for the organization and implementing new initiatives, including the Diverse Voices Project, POV’s co-production initiative in support of emerging filmmakers; POV’s Borders, PBS’ Webby Award-winning online series; and True Lives, a second-run series for independent documentaries on public television. In addition, he worked to secure pioneering partnerships with both Netflix and Docurama to expand the distribution opportunities for POV filmmakers and enhance branding for POV Previously, Mr. Kilmurry was associate director at Teachers & Writers Collaborative, a nonprofit literary arts and education organization and publisher, where he is now a member of the board of directors. He has also served as a board member and treasurer for Elders Share the Arts and East Harlem Block Schools, and as an informal advisor and funding panel member for other organizations including the New York City Center for Arts Education, the Association for Independent Video and Filmmakers and New York State Council on the Arts. Mr. Kilmurry attended the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Columbia University Business School’s Institute for Not-for-Profit Management.

Alina Kogan ’12 is working to unlock clean, productive and affordable energy for millions of households and small businesses in emerging markets as part of the Powerhive management team.

Ms. Kogan began her career as a social entrepreneur while still in college by launching a school in Afghanistan and leading community development projects in Mexico and Brazil. As a strategy consultant at Dalberg, she advised a variety of multilateral organizations, foundations and corporate clients on their international development efforts. Notable engagements included helping the IFC launch the SME Ventures funds in frontier markets and evaluating renewable energy investments in Central America for the IDB. In her current role as Director of Finance for Powerhive, Ms. Kogan leverages her experience in international venture capital at Fanisi (East African VC fund), investment banking at Citi, and impact investing at Pershing Square Foundation.

Originally from Russia, Ms. Kogan is fluent in four languages and has lived and worked on five continents. She holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and an AB in public policy and international affairs from Princeton University, where she was awarded the Labouisse Prize for public service.

Amnon Levav is a co-founder and Managing Director of SIT. He has personally facilitated hundreds of projects and workshops with companies worldwide, and is a popular keynote speaker on the topic of innovation. As co-founder and co-developer of the method, Mr. Levav is naturally an expert in all of SIT’s applications – Problem Solving, Marketing Communications, Product Development and Strategy – and a designer and implementer of programs for organizational innovation, transforming companies from within. Mr. Levav facilitates in four languages – Hebrew, English, Spanish and Portuguese – and can ask for a beer in several others.

Mr. Levav leads SIT’s expertise in social innovation and in what the company calls SIT Futures – creating new business models based on SIT’s intellectual property.

Previously, Mr. Levav was Editor in Chief of Status – The Monthly for Management Thinking, and before that he spent six years studying Mathematics, Philosophy, Cognitive Psychology and Linguistics at the Hebrew University. Earlier, Mr. Levav accumulated other useful experiences, working as a garage mechanic, construction worker, room-service waiter, and, most dear to his heart, as a social worker with juvenile delinquents, where he believes he learned more about coaching and inspiring for high potential under rigorous conditions, than any professional training could have taught him.

Chris Librie is the Director of Environmental and Health Initiatives at HP.  He is responsible for leveraging and aligning HP’s capabilities in environmental sustainability and health care into a focused set of global programs that contributes to HP’s top-line growth, brand and reputation. Mr. Librie leads a global team to articulate the HP sustainability strategy with a single voice, implement HP-led initiatives that have a positive impact on the environment, and manage the development of company-wide environmental goals.

And with the support of recognized leaders in global health as partners, Mr. Librie and his team collaborate to drive transformational programs which strengthen the quality of health systems and accelerate access to health care.

Mr. Librie’s background includes branding, marketing, general management and environmental experience. Prior to joining HP, Mr. Librie worked at S.C. Johnson & Son, where he most recently served as Director, Global Sustainability. There, Mr. Librie led a team to drive the company’s global sustainability strategy, establish company targets and drive key projects. In addition to S.C. Johnson, he has held senior positions at Diageo Brands and Unilever.

Mr. Librie graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in History. He then earned his MBA in International Business at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Scott MacMillan joined BRAC USA this past September to handle external communications. He is working to give BRAC the recognition it deserves in North American media outlets and beyond. A former business journalist, Mr. MacMillan comes to BRAC with 15 years of experience working in developing countries, covering Eastern Europe’s transition from communism while based in Prague for nine years before moving to the Middle East. His recent writing project (covered at WanderingSavage.com) took him from Tangier to Cape Town overland, and then northward to Nairobi, traveling entirely on public transport. He holds a BA in English from Amherst College.

Touré McCluskey is the Founder of OkCopay, the pricing search engine for medical procedures. OkCopay empowers people who are paying out-of-pocket to understand their medical care options and “shop” on the basis of price, convenience, and quality.

Mr. McCluskey is a veteran entrepreneur with deep expertise in health care, marketing, and sales. Prior to founding OkCopay, Mr. McCluskey was Managing Director of First Mile Health, a corporate wellness consultancy. He is most passionate about finding ways to help people find affordable medical care. Mr. McCluskey received an MBA from Stanford School of Business and a BA in History from Harvard University.Mr. McCluskey is a 2012 Echoing Green Fellow.

Sydney Morris is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Educators 4 Excellence (E4E), a teacher-led organization that seeks to ensure that teachers’ voices are meaningfully included in the policy decisions that impact their classrooms and careers. Launched in 2010, E4E has quickly grown into a national movement of over 7,000 teachers learning about education policy, networking with colleagues and policymakers, and taking action around policies that will lift student achievement and the teaching profession.

Prior to co-founding E4E with her colleague, Evan Stone, Ms. Morris spent three years teaching second and third grade at a high-needs elementary school in the Bronx, NY. She led her students to average gains of 1.5 years of academic growth in both reading and math, and 100% passing rates on the statewide ELA and Math exams. While teaching, Ms. Morris designed and led the school’s first-ever after-school ballet program. Ms. Morris also earned a master’s degree in teaching from Pace University.

She entered the classroom, by way of Teach For America, after graduating from Tulane University with a BA degree in political science and a concentration in international relations. While in New Orleans, she was actively involved in the New Orleans Public School system following Hurricane Katrina and worked with the nonprofit New Orleans Outreach to develop free after-school dance programs for low-income public school students.

Daniel Nissenbaum ’88 is the director of CRA Programs for the Urban Investment Group (UIG), overseeing compliance functions and special initiatives, including the capital component of the GS 10,000 Small Businesses program. UIG, a division of Goldman Sachs Bank USA, provides financing for community development projects and manages the Bank’s Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) program. Mr. Nissenbaum joined Goldman Sachs in 2009 in this role, and was named managing director in 2010. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Nissenbaum was a senior vice president overseeing an affordable housing finance team in HSBC Bank’s real estate division. His career has focused on real estate and community development finance, and spanned positions at Chemical Bank, Chase Manhattan Bank, J.P. Morgan and Merrill Lynch. In these roles, Mr. Nissenbaum has led transaction teams, directed bank CRA regulatory and compliance groups, and overseen philanthropy and community outreach programs. Mr. Nissenbaum serves as a board member for the Center for Housing Policy, an affiliate of the National Housing Conference, and for the Community Restoration Corporation, a de novo national non profit which is developing solutions to address the home foreclosure crisis.  Mr. Nissenbaum previously led 
two national organizations as board chair: the National Housing Conference, a national coalition for affordable housing, and the Low Income Investment Fund, one of the nation’s leading community development finance institutions.

Mr. Nissenbaum earned a BA in Urban Studies from Grinnell College in 1983 and an MBA from Columbia Business School in 1988. He and his wife, Penelope, have two daughters and live in New York City.

Nitzan Pelman opened the New York region of Citizen Schools in September of 2007 and serves as its founding Executive Director. In her role as ED, she oversees a team comprised of 100 staff members who in turn work with over 1,000 low income students in six public schools across three boroughs. She is also responsible for raising 5.1 million dollars in FY13. Citizen Schools was founded in 1995 to bring new solutions to the education reform landscape and continues to re-imagine the school day.

Prior to joining Citizen Schools, Ms. Pelman worked at the New York City Department of Education for four years in the Klein/Bloomberg administration. In that time, she served as the Assistant Director of the Office of New Teacher Induction and helped create a mentoring program for 6,500 new teachers. In her final year at the DOE, she developed, designed, and implemented the citywide “learning environment survey” administered to 1.8 million people through the Office of Accountability. Previously she served as the first Director of Development for Teach for America New York.
Ms. Pelman is a graduate of New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and Stern College for Women.

Clint Plummer serves as Vice President of Development for Deepwater Wind, where he manages the company’s pre-construction project development activities.

Prior to joining Deepwater Wind, Mr. Plummer served as Vice President of Asset Development and Underwriting for Endurant Energy, and before that, as founder and President of Redwood Power Company, which he sold to Endurant. Mr. Plummer’s career includes experience in project origination and development, financial structuring and negotiations, as well as analytics and underwriting for a variety of energy asset development projects.

Mr. Plummer earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from Ohio State University and his Master’s Degree in Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Katherine Rosenberg is Vice President of Strategic Partnerships of Grameen America. Ms. Rosenberg joined Grameen America after working as a research coordinator at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Prior to this, she served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal where she worked in rural health and community development. Ms. Rosenberg holds a BA degree from Union College in American Studies and an MPH from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

Jason Spingarn-Koff joined the staff of The New York Times in 2011 as the video journalist for Opinion. He is the series producer and curator of Op-Docs, a new initiative at The Times for short opinionated documentaries by independent filmmakers and artists. He directed the feature documentary Life 2.0, which premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and was acquired by OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network’s Documentary Club. Prior films and journalism have appeared on PBS, BBC, MSNBC, Time.com and Wired News. He was a 2010-2011 MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellow and is a graduate of Brown University and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

Erin Sweeney is a Case Team Leader with The Bridgespan Group, working in the New York office. Her experience includes work across a variety of nonprofit fields and topics, including education, philanthropy, advocacy, and veterans’ issues.
Prior to joining Bridgespan, Ms. Sweeney worked as a management consultant at The Boston Consultant Group (BCG) in both the Boston and Stockholm offices. While at BCG, she worked on a diverse range of projects including post-merger integrations, market assessments and go-to-market strategies, and growth strategies. Ms. Sweeney helped launch BCG’s own Social Impact Practice Group, aimed to combine the company’s private-sector expertise with their deep understanding of the world’s most pressing issues.

Ms. Sweeney has spent time in rural Gujarat, India working with grassroots social workers to increase female educational enrollment. In 2009, she spent six months volunteering with two children’s homes in Addis Ababa, Children’s Home Society and Family Services and AHOPE Ethiopia. In 2010, Ms. Sweeney was asked to join The Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City’s Young Leaders Committee. She currently serves as Chairman of Educators 4 Excellence’s Young Professionals Board.

Ms. Sweeney received degrees in business from The Wharton School and in English from the University of Pennsylvania. Ms. Sweeney also holds a Masters of Philosophy in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge, where her research focused on the rights of women and children in North Africa and Eastern Europe.

Cathleen Tobin leads the Financial Education and Social Communications practice at Women’s World Banking. Ms. Tobin joined WWB in January 2010, and has worked to increase financial inclusion for low-income customer segments in developing and emerging markets in Africa and South Asia.

Ms. Tobin works with WWB’s network members to build marketing capacity to support success in savings mobilization and other initiatives, such as building the financial literacy of un- and under-banked customer segments. She works with member microfinance banks to define the marketing structure within their organization; help develop marketing strategies that effectively reach targeted segments, particularly those who may be illiterate or have limited mobility; and find ways to embed financial education into more interactions between bank staff and customers.

Prior to joining WWB in 2010, Ms. Tobin spent ten years marketing consumer products to women, both in the US and overseas. She has designed and led a range of comprehensive marketing and branding efforts for Unilever, Revlon, and Johnson & Johnson. She began her career with Morgan Stanley, as a foreign exchange analyst.

Ms. Tobin holds an MBA from Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, and a B.A. in Sociology from The College of the Holy Cross.

Michael Tsan is a Partner based in Mumbai who helps lead Dalberg’s access to finance, renewable energy, and program evaluation work in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Africa. Mr. Tsan specializes in developing and assessing inclusive business models and base-of-the-pyramid-focused market transformation programs for off-grid products and services.

Mr. Tsan works regularly with social enterprises, multinational corporations (MNCs), development agencies, foundations, and specialized non-governmental organizations in the renewable energy, gender, access to finance, health, and agriculture sectors. A sample of his recent engagements includes a social business and corporate social responsibility strategy for a leading pharma MNC in Asia, a growth strategy for a high-profile agricultural extension NGO, the midterm evaluation of the International Finance Corporation’s advisory services portfolio in South East Asia, and an ex-post evaluation of the World Bank Group’s Lighting Africa program.

Prior to his work at Dalberg,  Mr. Tsan spent six years at McKinsey & Company in the US, Europe, and Asia. He earned a JD from Yale Law School, a mini-MBA from Tuck Business School at Dartmouth, and a BA in Economics and History from Swarthmore College. Mr. Tsan sits on the steering committee of the South Asia chapter of the Aspen Development Network of Enterpreneurs and writes and speaks regularly on inclusive business and renewable energy issues.

 Professor Bruce Usher is co-director of the Social Enterprise Program and an executive-in-residence at Columbia Business School, where he has been an adjunct professor in finance since 2002, teaching the Carbon Finance and the Finance & Sustainability courses. The objective of both courses is to utilize financial tools to create sustainable value for society. From 2002 to 2009, Mr. Usher was CEO of EcoSecurities Group plc, during which time he built it into the world’s largest public carbon credit company. EcoSecurities structures and guides greenhouse gas emission reduction projects through the Kyoto Protocol, acting as principal intermediary between the projects and the buyers of carbon credits. Mr. Usher led EcoSecurities through an IPO, a secondary public placement and strategic investment, and the sale of the entire company to JP Morgan in December 2009. EcoSecurities developed more than 400 projects in 36 countries, representing approximately 10 percent of all projects approved by the United Nations under the Kyoto Protocol. Prior to EcoSecurities, Usher was co-founder and CEO of TreasuryConnect LLC, which provided electronic trading solutions to banks and was sold to eSpeed Inc in 2001. For the previous six years, he was COO of The Williams Capital Group, a boutique institutional investment bank. Prior to that, he worked in financial services in New York and Tokyo. He is on the boards of E+Co, a nonprofit that finances clean energy entrepreneurs in developing countries, and Community Energy Inc., a renewable energy project development company. He earned an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School.

Bryan T. Wagner is the Executive Director, Global Sustainable Finance at Morgan Stanley.
Mr. Wagner leads social finance coverage as a member of Morgan Stanley Global Sustainable Finance, coordinating the firm’s work with companies and investors active in microfinance and other business models targeting the global economic base of the pyramid. He has worked on a variety of inclusive finance assignments spanning Latin America, West Africa, India and the U.S. Prior to his current role, Mr. Wagner spent five years as part of Morgan Stanley’s Latin America Investment Banking Group, based in New York and Buenos Aires. He has also worked with ACCION International, ACCION USA and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Mr. Wagner currently serves on the Board of Neighborhood Trust Federal Credit Union (a financial cooperative serving the Washington Heights area of Manhattan) and as Vice Chair of the Finance & Audit committee of Grameen America. Mr. Wagner holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MPA in international development from Harvard Kennedy School and a BSBA from UNC-Chapel Hill.

Professor John Walker’s  ’08 education in physics and engineering prepared him to hold senior roles in BAE Systems and Pentland Systems. Subsequently, Mr. Walker worked in venture capital and private equity for Chart Group in New York City, contributing to venture & LBO deals worth over $200m. Since joining Echoing Green in 2009 as Director of Finance, Mr. Walker has significantly increased his exposure to the social enterprise sector and sought to utilize his skills and experience in delivering increased impact through investment in socially-oriented, sustainable businesses. Mr. Walker graduated from the EMBA-Global program at Columbia and London Business Schools in 2008 and received the Distinguished Service Award for his service to the schools. Mr. Walker is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, teaching a course on raising capital for social enterprises.

Lisa Williams ’11 is an investment associate at Imprint Capital Advisors, where she has analyzed early and mid-stage impact investments across industries and asset classes. Most recently, Ms. Williams has led the firm’s work on identifying and evaluating socially responsible public equity and fixed income funds. Ms. Williams Joined Imprint Capital after serving as a 2011 Jalia Ventures Fellow. While at Jalia Ventures, Ms. Williams reviewed new investment opportunities, met with potential investees, and developed a detailed financial model for a fast-growing portfolio company to analyze scenarios for a follow-on round of capital.

Prior to business school, Ms. Williams worked in a variety of roles involving security analysis and was an Associate in the Corporate Bond Research Division of Citi Investment Research. At Citi, Ms. Williams developed investment recommendations for the Energy and Utilities sector and contributed to the initiation of positions in investment grade corporate bonds and CDS. Her previous experience includes equity research for beverage companies and regulated utilities.

Ms. Williams is a New Jersey native with a BA in Business Administration from Saint Peter’s University and earned her MBA from Columbia Business School. Ms. Williams was a Robert Toigo Foundation Fellow and is currently a member of College Summit New York’s Education Leaders Council.

Garrett van Ryzin is the Paul  M. Montrone Professor of Decision, Risk and Operations at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business and Chair of the Decision, Risk and Operations Division of the School. His research interest includes analytical pricing, stochastic modeling and operations management. He is coauthor of the book The Theory and Practice of Revenue Management, which won the 2005 Lanchester prize for best published work in operations research. He is an INFORMS and MSOM Fellow. Mr. van Ryzin received the BSEE degree from Columbia University, and the degrees of MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and PhD in Operations Research from MIT.

Scott Vitters is responsible for leading The Coca-Cola Company’s global PlantBottle™ packaging technology program.  This award winning innovation platform aims to eliminate the company’s dependence on nonrenewable fossil fuels for plastic packaging.  Under Mr. Vitters’ leadership, PlantBottle™ packaging is demonstrating how ‘smart’ technologies can be used to successfully differentiate brands with customers and consumers while driving long term cost competitiveness and enhancing environmental performance.

Mr. Vitters joined The Coca-Cola Company in 1997 and has held various roles of increasing responsibility, including Corporate Environmental Manager; Environmental Director – 2002 Winter Olympic Games; North America Packaging Sustainability Director; and Corporate Packaging Sustainability Director.   Some notable advances during his leadership included the establishment of the company’s worldwide packaging sustainability program, global investments in cutting edge recycling technologies, creation of a for-profit recycling collection enterprise and the launch of a multi-million dollar consumer marketing campaign promoting recycling.

Prior to joining The Coca-Cola Company, Mr. Vitters served as a consultant to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Solid Waste.  He also was a research fellow with the Environmental and Energy Study Conference, a congressional legislative caucus in Washington, DC.

Mr. Vitters is a highly respected leader in the field of packaging sustainability and innovation, speaking regularly at global conference and events.  In 2011, Scott was recognized by Fortune Magazine as a “Green Star Within the Most Admired Companies.”

Mr. Vitters has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Franklin & Marshall College and a Masters of Business Administration from Georgetown University.

Yasmina Zaidman is the Director of Communications and Strategic Partnerships at Acumen Fund, a global non-profit venture fund working to change the way the world tackles poverty by investing in enterprises that deliver critical goods and services such as water, energy, health and housing. She is responsible for all aspects of Acumen Fund’s external communications and media strategies, including its media relations, publications and its communications efforts across Acumen’s global offices. She also leads Acumen Fund’s efforts to engage with strategic partners who share Acumen Fund’s commitment to supporting entrepreneurial approaches to tackling poverty.

Prior to her current role at Acumen Fund, Ms. Zaidman initiated and managed the Water Portfolio at Acumen Fund, where she oversaw $3 million in investments in start-up water enterprises in India and East Africa now valued at over $40 million. She has been a regular speaker at conferences on the topics of water, social enterprise and philanthropy, and has authored several articles, including a chapter in The Role of the Environment in Poverty Alleviation published by Fordham University Press. Ms. Zaidman has worked in the arenas of international development, corporate sustainability and social entrepreneurship for fifteen years. She led the Environmental Innovations Initiative at Ashoka where, as Acting Director, she worked to capture and disseminate the best practices of leading environmental innovators.
She received a BA from Vassar College where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa and cum laude and her MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business with a certificate in Public Management.